Thursday, 5/15/08: Industry Night at Reggie's

This entry needs to start out with an apology. I'm just now catching up on entries that should have been written many weeks ago. This one right here... this one's a bit dodgy, folks.

This show happened a while ago – too long ago for me to remember all the details. All I have are my notes. I don't want to fluff out my entry and spruce up my prose with bullshit of any sort, so I'm just going to stick to the notes. This is all very unprofessional, I know, but then, I'm not a professional. Such are the luxuries that this status affords me. The date: May 15^th, 2008. The occasion: Columbia College's music management grad program industry night/gala. The venue: Reggie's Rock Club.

Flowers for Dorian, the first band of the night, reminded me of Second Stage Turbine Blade-era Coheed and Cambria. Not particularly fresh, but they played the kind of emo that I wish emo bands still played. Their performance was sharp. They sort of looked like idiots onstage, but were obviously having loads of fun. The only one who never looked like an idiot – who just looked like he was having the time of his life – was their drummer. I want to steal their drummer.

The second band to play, Needers and Givers, have a healthy dose of BJM in them, with a little bit of Decemberists too. They're so hipster that when you cut them, they probably bleed dingy brown plaid instead of red.

Brice Woodall and the Positrons, the band we had come to see, the band our friend Andrew manages, were third in the lineup. Andrew and I ended up chatting with a guy named Bob after the show, and according to Bob, Brice had the best stage presence of anyone who performed that night. At the time, I thought he was just being complimentary, but he was kind of right. Brice knew what he was doing.

When Andrew said that the first band they brought to his mind was U2, and Bob said that he was reminded of Radiohead, and I said that I first thought of Remy Zero, we realized that those three bands provided a pretty good reference for Brice's sound. A number of songs from Brice's “Feathery Trigger” album have made it onto various iTunes playlists and mix CDs of mine. Check out “Redwoods,” “Short List,” and “Hollow.”

The first thing I noticed about J. Roddy and the Business was that their bassist looked just like Murderface. A skinny Murderface, granted, and with longer, slightly less poofy hair, but otherwise just like William Murderface.

As far as their sound was concerned, I'd describe it as early 60's blues-rock with Jimmy Page on lead guitar. They had the same aptitude for early rock 'n' roll cliches as Jet, with a bit of a Raconteurs edge to them. (Actually, I probably could have summed that up by saying “They sounded kind of like the Black Crowes,” couldn't I?) They sounded kind of like the Black Crowes.

So that's it for Industry Night. I also went to see Thrice at the Metro on May 16^th, and, much to my disappointment, I have no notes from that evening. I can tell you, however, that their lighting was much more elaborate than it has been previous times that I've seen them, that their performance was solid, as always, and that “Digital Sea” was the highlight of their set, largely due to the addition of a gorgeous acoustic drum line to the chorus.

Next up is the Lollapalooza entry, which is going to be huge. And by huge, I mean very big.

Tuesday, 5/13/08: Mt. St. Helens with Interiors and Nouns at the Empty Bottle

I realized at some point on Tuesday that I was looking forward to dinner at the Bite Cafe almost as much as I was looking forward to the show. If it's not too late, a show at the Empty Bottle should always be preceded by dinner at the Bite. The place is small and looks pretty exactly like the inside of the venue next door, except with tables, and the menu is very vegetarian-friendly (yippee!) and pretty delicious. I had a bowl of wonderfully savory tomato-garlic soup, peppery and with coarsely-chopped veggies that gave it almost the consistency of gazpacho, followed by a jerk seitan sandwich that was vinegary enough to give it a tang but not enough to give me all kinds of acid reflux. I never know how to pronounce "seitan."

I had called ahead to find out the night's schedule, and was told that the first band went on at 8:30. I finished my dinner and hurried next door at 8:40, all worried that I was late. I found myself in an empty house. When I expressed my surprise to the doorman, he told me that the first band didn't go on until 9:45. Luckily, I had a book in my bag, so I sat down on the couch in the Empty Bottle's entranceway, pulled up my hood, and started to read.

Before long, I had company. A sleek black cat prowled up to the base of the couch, paused, and then hopped up to join me. After a moment's hesitation, he stepped carefully onto my lap, eased himself down to prone, and curled up. His name was Radley, I learned, and he's been a part of the Empty Bottle for almost as long as there's been an Empty Bottle. More than once, I had people walk up to me and say, “Oh my God, he's so cute! Can I pet your cat?”

"He's not mine,” I would reply. “So, yeah, I guess.”

He took well to human attention, which I suppose a bar cat must.

Rather promptly at 9:45, Nouns quietly took the stage and the self-described dream-pop duo of Chase Johnson and Anthony Iamurri plugged in and tuned up.

The pair has some very real skills. They both play like they've had jazz training at some point in the past, but they bring that skill set to bear to create a decidedly unique final product: delicate keyboard loops that ebb and flow behind soft vocal harmonies, and drums that exploit a pretty wide dynamic range, alternately rolling gently and sinking into thick grooves. Chase's pleasingly jangly guitar chords, strummed on a black Rickenbacker just like Johnny Marr's, have the biggest part in lending the music its distinctive texture. “Imaginary Economics," in my opinion the highlight of their set, was full of beautiful atmospherics grounded by a drum line that was practically all fills.

The Interiors, next in the night's lineup, was the kind of straight-ahead rock band I would expect to have come up in the early part of the decade. They played songs with a bit of post-punk and a dash of blues, but mostly just rock; the vocals sounded like Julian Casablancas with more of a rock-star wail. "Shooting Off," made out of fast, urgent 2/4 and rhythm guitar strummed on the up beat, was the last (and best) song in their set.

Mt. St. Helens was the evening's headliner, and their playing showed the most experience-polished performance acumen. Their sound wasn't anything new or revolutionary, but it defied pigeonholing just the same. Their songs were dancey, but not dancey enough to be called post-New-Wave; jerky, but not jerky enough to be punk; and poppy, but too gritty to be pop. Yet, somehow, they escaped sounding generic the way Interiors occasionally sounded (dare I say?) generic. Um, go listen to them.

Above all, from a music nerd's perspective, they were a testament to the textures that can be created with two SG's and a 335 over a J-bass. They were a tremendously fun act to attend; I'd definitely see them again given the chance.

Saturday, 5/10/08: VHS or Beta with Tigercity at the Empty Bottle

When I walked into the Empty bottle for the first time, I noticed its near-uncanny resemblance to that bar level in Guitar Hero. The stage is small – smaller than the bar – but there's lots of standing room, and lots of good views of the stage if you look around a little bit. The night was cold, especially for May; inside the bar, there was a chill in the air, and I regretted leaving my coat in the car. There was a space of an hour and fifteen minutes between door-time and Tigercity's set, and I had nowhere better to be, so I hung out and listened to the DJ while Tigercity completed a leisurely sound check. The DJ, incidentally, was really good. At long last, Tigercity took the stage and kicked off the last date of the two bands' six-week tour.

Their instrumentation was top-notch. The guitarist's loose hands and rapid, muted strums combined with the tastefully-articulated thumps from the bass to lend the music a funk inflection that meshed well with the dance beats coming from the drum kit, which were much more creative than the “MM, tss, MM, tss, MM, tss” of indie-dance-rock that I've grown so tired of. It definitely had the room swinging. The spectacle of the night, though, was a heftily-built old man bumpin' and grindin' like his bump-and-grind muscle had mere hours to live. Which it may have had.

The weak link in the lineup was the singer. He attempted to make up for a lack of charismatic stage presence by moving around a lot, but given the size of the stage at the Empty Bottle, his incessant vamping about meant that he bumped into the other band members a lot, all of which made the stage seem paradoxically too big and not big enough. His voice was most at home in an unremarkable baritone, but he spent much of his time in a falsetto that recalled Jamiroquai in its stronger moments and the Bee Gees in its weaker ones. Their music wasn't bad, but a band's live performance is only as good as its frontman. The contrast with VHS or Beta's Craig Pfunder was startling.

The man at the helm of VHS or Beta looked nothing like what I was expecting. Under dim lights at the end of an ominous introductory track of dark, ambient synth, A tall, lanky Asian man wearing some of the tightest pants I've ever seen strode up to the microphone, his face obscured by his hair. (His face remained obscured by his hair for most of the show.) The band was unhindered by the tight quarters onstage, but exuded a presence that enveloped the first few rows of the audience like a fog.

One of the first things I noticed was the band's equipment. They play some beautiful instruments. I recall a big Rickenbacker bass, a Les Paul Junior, a Bigsby-equipped SG, and a twin-humbucker Telecaster. The band has considerable multi-instrument ability, too – although the five-piece touring set was primarily drums/bass/keys/guitar/vocals (with Pfunder playing lead guitar on most songs), over the course of their set, four different people played guitar, and three played bass. Their songs were so wonderful and so thoroughly danceable, I wondered (not for the first time) why anyone goes to dance clubs. Pfunder's voice was in top condition; “You Got Me,” one of the highlights of Night on Fire, was his best Robert Smith, and “Alive” was moving, as it deserves to be. Their set concluded with a moving performance of “Bring On the Comets,” a prime example of the more straightforward pop sound attained by the album that shares its name.

A three-song encore followed, finishing with “Night on Fire” with Pfunder's black soapbar SG snarling out the lead riff. By the time the instruments dropped out and Pfunder led the audience in a chorus of

“Put your hands together and we'll light this night, light this night on fire!”

to the rhythm of upraised hands clapping, there wasn't a dry armpit in the place. The venue, shot through with a dry chill at the beginning of the night, was now hot, even steamy. The air hung bright and heavy, and every corner was suffused with awesome. I took a slow breath and emerged onto the sidewalk with an easy glide to my steps, the awesome having soaked into my leg muscles.

I didn't make the trip to the afterparty at Sonotheque, much as I would have loved to hear a DJ set from VHS or Beta, and despite the cover charge having been waived. It was 2 in the morning, I had driven to the show, and I wasn't about to go to Sonotheque by myself if I couldn't drink. But the awesome stayed with me: you know you've enjoyed a band's performance if all you want to do when you get home is listen to more of them.

Next stop: Tuesday, 5/13/08, Mt. St. Helens/The Interiors/Nouns, same bat time, same bat venue.

Intro: Phase One.

The obligatory introduction:

My name is Dan, I live in Chicago, and I love music.

I'll give you some more of this journal's backstory as time passes, but I'll use this time for the basics.

I'm kind of a neophyte in the world of concertgoing. I had a pretty sheltered upbringing in a New Jersey suburb, and my first concert (other than the Raffi concert my parents took me to when I was seven) was in high school when a friend of mine took me to see Korn. (Yes, Korn. Stop laughing.)

As it turned out, I had the time of my life, even though I wasn't a big fan of the band playing: it was the intimacy of personally witnessing a live performance that I found so stirring.

I started going to see the bands that came to play at my high school, but they weren't many. I went to see Thursday a few times in college, and then Funeral for a Friend, Finch, and Thrice at the Bamboozle festival in New Jersey. I drove to see Live in Providence by myself, and it was one of the most gloriously cathartic experiences of my life. At the end of the show, I wanted to give everyone there a hug. After graduation, I saw a few scattered shows in New York, and that was it. Until Chicago.

Chicago has a pretty irresistible indie scene. There are so many great venues here I don't really know how to handle it. After every show I went to, I found myself wanting to tell everyone how awesome it was.

So I'm not going to pretend to have gobs of indie cred. I'm not going to pretend to have a lot of experience in the scene. And I'm not going to try not to gush. I'm going to keep a diary of the shows I go to, and share my experiences with you, from the perspective of someone who loves music, nothing more. If you love music too, maybe you'll find it useful.