Friday, June 29, 2007

Transcendence

Tuesday night found me at Skylab, digging the way-out shit and chugging PBR tallboys. A surprisingly edifying combination. Witness to: a dude named Jalso, who ran his saxophone through multiple pedals to not unpleasing effect. Also fellow noise-mongers/droners Twink Bully, who I frankly don't remember a whole lot of, except for the Kenneth Anger film that accompanied the set. And my roommate Ryan Jewell, who I mostly missed due to getting locked out of the building post-cigarette and despite frantic calls to those inside to let me back in (although the 5 minutes of Ryan I did catch was more inspiring than an hour of most other bands ... if you're not familiar, Ryan uses drums, bike tires, vibrators, and everything else in his reach to vibrate/pound/hum you into a state of enlightened bliss. Really.) "Headlining," if you will, was Brooklyn trio La Otracina, who ride the psych-prog wave currently cresting at Holy Mountain, among other places. They brought the heavy, they brought the tribal, they brought the blissed-out jam ... I was into it, due no doubt in large part to the PBR pounders. Everyone else I quizzed on their impressions of the set seemed nonplussed, even though I heard elements of stuff most everyone seems to dig on these days: modern Japanese psych (Ghost, Acid Mothers Temple), old-school krauty stuff (Neu!, Can, blahblahblah), classic prog, etc. Yeah, they're "musicians," (I mean, they had some fucking mean-ass chops), yeah, they jammed, no, it wasn't very concise ... but I dunno, they took me with 'em. Check 'em out for yourself: http://www.myspace.com/laotracina. Your thoughts?

Last night at Little Brother's Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments offered transcendence of a different sort. I guess. Transcendence is transcendence after all, that's why it, you know, "transcends" things. Some thoughts:
  • Looking around the crowd, I remarked to Dave Artgay that this was one ugly fuckin' crowd. Us included. Good lord, what a bunch of broke-ass, drowned-rat-lookin' motherfuckers.
  • Bob Petric: one of the great unheralded guitarists of our time. Apparently one of the biggest assholes too. Can you have one without the other? Anyone who can wrest that kind of strangled beauty from his guitar has amassed some kind of rock and roll karma, however. All is forgiven Bob.
  • Ron House: lettin' it all hang out, mantitties and all. The most graceless and freakish of frontmen. He's delved deep into the bottle to come back up with the most retarded of profundities, and he generously continues to share his hard-won, and -drunk, wisdom with us. I for one am grateful.
  • Songs played: "My Mysterious Death (Turn It Up)," "Rump Government," "Bottle Island," "Quarrel With the World, something else I can't remember, and "Cheater's Heaven," of course.

I paid 5 bucks to get in, so that's less than a dollar a song. A bargain for that kind sweaty, boozy redemption. Leaving, I felt both much dirtier and much cleaner than I had upon arrival.