Guided by Voices, The Glands
40-Watt Club - Athens, GA

It’s cold in Athens. At least it was the night we decided to walk downtown strip to the 40-watt club to watch Guided by Voices perform. Of course I was looking forward to this, but by the fourth block my body was starting to get used to the cold, a certain sign of impending death. I never wear my coat to shows, because it’s hot inside and who wants to carry around a bulky coat in a sea of drunken pollardites? I certainly do not, so my trembling frame was covered merely by my trusty hoodie. During the final leg of my trek, I was pleased to discover that we would not have to wait outside. Good.

Once inside I rediscovered life, life that I would lose again later this night. I was warm, I could glide across the floor, I could jump on the chair, I could play that game which I forgot the name of. I could do anything! So I decided to go back outside. Why you ask? Well because I saw something. I saw a shirt. I saw a Guided by Voices shirt that I destine to have. A simple black shirt, with Guided by Voices lettered on the front in bold white sans serif letters and on the back a simple query. What shitty band are you in? So off to the ATM I went for the cash. Upon returning, I purchased the shirt, reanimated my limbs, and took my position on left side, just in front of the stage, to watch the opening band perform.

This band was called Glands. An odd name indeed, but who am I to question these four kids playing on stage. If they want to be called Glands, I have no problem with it. The songs were catchy, noisy, sing-along-ish, indie rock that has been duplicated many times in the entire Athens/Chapel Hill scene. Nothing spectacular stood out, but that was okay, they are just the opening band. The lead singer thanked the crowd for allowing them to play, because he knew. He knew why these people were here. They came for Bob.

Speaking of Bob. He was not on stage yet. I imagined him backstage, doing the drunken collapse, with the other band members poking him with microphone stands trying to get him to get up to do the show. Meanwhile, the roadies are hanging the sign. The neon sign that will soon exclaim, “The club is open” and will surely send this sea of people into orgasmic fits. Guess what? I was right. They lit up the sign and the crowd cheered, everything was good.

When Bob, Nate, Tim, Doug, and Jim finally staggered on stage, I fully expected them to start blasting A Salty Salute, but no, Bob wanted to play Hello There, a Cheap Trick song. That’s just what he did the entire night, Bob played exactly what he wanted to play. For over 3 hours and nearly 50 songs, Bob and his group of rotating band members played. They played everything from tunes off their yet to be released album Isolation Drills, to obscure songs from the Suitcase box set. When they finally made it to Salty Salute, it was on the second of three encores. Once they played it while Bob was away relieving himself, and then again when Bob burst onto stage, proclaiming the club is once again open.

I can’t recall every song they played, but it went something like this:

Glad Girls Chasing Heather Crazy Pivotal Film Isolation Drills Run Wild How’s My Drinking? Ha Ha Man Back to Saturn X I’m Dirty Chasing Tara Shocker in Gloomtown Far-Out Crops Submarine Teams Frequent Weaver Who Burns And I Don’t So Now I Do Tight Globes Pop Zeus Soul Train College Policeman Teenage FBI Mushroom Art Zoo Pie Things I Will Keep Fair Touching Alone Stinking and Unafraid In Stitches Peephole I Am a Scientist Tractor Rape Chain Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory Hot Freaks Closer You Are Game of Pricks Watch Me Jumpstart A Salty Salute Motor Away Cut-Out Witch Waved Out Whiskey Ships Psychic Pilot Clocks Out Girl Named Captain Get Under It Flat Beauty Baba O’Reilly Hello There.

Pirouettes, high kicks, drooling, fumbled cigarettes, many beers, a request to the crowd, a hole in the pants, broken glass, smothered in hugs. It was over. It was still cold outside, but we took a cab.

Godspeed You Black Emperor, Bonnie Prince Billy
The Wherehouse - Winston-Salem, NC

It made sense to me that God Speed You Black Emperor and Bonnie Prince Billy (AKA Will Oldham, AKA one of the Palace Brothers) were playing shows together. Perhaps a singer/songwriter with a twisted mind and twisted lyrics and an eight piece anarchist Canadian orchestra don’t seem like two bands that would go well together but it worked. It really worked well.

Neither band is made for the faint of heart. Fans of slick, comfortable (physically and mentally), carefully arranged concerts would be unhappy at this show. Their similarities made them perfect tour-fellows and their differences made the show a balanced study in musical contrasts.

The differences in style from one man’s cracked whisper to eight people’s lush instrumentals made the show like the favorite mix tape your friend made you. Start softly and simply, focus on lyrics and meaning and feeling. Start with a rough edge, unproduced and raw and move into a swirling ocean of orchestrated multi-layered sound.

It made sense to me that these two groups, with grass roots sound, feel, and focus would play a venue like The Wherehouse in Winston-Salem, NC. The Wherehouse is exactly that. It’s a warehouse, and ex-slaughterhouse actually. It is not a cheekily named club, but is an honest to god from what I can gather more or less abandoned warehouse with dicey plumbing, and holes in the floor (and what fun we had staring through the holes, and better yet, watching others, transfixed by the possibility of finding something no one else can see, bending over to peek!). The stage was roughly the size of my bed.

I like to be surrounded by sound. I like to feel like I’m seeing a band and not watching small people far away on a giant TV screen with 10,000 of my closest friends and for me, The Wherehouse is the perfect size to see a show. From the door I could have pegged Will Oldham himself in the head with a beer bottle, had I been so inclined. And I throw like a girl, too.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy is a strange man. He has one of those faces, his whole head really, that would make a portrait rendered by a straight sketch artist look like a boardwalk cartoonist’s caricature. He leaned back in his chair like an old man on a porch somewhere in the Appalachians, one ankle crossed over his knee, guitar which he sometimes played and sometimes just rested his arms on sitting on his lap, and softly began to sing.

He and the band made a lovely cacophony of random sounds and soothing noise that Bonnie Billy’s warbling and broken voice floated and soared over like a busted kite. He pretty much just sat and sang, sometimes closing his eyes, sometimes opening them and tilting his head back, looking preoccupied, lost, maybe even mentally deficient. Once he went so far as to lift his cowboy boot clad foot in the air but mostly he just sang.

Each song in their set ended with two or three of the musicians stopping and looking over at Bonnie Billy, who would shrug and stop playing. Are we done with that one? he would ask. Oh, okay. What should we play next? They’d discuss it briefly and start again.

The set ended with a couple of rockers, which honestly made me wish they had played faster songs the rest of the time. But it was okay because he was only the opening band.

About fifteen minutes passed between sets and the mystery of how nine musicians, including a set drummer, a percussionist (with tympanis!) two guitarists, a keyboard and other random things player, a bassist, a violinist and a cellist, could fit on a stage the size of a double bed was solved. The string section sat more or less on the floor. A far cry from cold distant area and stadium shows, indeed, and I was excited to be awash in the sounds.

While Bonnie Prince Billy and GSYBE! may have toured together on the strength of their similarities, their differences are what make the pairing work so well. While Bonnie Billy and the boys played simple strong songs without benefit of a set list or, it seems, much discussion over how long the songs should be, GSYBE! took the stage, dedicated the show to the spirits of the animals killed when the Wherehouse was an abattoir, and played two hours worth of seamless, nonstop, brilliantly arranged complex soaring music. With no discussion, no conductor, and only the barest hint of difficulty (and only during one little part) these nine beer and Captain Morgan drinking knit hat wearing heavy smoking Canadians crammed on a tiny stage and blew my brain out of my head.

As I mentioned, the Wherehouse is a big warehouse, a truly low-rent concert going experience. It was less an actual venue and more of a practice space. The show was billed as BYOB, which I took to be more of a liquor license thing, but which actually could have been better communicated as Bring Your Own Beverage as it was more of a “We are provided a sheltered space for a band to play that you might like to see and that’s it” kind of thing.

I love being that close to a band that I see. I love seeing live music in a space small enough for the sound to completely wash over me. And this space was perfect for that kind of sonic transcendences. And GSYBE! is a perfect band to see in a little warehouse that used to be a slaughterhouse that doesn’t have any concessions. And I was happy.

For awhile at least. My enjoyment of the music never faltered but after awhile my discomfort at standing for hours on a hard wood floor began to undermine my ability to loose myself to the music. I shifted and squirmed, and sat until my butt fell asleep and got up and shifted some more and honestly, by the time their phenomenal two hour set was over, I was glad. Tired, chilly, thirsty, and wheezy from the smoke, I enjoyed the music but was ready for the relative comfort of a warm car.

I wonder how the experience would have been different if God Speed had played in a symphony orchestra type venue. On one hand, I would have loved to sit semi-reclined in a comfortable chair with a clear view of the band and the creepy projector images they showed behind them while they played. I would have liked and pleasant lighting and access to liquids. But I wonder if how much that would have taken away from the show? How much of that feeling of swimming through the music would have been lost in a larger, more tastefully lit venue? How much of the crowd vibe would God Speed have missed if they weren’t quite literally sitting among them? And can a band of Canadian anarchists play in a better venue without compromising their values?

When I sat, I had a direct line of sight to the violinist and cellist. I watched as the cellist, lit cigarette in her mouth, walloped the hell out of her cello like some sort of string section Ira Kaplan. It was strange to see the violinist set her instrument on her lap during a section of the music where she didn’t play so she could drink her beer and light a cigarette. That’s certainly not something I would see if they played in an actual concert hall with concessions and comfy chairs. But how much did that affect the overall atmosphere, and the music?

I don’t know, really. Maybe I’m getting old and just like my fun a little cushier these days. Maybe, despite my protestations to the contrary, I’m selling out a little bit myself. Yes, I would like to see GSYBE and Bonnie Prince Billy in more comfortable surroundings. But I’d see them again at The Wherehouse, even knowing then what I know now.

Jennifer

Deicide, Marduk, Skinless & Gorguts
Albany, NY

Peculiar things happen when you turn your back on the local hardcore/punk scene you supported throughout your youth.

The bands you start and the business you conduct spread out like icy fingers connecting to all other jaded ex-hardcore kids that have grown up and grown out of it. At the same time, you become a scenester in a scene that you no longer feel a part of. Suddenly people actually talk about your band and come to see your shows despite all the years that you played to empty rooms before you got older and wandered away from it all.

To top it all off, you no longer have to pay for shows.

Rather than take advantage of this godlike power, you begin to pick only a select number of bigger and better shows to go to. You start to remember them for the music instead of the funny comments your friends made or the silly dances and pro-wrestling moves the “scene clowns” were doing. Musicians become stars again and you regain the sense of wonder that you lost when the band was just a bunch of dirty kids who were no better than you, playing on the same floor you were standing on.

Granted, there is something sad about that… a large part of your social life has atrophied and the human aspects of show going have withered to the point that now you are a passive object being entertained instead of a vital part of an exchange.

It goes without saying that I am currently undergoing this process and in order to conquer these mixed emotions, I require the help of the biggest, baddest, and most satanic bands that are likely to soil Upstate New York with their footprints this year.

Gorguts is not my style. I don’t know much about them and upon hearing them, I don’t have much desire to learn. They are basically just like any other 90’s Florida death metal outfit which means downtuned, uninteresting riffs and monotonous mid-range growl-screaming that sounds neither frantic nor evil. As if to indelibly stamp in my mind the complete lack of interest their set brewed within me, they took a full 10 minute break halfway through to fix a guitar. I weathered this trial standing by the pool table waiting for my girlfriend to show up and trying extra hard to avoid the gaze of the washed up metal relics who might recognize me from high school and try to strike up a chat.

Ahh the relics. There are only a handful of real honest metal (not hardcore… not metalcore… but METAL) shows around these parts every year and you can bet that some long forgotten throwbacks come out of their basements and trailers when the clarion call sounds.

The bittersweet nature of being a plain-clothes metal fan is that while you think it’s honorable to live the metal lifestyle to the fullest, it’s also terribly sad to see the locals you used to look up to still stuck in their glory days and consequently still stuck (and I do mean STUCK) in their tight pants and biker boots. The bald patches compete with the double chins and beer guts to see which feature of normal aging will really transform the (remaining) long hair and band logo-covered denim jacket from a badge of local metal authority to a full on burning bush of graceless aging.

The bullet belts, however, were top-notch.

Gorguts was finally out of the way and Skinless was next.

In order to fully comprehend Skinless, it is necessary to know that there are several levels of metalhead:

• The casual fan that grew up with an older brother who listened to Slayer and Maiden (and often has Malevolent Creation right next to Dave Matthews in their CD rack).
• The metalhead that listens to metal as a default setting of their lifestyle (whether that entails x-treme sports and jolt cola or a bondo-covered firebird and uncle Budweiser) but doesn’t really do any deep thinking on the matter.
• The academic, who may not have a lot of metal friends or connections, but knows everything about every band and has a massive CD collection and every t-shirt known. You can spot them standing alone in the corner of the venue, with the tape recorder, barely enjoying the shows that they are furiously collecting for posterity.
• The serious metal connoisseur who doesn’t find Venom to be at all funny and resents you for thinking so.
• Undetectable metal spies like myself who usually give little outward appearance of their true nature, but secretly wish they had never thrown out their Kreator backpatch.
• Glue sniffing lunatics who live only for intoxication, fornication, and metal in any form.

Skinless are the last on that list. They eat, breathe, sleep, smoke, and snort metal. Their sound is basically an improved mixture of Cannibal Corpse and Deicide with a few extra twists, but the important thing is that their influences are bone deep and whether or not you approve of the fact that their lyrics tend to be manifestos for the painful destruction of all mankind, you have to respect that they do what they do from the gut.

The singer did the evening’s only stage dive (from the top of a 15 foot stack of PA speakers). He topped that by taking time out of their set (of songs about killing and maiming and perversion) to remark that his girlfriend was beautiful.

Marduk took the stage while nobody was paying attention. The key thing to remember about Marduk is that they are part of a dying class of black metal that harkens back to the earliest Norwegian bands who had more in common with GG Allen than Mercyful Fate. Early black metal shows were about hastily smeared on corpsepaint, old leather and spikes that looked like they might have actually been worn into battle, and often a bit of onstage self-mutilation.

Marduk did not opt to slash any chests this evening, but the punk ferocity and unrelenting blast beat mayhem was there, complete with the facepaint and loads of satanic tattoos. Their songs are exclusively about war, Satan, destruction, Dracula, Satan, and war. While other bands of their genre are moving on to orchestral stylings or bleak electronica, Marduk are plowing on like a tank through a convent with nary a stylistic variation in sight.

Judging from the crowds initial reaction, perhaps Albany was not ready to embrace a style that had already come and gone in other parts of the world… but a band can’t put out an EP named Fuck Me Jesus and not expect to encounter some friction now and then. Regardless, they put on a full-blooded set and filled the space between explosions with such banter as “This song is for all of you… because when you stepped into this venue, you fell out of grace with god.” He also had a wide palette of stage moves which included forming an inverted cross with his arms. Pure magic!

During a large chunk of Marduk’s set, a cowboy was being harassed by some fight-rock thugs because of his hat. The cowboy seemed to be digging Marduk. I decided to help him out.

Deicide is a band I have been listening to since I was probably 17 years old. They are on a short list of the first few death metal bands I really got into and if I actually scrutinized that list, they might be the very first TRUE death metal band I ever really liked. Their first album is unassailable in my eyes. From the heaviness of the production to the demonic chorus of vocals, it stands up to anything that came out before or since.

Luckily they played more than half of that album… forsaking the fact that 3 others have come out since then (including one within the last year which they were supposedly touring for, but only played one song from). Philosophically, I have a problem with bands retreading past glory at the expense of new exploration, but in this case, I was too busy shouting out the words to bother with philosophy.

While Marduk took the evening’s cake for overall evil, their song titles simply couldn’t hold a candle to such Deicide gems as “Blame It On God,” “Crucifixation” and “Bible Basher”.

Apart from anyone who has any concept whatsoever of an afterlife and eternal punishment, who couldn’t love a band led by a man with an inverted cross branded into his forehead and who furthermore penned a ditty called “Satan Spawns the Caco-Daemon” in tribute to his newborn baby (named, of course, Daemon)?

The awkward nature of being this sort of scenester is that you aren’t sure if you are supposed to stick around and thank the guy who got you in for free or just enjoy the show and go about your business like the world owes you a living. Generally, I choose the latter, but the social machinery of metal is such that the next time I see my benefactor (Skinless’ singer), I pretty much just have to inform him that “Deicide fucking rules” and it will suffice.

I ended the evening of nihilistic brutality with a Boca Burger (eaten savagely with a sharp knife) and some lemonade (imbibed with total abandon).

Scot

Athens, GA

I’m constantly amazed by the CDs I find in the used bins at the record store. Rarely does a CD purchased from the used bin ever change my life. Fourteen years ago, fresh out of high school and stumbling intrepidly into the world, I purchased a CD from a used bin purely out of curiosity. The CD was God Bless Us All by NRBQ, a live set from 1987. I’d heard of these guys before but never actually heard them. I really didn’t know what to expect. When the unabashed exuberance and happy bounce of the music jumped out of the speakers, I knew this was something special. I listened to the CD again and again, each time becoming more familiar with it, more excited. I wanted to be at that party.

Little did I know that by buying the CD, I was already there.

Nearly a month after that fateful purchase, I began volunteering at a public radio station so eclectic that their record collection was in complete disarray. The African juju music was filed right next to Elton John, and the George Russell records were as far away from the jazz section as they could be. My job was to organize this musical mess. About two days into the project, I found the holy grail: the NRBQ stack. There was, among others, NRBQ with Skeeter Davis, the manic Scraps, the aforementioned God Bless Us All, and the classic At Yankee Stadium.

From the moment the needle hit the vinyl of At Yankee Stadium, all thought of ever leaving the party had vanished. All that was left was the raucous beat of Tom Ardolino’s drums, Big Al Anderson’s steady guitar, Terry Adams’ zany bounce, and Joey Spampinato’s sympathetic voice. The Q was the soundtrack to the rest of the record organization project. They made fun of me, kept me laughing, and held my spirits up throughout the project. They had become my friends.

Fast forward through fourteen years.

I’ve been to several NRBQ live shows - parties, if you will - and I’ve figured out at least one thing about these guys. A live NRBQ show is an adventure. Each time, I am greeted with the happiest bunch of musicians to ever take a stage. When a band is having as much fun as the enthusiastic crowd there to see them, you know you’re in for a treat.

Such was the case when NRBQ played at the Caledonia Lounge in Athens, Georgia, on June 2, 2001. As the band made their way onto the stage, Terry was singing before he even made it to his microphone and keyboards. Finding his seat behind the drums, Tom waved at the crowd like a bearded beauty queen from a float in a parade of freaks. Donning his bass guitar, Joey smiled like a Cheshire cat that knows you’re in for a wild ride. Johnny, Joey’s brother and still the “new guy,” drew his perpetual smirk, a result of the twist of fate that made him a Spampinato, a killer guitar player and a natural choice to replace Big Al in NRBQ. Finally in front of his microphone, Terry let out a big “weeeeeellllll…” and the band launched into “Tired Of Your Permanent.”

There wasn’t going to be a serious moment in the house tonight. Even when Joey stepped up to sing a heartfelt love song the mood was positive and light. Each song that bounced from the stage was like an old pal that makes your face light up every time you see him.

And speaking of faces, no one has a better collection of zany faces that ol’ Terry Adams. Each time he brushed his moppy hair from out of his face, he treated us to another kooky look from his vast archive of funny faces. Regaling us with his chant of “c’mon, c’mon,” Terry was the ringleader in this greatest show of mirth. I know of no other band that can sing about girl scout cookies, encyclopedias, and wacky tobacky like the Q can.

NRBQ has been around for over 30 years. They do what they do best, which is tour constantly and sumptuously entertain no matter where they go. I’m grateful that I can still see them play in a club that fits only about 100 people. Terry even remarked, repeatedly, in a high squeaky voice, that we could all tell our grandchildren that we once saw NRBQ “in a tiny little place way down Georgee way.” I’ll also remember to tell them to always search through the used CD bins, too.

Armando

The Magnetic Fields
Metro, Syndey

Stephin Merritt resembled the Mona Lisa perched on a tall tennis umpire’s stool. His perfectly socialized crimson trousers, richer than the color of borscht, made perfectly brighter by the dour grin that crossed his face as the stage lights showered him with mirth. I recall a much loved tea towel, long before I would know the significance of the Mona Lisa in a historical sense, but over time, she did became a scorched, grinning mystery. As my mood template devoured that grin, I knew the musical references would fall like dominoes that night.

Whatever were my fears, they dispersed as soon as I soaked up the perfume of the room. The familiar beer-drenched carpet and the symbolic mood template I had issued myself seemed like a rustically aromatic brew. Melancholy, loss, lust, violence, tranquility, disturbed surreal images. Its always amused me how the prosaic reveals the surreal. Playing without a drum kit raised a few eyebrows, and whilst they were suspended there in the historical technocracy of modern music, you squint to see if the eyebrows at the back of the class are pissing their pants in terror. As the rest of the world dragged home their attach� cases and dusted off their spectacles, Claudia Gonson played the part of Queen of Hearts. Stephin, broody, gave the impression we were all eavesdropping on his morose, statuesque montages. I don’t know what he made of the compulsion to applaud the first line of each and every song. If he was annoyed, he didn’t allow himself stray from convincing us that he was doing nothing but exploring the darker reaches of his heart. That, and a ‘cello vibrato wide enough to slice left us sitting on a wire forced between two pegs.

Forcing you to listen deep into the inner ear without a safety net of obvious percussion each song found its dark, idyllic mood. Wit wore deep purple. Claudia was the key, the link between the Brill Building on the other side of the world and our sun parched faces. Pauses, cunningly placed, teased us. Sometimes even breathing or slobbering on a beer had the potential to destroy the meaning of one of Stephin’s words. Mostly, it was the sheer economy of the music, the orgy of lucidly performed words shrouded in whimsy. We obeyed like an army of iron fists in velvet gloves.

With guitar, ukulele and banjo backing, watery sounds rippled away, the songs were like sodden wood carvings dragged from the sea bed which underwater display the most delicate nuance of light, shadow and craftsmanship but when brought to the surface in the harsh sunlight look like a confused pulp. Saddled into the lyrics, they together dramatized the story, often seemingly elegantly, but mostly with a perverse undertow, always feeding on tension and the possibility that the song could blow up without warning. You could not ignore the musical references of the past as they smirked at our sanctimonious facade. Stephin Merritt used these like dominoes, setting off on one tangent which was intercepted by another somewhere, sometime. The hollering of the disco crowd, still high from a diet of Abba, even beautifully teased by Stephin who redefined the conventional romantic ballad as a wash of loathing and overwhelming pleasure. This is music that can not only interrupt your dreaming, but redirect their endings.

The worst thing a songwriter can do is talk too much. Here we have miniature soapy operas lined with the muscle of inner poetic hooks which twist our ears into thinking we are peering into someone else’s reality where we do nothing but be intrigued. The lie that every generation of songwriters hates the next is not given the time of day amongst Claudia’s shimmering piano clusters which were able to misdirect a song with the blink of an eye, smashing it up like a dialectical joke for those in the know.

Songs from every imaginable genre that this instrumentation would allow, cruised along. The men, gatekeepers of show tunes and opera, raised both eyebrows at the cabaret frescoes of escapism. Women, rumps glued to the coffee house chairs of inner city living, squawked at the transparent seagulls only visible to them. When Claudia responded, it was a penned in formula you couldn’t denounce. The quirk factor was fascinating to watch, drowsy songs were simply not permitted to drip but snarl melodramatically. I was surprised how deep and resonant Stephin’s voice actually is. That, and a crazed twittering bass interrupted by a cuckoo stuttering, resembling a trucker snoring along to a lullaby. We saw the phantoms of nostalgia leer on. Trying hard to be miserable, it was Stephin’s smiling eyebrows which repeatedly gave him away. A pool of sarcasm had gathered at the base of his stool. He was not grim.

Claudia fixed him one of those stares you see on a dog just before it bites. The humor that lurked in the hushed room had almost a sepulchral quality. In another place nearby, it was Pantera strutting their idiosyncratic gyrations before a hissing snake pit. It was apt that the Magnetic Fields were quietly propulsive, like seagulls that appear to fly backwards but cleverly hover in a field. You were left sucking a bleeding finger pinpricked by roses in full bloom.

Voz

The Strokes, Cave-In, Sorry About Dresden
Cat’s Cradle - Carboro, NC

Jeff and I had listened to some Cave-In mp3s and debated their relative merits. My conclusion was that they sound pretty good in an old Smashing Pumpkins sort of way and merited further investigation. Jeff, on the other hand, opted for a swift dispatch of their lead singer via a boot to the neck. We were both looking forward to whatever light their live performance would shed on our opinion of them when we saw them open for the Strokes at the Cat’s Cradle on Tuesday night.

We got to the Cat’s Cradle during the first band’s set so we just assumed they were Cave-In. I was impressed that a band who had been hyped as the next Smashing Pumpkins/moody new metal band looked so genuine, like guys who lived in your dorm or, in the case of the bass player, remarkably like Quentin Tarantino. The lead vocals were shared between the two guitarists and Jeff and I both agreed that neither deserved the voice box crushing he had earlier sought to administer, and were quite impressed by their melodic screaming. I gave them a big thumbs up, and Jeff fought the urge to buy their CD, remembering his dislike of their (supposed) studio recordings.

Of course, this band wasn’t Cave-In. This band was Chapel Hill’s own Sorry About Dresden. Which meant that we should have bought a CD and that the next band wasn’t the Strokes but was actually Cave-In.

Cave-In took the stage and I was impressed that after all that I’d heard about the Strokes- fashion monkeys, 45-minute sets, playing the album nearly note for note then exiting sans encore- they looked so down to earth, more like a mildly fashionable metal band, perhaps the next Smashing Pumpkins. When Cave-In started playing, I thought, Hey, that sounds nothing like Is This It at all, and isn’t it neat that they’re jumping around so much and sliding toy lazer guns up and down their guitar pick-ups to create strange and wonderful space noises instead of standing around like they are posing for the center spread of Spin magazine. Then I thought, This isn’t the Strokes. Then I thought, These people are loud. Then, remembering the advice of one stranger to another at the last Cat’s Cradle show I attended, I went to the bathroom to get some toilet paper to stuff in my ears.

I brought some back for Jeff and he said, “This is Cave-In” and my world made a little more sense.

I mentioned Cave-In was loud, right? They were so loud, I’d like to mention it again. I’ve got no beefs with loud music, especially well done loud music. But sometimes being really really loud is the communicative equivalent of using an unbearably small font size on a web page. Whatever message you are trying to get across to your audience is totally blotted out by your methods. Cave-In was so loud that it was hard to hear the songs above their own noise. I could see the lead singers vocal chords standing out from his neck, but it all just kind of sounded like planes landing at the airport next door to your house.

I soon joined Jeff in his desire to step on the lead singer’s throat.

Mercifully, Cave-In quit playing and after a rock-star worthy forty minute lull (during which the house played Guided by Voices so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been) The Strokes took the stage. The forty minute delay had obviously, and justifiably if I may say, been used to get Nick Valensi’s hair just right and the band did look good, if a little overdressed for the 70 degree Indian summer that’s sprung on us here in the US south.

The Strokes played well, too. They were very accurate, barely deviating a note from Is This It and actually going so far as to play the songs in the order they appear on the album. I like Is This It so it’s not that I minded, but hearing the Guided by Voices songs played in that forty minute lull had reminded me of why I like live music. I like the unpredictability. I like the creative use of children’s toys to produce cool sound effects. I like quirky covers and unexpected band member/audience banter. I like different versions of songs and extended jams (when appropriate, of course). The Strokes offered none of this.

They didn’t move around much, just kind of stood there as if posing for a fashion shoot for the center section of Spin Magazine. That in itself wouldn’t make a bad show; Built to Spill never moves, but their music does. But The Strokes looked and played like they had been doing the exact same thing for years. Frankly they were four headset mics and a dance routine away from a boy band.

Except of course for Julian Casablancas’s voice. He didn’t move much, and despite his declaration that he was “having fucking fun, even if I don’t fucking look like it”, he didn’t fucking look like he was having much fucking fun. But his voice was like another entity, an angry creature that ripped its way out of this pale skinny kid standing still and holding a microphone and prowled around the room. The music might be note for note from the album, but the difference between hearing Casablanacas’s voice on wax and hearing it live is the difference between watching Silence of the Lambs on TV and waking up to find Hannibal Lecter standing next to your bed.

Yet despite that, the only emotive response from Casablancas was to occasionally furrow his brow, until the last song when the heat must have finally got to him and he hit himself in the head with a beer bottle and a mic stand. Nick Valensi dripped sweat, Albert Hammond smiled occasionally, and I have no idea what Nikolai Fraiture did since they hid him in a dark corner lest they blemish their general attractiveness. And they played Is This It with admirable accuracy then they walked off stage, sans encore.

Someday, I’ll be able to impress future generations of teenage girls that I saw the Strokes in concert before they were merchandised onto lunch boxes, provided I’ve regained my full hearing. Until then, at least I’ve got Sorry About Dresden.

Jennifer

Les Savy Fav
Rome (written upside down)

In every review ever written for Les Savy Fav, two things are mentioned. I will not mention these things, because if you have read anything about this band, you surely already know these things. Having said that, this is the best release of 2000. There isn’t much to say about it. It is a five song EP. IC Timer, Asleepers Union, In These Woods, Hide Me from Next February, Rome. Each song is just right, and the Ep is just long enough that I can listen to the whole thing on my drive to work.

Modest Mouse
Build Nothing Out of Something

I saw Modest Mouse for the first time at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill. Earlier that day I had went to a very bad job interview, and I wasn’t in a very happy mood. A few weeks earlier I had purchased Build Nothing Out of Something, and really liked it a lot. So there I was, standing in the corner of the club being grumpy. I had the classic indie rock arms crossed feet together pose, and was ready and willing to bite anyone’s head off that came near me. After the opening bands, Tim Harrington introduced Modest Mouse. He informed us that we were no longer who we are, but we are part of the Modest Mouse family reunion. They started with Never Ending Math Equations and Isaac continued to bark and scream lyrics for the next glorious two hours. I was a little less grumpy afterwards.

Weakerthans
Left and Leaving

What do punks do when they get old? Most them gain weight and tour until they’re 50. The nice ones make lovely albums that focus on their strengths of their early punk days. John K. Samson is a lyric person, he always has been. Ever since I heard Anchorless on Less Talk, More Rock, I thought, this is neat. So Mr. Samson left Propagandhi and formed the Weakerthans, the only band that supports a poetry-positive revolution. We still want to change the world, but we want to solve some of our own problems first.

Smog
Dongs of Sevotion

The album would be absolutely brilliant if it just contained one track, Blood Flows. How could you not like a song that contains a jew’s harp and cheerleaders? He also talks about machetes! My friends, this is the pinnacle of odd but wonderful music.

A Silver Mt. Zion
He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner of Our Rooms

I got this album after I had already purchased all of the Godspeed You Black Emperor! collection. I expected it to sound mostly the same, except lighter, because you know, it’s like 3/9ths of Godspeed. What intrigued me more was the presence of vocals by that lovable canadian, Efrim. Granted his singing voice isn’t that great, it is very appropriate. He squeaks and cracks, and barely makes it through the song, but by the time the POOrade starts, you know you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Shellac
1000 Hurts
I like Steve Albini. Yes, he is a sanctimonious loud mouth, but that’s okay in my book. I can’t think of many words to describe this album, so I will just say what comes to my mind first, completely nuts. It’s just wacky. The tongue-in-cheek lyrics are secondary to the odd math rockish beats that drive the music, the badump ba badump ba ba badump, you know. It’s good, and Prayer to God makes me want to smash windows.

Godspeed you Black Emperor!
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

Yes, it’s long. Yes, it’s pretentious. Yes, it’s crescendo decrescendo over and over again. Yes, I like it. When I play the first track and the drums kick in it makes me want to MARCH, and I still get sad when the old guy tells me I can’t sleep on the beach anymore.

Palace Brothers
Viva Last Blues

How could you not like Will Oldham. Here is this relatively obscure man from the hills of Kentucky, who’s voice cracks as he sings wonderful tunes, not for a crowd of people, but like he was sitting on his back porch, playing for squirrels. I have eight Will cds, and the thing that stands out the most on this one is the production. Produced by Steve Albini (see 1000 Hurts), it is at just the right level to enjoy the music, without overpowering Willy’s wonderful voice. As much as I love Will’s lo-fi pieces, I can’t help but enjoy the rockers on this album just as much.

Songs: Ohia
Axxess and Ace

When I become a pirate, I will wear an eye patch and have a small dog named Tobin Sprout. I will sail the seven seas and sink any ship that crosses my path. I will cut the left index finger off of all my enemies and place them in a large jar that I will keep in the corner of my cabin. I will call my ship the Dingo Berry. Most importantly, my crew MUST refer to me as Captain Badass. I am setting your heart on fire, so when you leave me
I will burn on in your soul.

Sea and Cake
Oui

On October 3rd, 2000, two albums were released. One was Kid A by that band that isn’t on this list, the other was by the Sea and Cake. It is in my honest opinion that the latter is better record. I listen to this album a lot at work. Through my headphones, I can clearly hear all of Sam Prekop’s breathy vocals. He whispers through ten tracks of the smoothest and most well produced album of 2000. October 3rd was a good day.

Jeff

Yo La Tengo
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-out

Maybe I needed a lot of soft padding for my brain this past year but I never agreed with the folks who bemoaned the lack of rockers on this album. Actually, Cherry Chapstick is still my least favorite song on here. But The Crying of Lot G makes me uncomfortable and sad, Last Days of Disco make it all okay again, and Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s house is complete song writing genius. Like Zen Guerilla, it was Yo La Tengo’s live shows that won them the coveted My Favorite Band award, but since I can’t see them live as often as I want to hear their songs, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-out gives me soft and wonderful music for my slippery brain until I can smile at them in person again.

Weakerthans
Left and Leaving

Somewhere around the time I started needing soft things to pad my brain with I also started liking cute things. Maybe 27 years of jaded cynicism finally tired me out. I don’t know. I don’t care either, because the Weakerthans told me where to keep my tenderness, bad ideas and hopes so everything’s going to be just fine. Left and Leaving has happy fun songs, and disgruntled songs, and intelligent lyrics, and, despite the tough competition from Last Days of Disco, the sweetest love song of 2000, My Favorite Chords:

You are a radio. You are an open door. I am a faulty string of blue christmas lights. You swim through frequencies. You let that stranger in, as I’m blinking off and on and off again.

Centro-Matic
All the Falsest Hearts Can Try

I like to sing. I really like to sing in my car, really loud. I like catchy harmonies, low-production instrumentation, raspy voices, and, from what I can decipher, good solid lyrics. I like to turn this album up in my car and sing outrageous harmonies along with Will Johnson, and to make up what lyrics I can’t figure out. Centro-Matic is shaping up to be one of those rare bands for me, an I must own everything they release band. That’s a nice feeling.

Lenola
My Invisible Name

This is an odd little album. It’s got what a lot of bands try for and just don’t quite get: a collection of songs that are completely different from each other yet fit together beautifully on an album. If My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless didn’t sound like the bottom of a bottle of valium, it might sound a little bit like My Invisible Name.

Spoon
Series of Sneaks

Car Radio is the world’s catchiest song ever. It’s all of maybe two minutes long and has more hooks that a deep sea tuna boat. I bought the whole album on the strength of this one song, almost on the strength of the lyric “I’m just a user I don’t make any of this stuff”, and yay for me. One by one the songs on the album became my favorite, and for simple tunes that rely on hooks more than brains, it’s got surprising staying power. I still love it, even a whole 10 months later.

Zen Guerilla
Trance States in Tongues

There is a hometown bias here. Although these fellows are signed to Sub-pop and currently based out of San Francisco, they started in my hometown of Newark, Delaware. I used to follow their lead singer around University of Delaware’s campus, actually cutting class to spy on Marcus Durant’s everyday activities. But even better is the music, what I read described once as “Hard Core Motown” and which is a good enough assessment that I will use that rather than try to come up with my own. The bass is heavy, the drums knock you on your ass, the guitars make a wall of noise, and right in the middle of it is Marcus’s growling howl. Their real power comes from their live performances, loud raucous spectacles of sweat and screams, but until you can see them, Trance States in Tongues does a damn god job of moving you in the meantime.

Neutral Milk Hotel
On Avery Island

I should have bought this so long ago. I didn’t know about NMH until the end of 1999 when my friend Andy gave me a copy of Aeroplane Over the Sea just because he thought it would be something I liked. It was something I loved, and I went to the CD store to get anything else by this band, anything, and found On Avery Island. And the guy who worked there, who used to be my friend, told me it wasn’t that good and talked me into getting a Nick Drake album instead. Nick Drake is okay, but he’s no Jeff Magnum. Every song on this album gets a gut reaction for me. Song Against Sex makes me want to jump on my bed, Leave Me Alone makes me want to jump in the air, Where You’ll Find Me Now makes me want to fall in love and never let go, Baby for Pree makes me want to shout, Naomi makes me want to run through the streets, Three Peaches makes me want to sob uncontrollably, Pree-Sisters Swallowing A Donkey’s Eye makes me want to float away. None of the songs make me want to change the CD.

Palace Brothers
Viva Last Blues

I literally should have bought this long ago. Years ago I heard a song on the radio that moved me enough to pull the car over at a pay phone and call and find out who it was. It was Will Oldham and the song was from the album Joya. I wrote that down, and forgot about it. Some time towards the end of last year Jeff sent me a song called Nomadic Reverie by Bonnie Prince Billy. Wonderful song, amazing, and I listened to it over and over again through the world’s crappiest computer speakers. Then he told me Bonnie Prince Billy was Will Oldham. And I said that sounds familiar and damned if it wasn’t still written in the back of my address book: “Will Oldham, Joya”. Eventually I bought Viva Last Blues (instead of Joya but that’s another story) and it went into the CD player to stay for about one month straight.

Modest Mouse
The Moon and Antarctica

I was worried about this album. I was worried Modest Mouse would lose something with production, end up like Pink Floyd somehow, just parodies of themselves shooting inflatable pigs into the audience at concerts and making slick boring records that cater to the Rolling Stone Magazine Four Star Reviewed and Sanitized for You Protection crowd. I was silly to worry about this. They did what so few bands can do. They used their powers for good. They made songs that they couldn’t have made without some more studio time and money and gadgets. They actually transitioned from jangly to smooth without losing any soul. It all fell right into place and I am honestly excited to see what they do next.

Radiohead
Kid A

I didn’t want to put this on here because everybody did, but maybe, just maybe everybody likes it because it’s good? I don’t know. I liked it because it took me away to a place where things are soft and sad. I sat at work, headphones on, crouched in my cubicle, or I sat in traffic, radio on high, willing myself to levitate out of Atlanta’s soul sucking gridlock, or I lay in my room, trying to forget whatever I didn’t want to think about, and Radiohead came on and told me how to disappear, and be optimistic anyway, and float in limbo and it was good. Not many albums can take you away quite like Kid A and it is wonderful.

Jennifer

I was in Sunday school the first time I heard rap music. Some kid, some redneck destined for Camaro driving in his near future, brought in a tape of “Rapper’s Delight.” I was delighted. We listened to it about six times when we should have been doing New Testament word searches and making Jesus puppets out of construction paper and Popsicle sticks. I sat, crappy waxy church crayon poised motionless over my crudely rendered prodigal son coloring book page, rapt, listening to each word, determined to memorize at least the part about the chicken tasting like wood.

I did a fair job of it. I went home and promptly recited the song to my father, who was impressed enough with the song and my rendition to buy me the Best of Blondie, which of course contained “Rapture.” I memorized that, too. I still know the whole thing.

There wasn’t much rap in my life from age seven to 12. I subsisted on a diet of whatever my Dad listened to, which could range from Prokofiev to The Statler Brothers to Black Sabbath, then later what my aunt listened to which pretty much toed a straight and narrow 80s cheese metal line. I was okay with that. I really like Def Leppard. Some outside influences wormed their way in as well. I distinctly remember really like Rick Springfield, for example, and The Fixx. And Kajagoogoo. And Big Country. But mostly cheesy heavy metal like Quiet Riot and Ratt and Mötley Crüe.

I also really liked Kurtis Blow.

I can’t say that I heard Run DMC and suddenly my life changed, but I heard Run DMC and slowly hip-hop became a big part of my life. My friend Beth gave me this shitty mix tape (Centron brand tapes, remember those? Six in a plastic pack, no cases?) loaded with Run DMC, The Fat Boys, Whodini. I think it was taped off the radio. I played it until it broke.

This wasn’t the sum total of my musical taste. I have always, even as a kid, prided myself in having diverse affections. I was a big fan of the entire mid-to-late-eighties alternative pop/punk pantheon including but not limited to REM, The Bolshoi, The Cure, Butthole Surfers, The Smiths, and The B-52’s. But as time progressed, hip-hop got more and more airtime in my tape player.

Soon came The Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill and then a little later and even better Paul’s Boutique. There was The Digital Underground and De La Soul and Third Bass. Then by the time I went to college if it wasn’t hip-hop (well, or Phish but that’s a story for another essay), I didn’t care much.

NWA, Cypress Hill. New Kingdom, The Pharcyde, Freestyle Fellowship. Black Sheep. Diggable Planets. Jungle Brothers. Tribe Called Quest. BDP. Public Enemy.

I loved hip-hop. I still hadn’t lost touch with what was now known as indie-rock (since “alternative” had been corrupted by MTV to mean “that which gives off the air of non-mainstream to the unimaginative”), but I listened to hip-hop more than anything else. I wanted it fast, and bouncy, and full of words. I forgave misogyny and homophobia and occasional lapses into cliché and listened and listened.

Then came WuTang Clan. 36 Chambers was good, but I something didn’t work for me. “Method Man” was a classic. “Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin ta F’ Wit” made me jump around with gleeful, cartoonish rage. But I never got into the whole album.

I tried really hard to like the Roots. Their songs were good but they left me kind of flat. Big Punisher was great fun to hear on the radio, but I bought the album and never listened to anything but that one song. You know, Hot tub, poppin bubbly? I was losing my taste for hip-hop.

Slightly more esoteric artists began to catch my attention. I dabbled briefly in Drum and Bass and general DJ stuff, like LTJ Bukem and DJ Shadow, although I didn’t then and don’t now have the energy to stay current enough with all that shit that I don’t get laughed out of the basement of any amateur turntablist.

I tried Missy Elliot, and I still really like her first album. Then I tried Timbaland and Magoo and Redman and gave them both to my roommate. A little later, Jurassic 5 gave me hope, but when my hand hovered above the J section of my CD collection, it more and more often grabbed Jets to Brazil, or better yet, skipped the J’s altogether and went right to Lenola or Modest Mouse.

I think about the years of heavy metal fandom, and how, as I clutched my ratty copy of Circus magazine I swore that I would stay metal forever! I vowed to learn to play bass, preferably of the flying V-type, and get a Judas Priest tattoo. I outgrew the whole shebang by the time I was 13.

I don’t think I outgrew hip-hop. I don’t think I got tired of the scene, and I don’t think I got sick of the people aligned with that type of music. Just somewhere down the line, BlackStar, Micronots, Blacked Eye Peas, Dilated Peoples all stopped speaking to me. Or I just stopped listening.

Today, driving home from work, it felt like fall. The air was kind of cool and sharp, and something about the quality of the light tricked me into thinking it was getting dark early instead of still being light enough to play outside at eight. Part of that might be the music I was listening to, as well.

I’ve been taking aural time machine trips back to my freshman year of college and listening to The Sundays. Strangely, the most vivid memory I have of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic is not of autumn, but of cleaning my parent’s house in the summer, stereo turned up loud, doors open, dust rag in hand.

(My mother left me lists of chores to do while she was at work whenever I lived at home, up until the last time I lived at home which was when I was about 25. Nothing makes you feel better about having to move in with your parents again than shuffling out of bed around noon to find a neatly printed note on the counter asking you to please clean the living room (sub-bulleted with items like dust, vacuum (move furniture!), Windex the TV screen) and don’t forget to put the clean dishes in the dish washer away.)

But so, despite the reality of the actually memory, the songs were making me feel decidedly autumnal, which was in turn making me feel nostalgic. Whatever the actual circumstances in my life at the time, I know that the lyrics on this album meant a lot to me.

Like these:

I won the war in the sitting room
I won the war but it cost me
I won the war and I feel proud
but God only knows why it’s hard to get to sleep in my house

I mean if that’s not the absolute anthem of a bored, sullen 18-year-old girl trying to find enough discontent in her home life to justify some insane course of action like joining a cult or getting married so she could move out, then I don’t know what is.

And these:

but I’ll keep hoping you are the only one
yes, and I’ll send you letters, oh, wouldn’t it be such fun
oh, we are who we are, whatever the others say
but poetry is not for me, as much as I’d like to stay
oh, I just want to go home

In other words, high school boyfriend, I’m in college now, and you were fun to make out with in cars in high school but really all you’re doing now is boring me because I am world weary, burdened with knowledge, and smarter than you.

The last song on the album was always my favorite. The lyrics are kind of hard to understand, but the music is sweeping and epic and dark and hopeful at the same time, just like I like ‘em. I circumvented the oblique lyrics by making up my own, and just assuming that whatever Harriet Wheeler wrote was better and much more meaningful.

I’m a little older now and I don’t have as many delusions of alluring moodiness, so I’m able to listen to song lyrics with more objectivity. And as I listened to this song, I realized she was singing about the Lone Ranger. And his clothes. So when I came home today, I looked up the lyrics and sure enough:

the Lone Ranger sold his wardrobe
the Lone Ranger sold his bad dog
well you saw him and you could hardly know
cos times change…. I know

Nostalgia is fun, and I still love her voice, but sometimes it’s a real drag to lose those old illusions. But that’s almost made up for by the fact that the fake lyrics I wrote were actually better and more meaningful than Harriet Wheeler’s.

Or maybe it’s just easier to replace those old illusions with new ones than it is to lose them altogether.