Add it Up

Yeah.

So the Beck roped me into the supportive role of going to see a show by Sigma (myspace site), a punk (kinda) metal trio featuring one of her vet techs, Jon (that's him in the photo up top) (the one sans trashcan on head). Not that I am not down with the crazy circus metal screaming lyrics genre as a rule - my bud Verbal's band Crisis Bureau (myspace site), while not really meeting the "circus" qualification, in fact kicks quite copious amounts of ass. I mean, gels and the Clear aside, Crisis Bureau's music gets you so amped / powerful as to surely have been outlawed by major league baseball (I know this; have used the Bureau juice myself while throwing 140 lbs around on the bench press. You quiver in my presence). And Pantera's stylings will always do on a day crying for testeronorific release. So yeah, a San Antonian KISS / KZEP upbringing leaves a lot of room in my heart for appreciation of the subtleties of hollered vocals and abuse of the E/F/F#/G G# power chord section of the guitar. So while roped in, I was looking forward to some aggro music and anticipating some awesome blank looks from the i(n)Vet(erate) showtune listener.

I was not the only roped-in one, either. Beck's colleague and fellow vet Katy and her husband Tad were joining us in the excursion. Like an idiot, I had left my phone in silent mode, so I missed all 12 calls that Beck made between 5:30 and 6 warning me that they were all coming over and we would then head out to the show. I finally called Beck, realized the dealio and had about 7 minutes to get dressed and make our refugee camp of an apartment look reasonably presentable. I succeeded - the two vets changed out of their work clothes into more punk-metal appropriate garb*, and we headed down to the show.

(* - I shouldn't fail to mention that we with our non black-dyed, unidirectional unspiked hair, our Gap-bought garments and possession of a high school diploma (in terms of age, not intelligence - I think) stood out at the show like nobody's business. Jon even told the guy at the door to let us in for free and must have said something like "they're the old folks" because we were instantly recognized by the doorman upon entry BY NAME. It was like being Norm, if everyone at Cheers were not of legal age and thought Norm was a narc. SO we got in free - but the entire event involved a pseudo spotlight on us as people who didn't belong, didn't be very long. I felt like an anthropologist, or maybe like Jane Gooddall amongst extraordinarily disenchanted and apathetic apes. We were not welcomed as on of them, nor were we the recipients of eye contact, for that matter. Chapter 73 in the Who's catalog of "justifications for one of our first hit songs." Though these kids probably would have sneered at Roger Daltry, too).

BUT, the show was supposed to be at 7:30 (hmmmm... aggro punk metal on opposite the Wheel of Fortune: dubious) so we had an hour to kill beforehand. We hit up the Taco del Mar (quite tasty) near ASU, headed to the club where the doors STILL were not open, and ventured to the DQ ghetto, I mean country, for a pre-rock blizzard. Wow - really, for a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed dairy queen, you'd think they'd attract more vibrant clientèle. Scary dudes with all kinds of unfriendly tats (spider webs, knives, barbed wire crossed out and labeled "passé"). So we were out of place even when trying to get dessert, which is precisely the type of thing that never happened at Squirrels and Soups (only since we didn't have kids in sports uniforms and weren't fat, I guess we actually were kinda out of place there, too). As it stood, our Blizzard Techs pulled off the job swimmingly and we managed to make an exit without getting TOARN (tattoos of a racist nature).

So finally the show... which still hadn't started. It's 8:20 or so by this point, and Tad is getting upset. Here's Tad looking upset with Katy providing angry backup:

In due time, though, the show, for better or worse, did go on. What precisely happened is that the drummer wandered on stage and started smacking the first of what would be a near ceaseless, machine gun repetition of straight ahead 4-4 bass drum driven sixteenth notes that made up for with volume what they lacked in clarity. And Jon jumped on his bass (which, btw, was by far the best played instrument on stage) and the first of many muddy low note, super-distorted metal riffs started scratching from the guitarist's corner of the stage. And then the guy who is pictured above with the trashcan on his head ran on stage wearing a leopard mask and screaming something into an electronic megaphone rife with feedback. He then ran around like a complete idiot and smashed cymbals, trashlids, stools, etc., anything that would add to the noise.

Noise: the problem. Crisis Bureau shows are orders of magnitude louder than this show was, but they play with precision, so there's something discernible going on in each ear-blistering note. This was just mush, unfortunately - true, when the band dropped out and let someone play isolated, it sounded fine (Jon's bass riffing, for all his psychotic jumping around, sounded spot on when solo). But for the most part, it was a thirty minute drive-by of muddiness, accentuated by the aforementioned occasional solo instrumental breakthrough and a whole lot of vocally garbled "fucks" and "yous."

So not my favorite type of music, granted, but I'm trying to qualify myself as someone who is capable of dropping the "all metal sucks" curtain - that said, maybe it was the venue or the stage or an off night, but this was way too imprecise for my taste. But at least they had energy, right? Um... there were a TON of 11-16 year olds there to see The Adolescents, a very big-time hardcore band from the early 80's who feature members of Agent Orange and Social Distortion. But they were quite clearly there ONLY to see the Adolescents and could give a FF about anybody else. But rather than any aggro shouting of "you suck" or worse, they just... sat there. Sigma is blaring away on stage at the peak of their emotions and energy, and fifty or so kids are all sitting along the walls and not moving a muscle. Leopard head trashcan boy continually challenged them and ran around the pit area to try to get SOMETHING started, but to no avail; apathy was in full effect. Beck, katy and Tad were disappointed in this (as, obviously, were the band members), but it served as a nice little crystalline representation of youth doing what they do best. It was, in a sense, perfect apathy, a we're here for one thing and one thing only and care so little about whoever this opening band is that decibels be damned, we're just going to sit and wait. The ADHD element was gone, but otherwise, this was lazy youth at their who-cares apex.

So that was interesting. After the set, Jon came out and apologized for the lameness of the crowd; Beck et al paid him compliments. Don't get me wrong; they definitely knew how to play and were very into their own approach; I just personally feel you can't sacrifice that much musical coordination for energy (particularly if that energy is falling on deafened ears). After about five minutes we made the "gotta get up early tomorrow" speech and left the club (well, we stopped to go to the bathroom on the way out to be greeted by a bathroom attendant. Awesome).

Beck then missed the 101 exit twice while telling stories about my bachelor party. And Katy and Tad used the word "gay" roughly seventeen times to describe a European music contest they watched recently in Finland. We got back to the condo not too late (9:45?) and caught the tail end of the new show (x 3) du jour, Scrubs. A good night, all told. And speaking of good night...

(oops - I thought I'd let the uninitiated in on the pun of this post. The title, Add it Up, is a song by seminal acoustic punk band the Violent Femmes. And the band we saw last night was named "sigma," which is the Greek sign you use for the sum of a iterative sequence (aka a series). You will never be able to accuse me of being non-forthcoming about my nerd-ness).