This is not a SXSW post

Because really, aren't you tired of hearing about it? I am. Whether you went or whether you stayed home like a normal, sane person, it's time to shitcan the SouthBy talk and move onto more important topics, like March Madness or getting that hot summer body before shorts season arrives. And everyone else has already done a better and more timely job of talking about it. But I DID go and saw a ton of awesome music and bought some cool records, so I will probably namedrop the fearsome 4-lettered acronym from time to time in the next few posts. I brought a camera along hoping to capture some visuals to accompany my reminiscings, but I forgot that 1) I hate taking pictures 2) I'm not good at it and 3) taking pictures is gay.

But anyway, what I'm listening to right now ... two Naked on the Vague releases, Sad Sun (Sabbatical) and The Blood Pressure Sessions (Dual Plover). I saw them at the Siltbreeze showcase in Austin, which, even if it wasn't quite as mind-bending in execution as it was on paper (as much as I liked that Ex-Cocaine record, I was just really bored by the stuff live), still provided some big thrills and chills. NOTV was actually one of the bands that I found to be pretty head-spinning live and the recordings now make even more sense. Imagine two people sold into slavery, chained in a dank basement with some guitars, keyboards, and sundry effects, and forced to express their existential agony with primitive percussion and vocals that sound like they're being yelled/groaned from said basement. It's like that. But better. Full disclosure: I was really, really high when I saw their set, but I checked with a few sober people and they agreed that it was a spectacularly dread-suffused and riveting performance.

So anyway, NOTV are doing a big American tour over the next few months, some dates of which are going to include TNV and Psychedelic Horseshit, and Rich Horseshit claims that a Columbus show is in the works (haven't seen any evidence of this yet, but I still hope). You'll probably enjoy these dour Aussies even more if you see 'em live, but in the meantime, hunt the recordings down and let 'em sink into your bones. Good listening for when you're stuck in your own existential dungeon.

Old is the new new

Caught Tommy Jay's set at Carabar last night, and it was gorgeous. Just beautiful. His band consisted of a woman on backing vocals and conga drums, another woman (apparently Mike Rep's ladyfriend) on vocals, a lead guitar, a pedal steel player, and Mike Rep himself providing (exceptionally good) Casio bass lines and other keyboard ornamentation. They also brought up another friend, a short chunky woman with closely cropped gray hair and wearing a spangled bird mask, to provide backup crowing and cawing on a song. All the participants looked incredibly happy to be onstage and added a positive sheen to Tommy Jay's mysterious and melancholic tunes. The loving connection between old friends playing music together was palpable. I absolutely have nothing cynical to say about this. It was great. I have to say on my 30th birthday it was also quite inspirational. I can only hope to be that weird and wonderful and committed to kicking out the jams 15 years down the line.

Unfortunately the crowd dissipated during Mors Ontologica ... and I have to say that personally it was a supreme test of will to stay the entire length of their set ... but it was worth it because then Necropolis came out and kicked my ass, as they always do. It doesn't matter how many people are in the crowd, they always bring the ruckus. They played all the latest hits from their recent string of 7"s tight and fast without stopping for breath. Plus the sound was good so you could hear Emily's keyboards coming through loud and clear, which is the icing on their spazzy punk cake. I was so excited I threw a beer can at Bo, but now I feel kind of bad about that. I'm sure he understands.

It was a great night, kinda like seeing the punk-rock torch getting passed from one generation to the next. For better or for worse, Columbus honors its elders.

SHITGAZE Superbowl

This is the last time I'm ever going to use the "s" word, since that joke is wearing thin already, but since Saturday's show at Bourbon St. featured two Titans of Shitgaze--the NME-approved Tyvek and the me-approved Guinea Worms--going head to head for the shit-fi crown, I guess it's OK one last time.

I missed Blind Shake, who is apparently Michael Yonkers' backing band? Guess I'll catch 'em next time ... kind of curious ... got there in time to see Guinea Worms finish a rendition of their ode to collegiate fashion, "Drunk in Yr Uggs" ("drunk in yr uggs, walkin' slow for the thugs/nothing on yr thighs, except for my eyes") then launch into the Official Party Anthem of 2008 (sez me), "Box of Records." This song is evil. Since the chorus repeats at least 10 times througout the course of the song, and since the melody is retard-simple, you will be tortured by Will Foster's reedy voice wailing "there's really nothing better, there's really nothing better" in your head over and over again for days after one listen. It's been on repeat in my skull for weeks now, to the point where I might as well not even buy the 7", but I probably will cuz I guess that's kind of like downloading. Maybe someday we will be able to download songs directly to a chip in our brains. Whoa! Such was the hottness of their set that the Worms were actually looking--and my opinion was corroborated by a female friend--pretty hot themselves. Who says shitgaze can't be sexy???

Despite rampant hype and having played in Cbus at least 3 or 4 times in as many years, I had yet to experience Tyvek live. Rampant hype almost always = bitter disappoinment, but Tyvek proved to be hype-worthy and then some. For the first few songs I remained unmoved and I thought I'd been had by the Internet/record-nerd cabal--AGAIN--and then about halfway through their set something clicked and they became riveting and life-affirming. "Don't take away my air conditioner/it'll make it hard for me to sleep" singer Kevin begs, and you have the feeling he really needs that air conditioner. Like it might be the last thing standing between his sanity and a shooting spree at a fast-food establishment. Portraits of everyday despair against a clanging guitar backdrop and skeletal drums (reminds me vaguely of Mick Collin's post-Gories project Blacktop). Rock n roll bread n butter.

Wish I had more good things to say about Birthday Suits; I like 'em live just fine, but I don't ever feel a need to hear them on record. They're fantastically explosive onstage but the songs don't stick. They work so hard, though, I really want to root for them. Someone recommend something, a 7" or something, that will change my mind.

We're back

After a long hiatus UR So Artgay!! is back, with 100% more vitriol than ever before ... we'll be callin' 'em like we see 'em, kickin' ass, takin' names, etc. etc. etc. Oh yes, and reviewing records and shows, too. Speaking of ...

Caught Daily Void and TV Ghost at Bourbon St. on Friday night, wow. Awesome weirdness reigned. Chicago's Daily Void vacillate between Crass-ish hardcore and a more swinging Jay Reatard brand of punk (the vocals especially recall Reatard's stuff). Occasionally they leaned toward the latter maybe a bit too much but I'm not a hater so I'm not going to take points off an overall blazing set for petty shit like that. Lafayette, IN's TV Ghost, as usual, ripped my fucking head off with their lurching monster-punk. Abrasive keyboard whoops and wails atop spidery guitar lines and beyond-the-grave vocals, non-stop hostile energy. These teen sensations are going places, make no mistake. Missed Vegetative State yet again, caught the end of the Burndowns' set ... the Pittsburgh punk-poppers play fast, fun, melodic songs with gruff Rancid-esque vocals and the occasional careening guitar lead. Nothing wrong with that at all, so stop sneering. I love Rancid.

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.

I saw approximately 2,000 bands this weekend!

Many of which I am trying to forget. I am tired--deeply, deeply tired, at the cellular level. And deef. Here is a small sampling of what put me in this dreadful state:

Mike Rep & the Quotas (Comfest, Sat. 6/23): Despite Rep's "legend" status among those who care about such things (and I am one), I never got into these guys. But Saturday the majesty of Johnny Furnace's echo-drenched guitar solos hit me full force. Eerily reminiscent of Grateful Dead-style noodling. I was at Comfest and that might have had something to do with its appeal. I will have to check them out again to make sure it wasn't just all the tie-dye seeping into my brain.

Unholy Two (Bourbon St., Sat. 6/23): Saw them at the post-CDR-BQ show last summer and then studiously avoided them after that. Now, whaddaya know: with Bo and Adam of Necropolis lending a hand to the proceedings the Two now produce mechanistic skullfuckery that is quite nearly danceable (I did, as a matter of fact). Bo laid into his pots and pans (I think there were some real drums, too) like an autistic kid who's been fed a buncha shots and set loose onstage, Lutzko's guitar was as blown-out as [insert gay/anus/Pride Weekend joke here], the whole mess floated in a fluffy cloud of Adam's corrosive feedback, which he sculpted with a massive bank of pedals (I usually don't enjoy watching people twiddle knobs but he made it worth my while [lots of thrashing/writhing], thanks Adam). Pussy Galore with less "fuck you" and more "JUST FUCK IT." Lutzko also wore the most ball-crushingly tight pants I've seen yet on a man. Mad props dude.
http://www.myspace.com/theunholytwosucks

Jerusalem and the Starbaskets (Bourbon St., Sat. 6/23): Sorry, I tried to like these guys but I just couldn't. I was bored. I will admit I was nearly too drunk to stand by the time they played so that probably didn't help. Just a drummer, a dude with a guitar, and some naive, starry-eyed hippy-folk. Recalls the Velvet Underground in Mo Tucker-on-vox mode at some times and the Go-Betweens at others (and why do bands like this get the "psychedelic" tag all the time these days? I hear not one iota of "psych" in this stuff). Not BAD exactly, I just couldn't pay attention to it. I like some of the songs on Myspace better now so it might just be one of those things where it doesn't translate to a live setting very well. Or I could just be a drunk asshole with no attention span.

http://www.myspace.com/jerusalemandthestarbasket

Gut Reactions (Carabar, Sun. 6/24): I'd be lying if I said that I haven't seen caveman garage-rock done better than these guys are doing it. But of course the whole thing about caveman garage-rock is that you're not SUPPOSED to be trying to do it better than the next guy. Gut Reactions are not possessed of any sense of melody, dynamics, or polished presentation that can't be found on any given Teenage Shutdown comp, but they: 1) looked like they were having a supergood time, 2) wore sunglasses onstage, 3) have a lead singer that did such a good impression of a retarded kid I was afraid he was going to poop his pants onstage, and 4) appeared to be the biggest nerds ever. I am a nerd, too, so I have a fine-tuned appreciation of nerddom. Anytime I get to see a band look this unselfconscious while playing I feel grateful. I think I might be a fan.

http://www.myspace.com/thegutreactions

In praise of the local, pt. 1

Update: I've been really fucking lazy about posting anything. In other news ...

I friend of mine once said that "local bands are 'local' for a reason." Hmmmm ... don't know if I agree with the value judgment behind that (i.e. "they deserve it"). But I mean, it definitely IS true that it takes some special combination of hooks/looks to really get over with the masses of college-indie-type girls in tight jeans and eyeliner, especially in today's crowded music market. I guess I just wonder whether there is even such a thing as a "local" band these days given the mushrooming of music blogs, websites, labels, etc.etc.etc. A band beloved almost solely of their roommates. In some ways, the massive proliferation of music chatter out here in the electronic wild creates even more of a gap between bands that are going to have an audience somewhere, anywhere, and those that will continue to provide the soundtrack to local house parties. I'm not talking about a bunch of skinny dudes in tight tshirts with highly atmospheric (read: pussy-ass) songs and lots of guitar pedals (I'm not, but Pitchfork definitely is, right this very moment). Those guys are pretty hot and they'll be OK, even if they are pussies. I'm talking about your friends' band, the ugly dudes who have been wearing the same jeans for 2 years straight and take a swig of leftover beer in the morning instead of brushing. The ones who get so drunk they can't remember their own songs half the time. The ones that are definitely not going to be getting laid by said college girls after their show.

The subtext of that statement is, of course, that too much "local" is a bad thing. Make something too context-specific and any chance of it being appreciated by people outside your circle is pretty much shot. Like I said, I honestly am not sure if this is entirely possible these days--even if your band has never left your basement, someone, somewhere is playing a cassette you made on a boombox 4 years ago and trying to impress their friends with obscurity and non-existent sound "quality" ("no-fi, man!"). But I think that if you look in the right places the truly local band still exists. And this, my friends, is a good, good thing ... both the fact of such a band's existence, and the fact that no one other than their friends will ever crack the code of their charm.

I started thinking about this last weekend at the last-ever Tree of Snakes show at Bernie's. I've pretty much given up trying to explain the appeal of Tree of Snakes for people that don't already get it. I've often tried to imagine I don't know the (incredibly charismatic) Snakes: would I still like their music? I think so but I can't be sure. In any case, the Snakes would consider this question completely irrelevant and would probably spit beer on you if you raised it in their presence. They exist for the very same reason rock and roll itself exists: to get so wasted you can't think, then use your primitive reptilian brain to yelp tunelessly about girls and money, or lack thereof, until you fall down.

That said I still find myself trying to convince unbelievers that the songs are as solid and timeless as anything in the Ramones catalog and that sadness lurks in the background of "Throw a Rock at Me." I mean: "if you see me walk away/if you see me walk away/throw a rock at me/I deserve it anyway/throw a rock at/throw a rock at me"--nothing if not a paean to self-loathing, no? Albeit one issued from the mouth of a drunken 6-year-old.

Anyway ... Tree of Snakes rendered this entire douchey discussion completely moot last Friday. It was a classic sweaty free-for-all, all smashed bottles, drunken groping (it was like Woodstock '99 in reverse, I had my crotch grabbed by a GIRL), aerosol-can flamethrowers, and of course TOS classics bellowed hoarsely into a mic that was unplugged anyway. They graciously included hits like "I Am a Lion" and "Orange" and more recent favorites like "Alexandria" and "Big Tomato." It didn't matter if anyone else outside of Columbus, or Bernie's, for that matter, got it ... they were playing for us, and no one else.

I still think that someday some nerd is gonna come across "The Ottoman Empire Strikes Back" and will have a fit over these lost pop gems, but if not, that's OK too. I recommend going here and checking out the tuneage for yourself if you don't want to wait for the great Tree of Snakes renaissance.

For another account of that glorious evening go to Kevin Elliot's World of Wumme, where he too sings the praises of the band's anarchic final performance. And also references the Ramones. Shit. Well, it pretty much all comes down to the Ramones, anyway, doesn't it?