Working Man's Reprise

Someone pointed out to me that the last post made me sound crotchety and perhaps older than I am. I am twenty eight years old. I am not a forty year old Smiths fan with a wife and three kids who's finding it hard to fit live music into my already hectic schedule of coordinating Pump It Up parties. I am single and without responsibilities, save feeding and clothing myself.

Admittedly, I may have lazily adopted a cranky tone. If I'd been more self-aware, I might have been more deliberate about making myself sound cool and young. But is there something about merely suggesting shows start earlier that makes me sound old? Why doesn't it make me sound like someone with a day job who likes sleep, which is actually the case?

One of my abiding examples of peaceful iconoclasm is my friend Matt. I first encountered Matt when we were both college freshman and he lived next door. Matt liked B-horror movies, Arkansas, hardcore music, and having coffee at 7am before heading to the library and retrieving the morning paper. A man of habit, he continues that last practice to this day. He feels no need to behaviorally conform to any subculture. He is the Switzerland of status quo.

I'm not quite there yet. I run on a fuel that's 90% peer-approval, so I'm a little embarrassed to have outed myself as the "old" guy who's wiped-out by midnight. That doesn't change the fact that the ethos by which one becomes known as "old" has more in common with MTV Spring Break than it does with music.

Apology of the Working Hipster

My upstairs neighbors don't sleep nights. I know this, because from about 11:00pm to 6:00am every night, I endure what sounds like someone obsessively shoving a recliner to alternating corners of their loft, ceaselessly, like a meth-addicted, interior designing Sisyphus. I mention this because it directly contradicts my own schedule. 11:00pm to 6:00am: sleeping. 8:30am to 5:30pm: ceaselessly pushing numbers and text from keyboard to printer to outbox, like a necktied Sisyphus. But still, like a contributing member of productive society, which is more than I can say for my laz-e-boy shoving upstairs neighbors.

Historically, productive members of society ask very little at the end of the hard work day: a cold beer, good conversation, and a little romance if they're lucky. Why is it, then, that the musical community had drifted so far away from the working man's pace? Why do shows scheduled for 9:00 start at 10:00, labor under half-hour sets and hour-long sound checks, and finally end at 2:00? Why do shows so often consist of comatose hipsters and maxed-out sound systems? And why is this all so rigidly now the standard for performed music? Who is this working for?

I read an autobiography of a man who, as a child, lived through the Southie busing riots in Boston in the 70s. The author's mom actually cultivated a sustained Boston-wide reputation during this period by arousing the anti-establishment sentiment of the neighborhood with music, performing sharp, angry folk tones in local bars to the delight of Southie's working class just as they left the day's work behind. The shortsighted outrage of that particular situation shouldn't be envied, but the basic picture still appeals to me: accessible music for the working class on their terms.

It's a question of audience, or maybe even potential audience. If shows start at ten or eleven and drag on till two, then that's a situation where artists are making music for artists or at least for tweekers who move furniture all night. Those people need music too, but on its face, this rigid night owl policy is patently anti-populist and ghettoized. What about the welders, mechanics, maids, or even the accountants, pharmacists, engineers, etc.?

One would wonder what it might be like if shows started at, say, eight. If there were never more than three acts. If the sound person would switch the EQ dial from "party" to "music." If the music ended at ten, the lights went up, and everyone still had about an hour to converse, discuss the music, dialogue thought.

Maybe this is all impractical. Maybe I should capitulate to the sophomoric machismo that dictates coolness: insomnia, vomit, self-involved oblivion. Whatever I do, I'm not going to turn folk just so I can go to bed at a proper hour. So c'mon, Rock and Roll, we can figure this out.

Ponytail vs. Permanent Press

This is nothing but a re-post. Apparently, I don't take my own contributions to this one in six trillion piece of web real estate seriously, so why not fill it with someone else's hard work?

This band is neither from DFW nor coming to DFW, but this Pitchfork-produced clip scratches me right where I itch. I have fantasized for a while about bands performing in unorthodox locations: empty and abandoned urban lots, concrete medians of major thoroughfares, BLM land on the Arizona strip, my apartment*. I have a friend who once had a goal to reduce his show-going to bands performing in art galleries, though I don't think he ever followed through.

Baltimore's Ponytail pulls one off that I had not even considered: the laundromat. Of course, this brings to mind our own, now defunct Bar of Soap, but that was a bar AND laundromat and I honestly never saw anyone wash their clothes; although, I'd be interested to hear from you if you did. This appears to be an operating, run-of-the-mill, (Baltimore?) laundromat. I had never heard Ponytail before and was immediately impressed with their dual-guitar spastics, but what is going on with the frontwoman? She seems to be contributing little beyond randomly knifing the music with a disharmonic yelp.

*Pathetic foreshadowing. Expect a long overdue post about this soon.

Annex House - The Beaten Sea w/ RTB2 - 1/23/09

www.sarakerensphotography.com

The blues scale. The electric guitar. Double-fretting. And now, my new favorite music innovation, the house show. After attending an Annex House show last night, I am convinced that the idea may be the one legitimate remedy for the Dallas music scene.

Deep Ellum is not dead. Deep Ellum is still breathing, but its breathing is a labored, emphysemic heave occuring two days a week. Music is no longer the commodity it was. Have no illusions; when Deep Ellum was at its zenith, the place was not fully populated with genuine music appreciators. A fair portion were trend-zombies who saw Singles in the theater, when live music became the pasttime du jour. The popular draw now seems to be dance clubs, throbbing with disinterested, disembodied music, four times removed from any song writer. Copies of copies of synthesizements.

With the trendies gone, and the music-appreciating populace slashed to a remnant, house shows are perfect for Dallas music fans. Like Christians of first century Rome, driven to the catacombs, worshipping in secret, without the blessing or support of the establishment. At Annex House last night, I imagined we were just that: the last true disciples of music whittled down to our eager corps.

Show intimacy is an oft-overlooked commodity. The virgin power of a house show is immeasurable, the sum of a thousand frequencies of harmonic energy wrought by the collective excitement of being an arm's length away from the the guitars and vocal chords and wooden sticks improbably mingling to create music.

Yes, give me the stamping toes of boots two feet from my knees, the reverberations of the songsmith's heels on a wooden floor, channeled up through my beer bottle. Such was the palpable communion during The Beaten Sea's opening set in the anonymous living room at 1207 Annex Ave., Dallas, TX. The Beaten Sea have a chest-full of tunes ideal for living rooms. It is bonefied porch music; a little country, a little gospel and old spiritual. As instruments were stilled, The Beaten Sea's overwhelming ingenuousness crescendoed to the collective, mellifluous wail of the three members crowded around one microphone. Unembelished. Immaculate. Rough-hewn. Perfect.

If the hopeful swell of the Beaten Sea had come over the room in waves, the next house act, RTB2, made them tidal. "Demonstrative" Jamie Wilson of the Beaten Sea always calls Ryan Thomas Becker (RTB). It is as good as anyone could do with a one-word attempt, but even a word as ample as "demonstrative" fails to encompass Becker's presence. His gesticulating, the frightening ease with which he plays, both wreckless and precise, his Screamin' Jay Hawkins-cum-verbose librarian. No one term can encompass all that. Becker's indefinable oeuvre rests solidly on Grady Sandlin's (2) unflagging backbeat. This one-two attack was, as usual, fully displayed last night. Bluesy and wild, impassioned and raw. Being in a living room with RTB2 is like being in a living room with a cyclone.

House shows may not be the ideal setting for every musical experience. The Flaming Lips might find it difficult to execute their full stage production under an eight foot ceiling. But for Dallas, for a musical culture that is strongest when its bands play with the least pomp, a house show is like a sanctuary. For last night, at least, music was given its due sanctity.

How did we let Springsteen leapfrog Nirvana?

Two things have happened in the past week. First, I renewed my affection for music made between 1990 and 1996. Second, the democrats have been holding their election year convention in Denver. I was watching Joe Biden's speech, and the overeager applause, when it occurred to me how funny it is that the new generation is listening to the generation before last. Old, dried-up hippies are the new heroes for people in their twenties.

It's safe to say Nirvana wouldn't have shared the same enthusiasm. The band mocked The Youngbloods' call to "try and love one another right now" at the opening of the Nevermind song "Territorial Pissings." Mocked it, because, as children of divorce, they didn't much want to believe people who talked about love. They rightly called into question a generation who spent so much energy trying to let everyone know they cared for people when, in fact, they were so self-absorbed that they ended marriages for the sake of their own happiness.

In the 1994 film SFW, the cynical catch-phrase of "so fucking what," at one point a valid response to a shitty situation, becomes comodified to the point of meaninglessness. At the end of the film, the phrase is replaced in popularity by "everything matters," which becomes equally commercialized. Life has officially imitated art, so now we sing Springsteen again and talk about the change that's just around the corner, about the dignity of work, about the importance of self-sacrifice. All of these are virtues. But how confident can we be that the next generation won't be mocking our hypocrisy?

Weekend Roundup Pt: 2 - The Toadies @ The Palladium - 8/22/08

My (over?)-analysis of the appropriateness of venues continues with my take on what I'm calling the biggest homecoming of the year. Biggest, because I might as well apply a superlative to a show I got to attend, and because I don't think Sam the Sham has planned any forthcoming reunions.

Dallas is not well-suited to homecomings. The city's combination of a transient populace and me-first ethic make loyalty a bygone virtue in North Texas. But alterna-rock memories are still burned into the consciousness of Big D show-goers from the early 90s. A good lot of them have spouses, houses, and kids in suburban school districts now, but, as I saw Friday night, a Toadies reunion can still draw them back to the Dallas epicenter.

Let's be honest, once the early 90s buzz wore off, Dallas was not overly kind to The Toadies. A period of seven years separated their much-lauded Rubberneck (1994) from their unfairly derided Hell Below/Stars Above (2001) and people lost interest. The local radio didn't help. When I spent my first summer in Dallas in 1997, there was still a Q102, and plenty of Toadies on the airwaves. Four years later, Q102 had been replaced by a Clearchannel sinkhole and the Toadies could not buy local radio support. The low point of summer '01 had to be the 97.1 sponsored "Big Freakin' Deal," a festival name that was no doubt brainstormed by two middle-schoolers with a bag of whippits. The festival offered a foul lineup of butt-rock bands--Staind, Saliva, Cold--all of which received ample pre-festival promotion, and the Toadies. At a hometown show that should have been The Toadies' prodigal triumph, the band was relegated to opening for Rammstein. Despicable.

When The Toadies released Hell Below/Stars Above, They were still trying to build on the success of Rubberneck and establish themselves as an important, current band. As I said, interest and loyalty waned and the band imploded. The band is more grown up in 2008 and have fewer illusions about themselves. Lisa Umbarger has been replaced by Doni Blair of Hagfish, another longsuffering Dallas musician, and band members still have other ongoing musical projects. They do have a new album, but The Toadies know that they exist in people's minds primarily as the group from 1994, evident by the Rubberneck-heavy setlist from Friday night. The band is reformed undoubtedly for making cash, but I believe they are also back for that synergy they once had with fans, something that time, corporate radio, real-estate developers, and disloyal fans have eroded. Something that came back to life again at the Palladium last Friday.

The Palladium is the wrong place for any band with a soul and especially for a band like The Toadies. The place has a dozen flat-screen TVs piping images from the stage, $6.00 beers, and bartenders dressed in uniforms. Rock and roll shouldn't be allowed in the same building as a uniform. But even the Palladium with all its plastic luster couldn't diminish the effect The Toadies had on the place. It was a case of "My musical chaos can beat up your grabby capitalism." And it did. The unsavoriness of the place vanished as soon as the band opened with "Mister Love."

I still don't have an official setlist, but I counted in my head nine songs from Rubberneck, four from Hell Below/Stars Above, four from the new album No Surrender, and a show-closing standard from the unreleased Feeler. What I do know is that the energy never subsided. They ripped through all the classics with aplomb and won us over with all the new material. Dallas, a city with a normally fractured music scene, exhibited a heartening solidarity, shouting back every word of "I Come From the Water."*

Drenched in sweat, the crowd left The Palladium in a renewed euphoria. Members of Deep Ellum's old guard--easily noticeable by their sun-faded tattoos, camouflage shorts, and beer bellies--were reveling in the nostalgia of the moment, in the way it used to, and should be. Younger fans were dumbstruck at having witnessed a moment they had theretofore only experienced on their ipods. It would be hyperbolism to say The Toadies embody what everyone remembers and misses about the music scene we used to know in Dallas and took for granted. Some of Dallas' snarkier inhabitants even have the gumption to call them "overrated."** But one has to assume that there at the Palladium, something was revived in the audience at having seen a band that everybody rightly wrote off as dead. It was the memory of all the reckless fun Dallas used to have and a renewed hope that it can still have it.

*I was so personally overcome with excitement at one point, that I, like many others that night, made an attempt at crowd surfing during the song "Hell Below/Stars Above." I often forget how light I am. I was thrown forward with much violence and little effort, making the stage in what must have been world record time. I apologize for all the people I unintentionally kicked in the head.

**Send Jesse much hate mail.

Weekend Roundup Pt: 1 - Sarah Jaffe @ The Cavern - 8/21/08

I cannot imagine a venue more appropriate for Sarah Jaffe than the Cavern. The venue's brutally understated stage lighting has a single point of failure: one solitary lightbulb. The walls seem to crowd in on audience and artist alike. The Cavern is built and lit as a virtual confessional booth for musicians. No other site is better suited for Sarah Jaffe's tuneful vulnerability, a woman for whom, perhaps obsessively, nothing may be kept secret.

Sarah Jaffe's tendency toward dark honesty is well-known by now in local music circles. Jaffe has even achieved national levels of recognition, having been selected as NPR's Song of the Day on 8/21. Sarah is known for her Dostoevskyish brand of self-consciousness, persistent as she is in exploring her more ignoble motivations. Her threadbare compositions provide the perfect backdrop. Assembled from small bits of guitar and cello, you can almost seem them bend under the gravity of her penitential voice.

Jaffe's fragility in verse is held in tension by her abilities as a performer. Her voice is as insistent and flawless as her guitar work. Meekly resting behind her large-framed glasses, her downcast gaze is somehow as arresting as a direct stare. Sarah can command even those segments of the audience that hadn't planned on listening, the ones who willingly hush their conversations when Jaffe pulls back the sound to a whisper. The effect at The Cavern felt like you were dropped into film noir or a T.S. Eliot Poem, like you were having a cigarette with Tom Waits. I have enough confidence in Sarah to believe someone like him would have been there last Thursday if he had the time and requisite anonymity. With any justice, that's just the sort of recognition Sarah Jaffe will one day receive.

http://www.myspace.com/sjaffe