Zach Oooh!n
I'll be in the back room drinking my half of the beer.
So now then. Spoon, John Vanderslice last night. Abbey Pub. Now my favorite club to see live music in Illinois, taking over
Metro and The High Dive. There is something to be said for a wide open space that slopes downwards towards, rather than away, from the stage. There is also something to be said for sound, which last night was top notch. There is also something to be said for putting two outstanding acts on the same bill, back to back, balls out. We can disregard David Singer and the Sweet Science, who opened, cos, well, they sucked. They were, really, awful. Just bad. The David Singer guy is a chubby accountant looking dood, which wouldn't matter, but he's up there acting like TheFuckingReverendAlGreen, and singing these Ben Folds rip-off arenarock songs and his backing band consists of five (!!!!!) likewise mannered and dressed doods, which wouldn't matter, except they're up there acting as if they're the Staple Singers and the whole scene could've come out of a ten-year high school reunion where the band that was together at 18 comes back and tries to recapture the magic. There were synthesizers and tambourines and those bowling pin looking things that have grooves on them and it was just awful. He did have a line from one song about a recurring dream in which he crashes his car that was fabulous (thinking back it was, i think "I got out of the car/brushed the glass from my hair/and took a look at all of the goddamn stars) but mostly he just sucked mostly. And he had this crowd that he must have invited along that was full of DBags who were all going nuts after his songs and talking really loud.
So the Abbey Pub is excellent, even if the ambiance, at first, was less than stellar. What struck me about the crowd (and Mjarcie too) was that everybody there seemed to be way too hip for their own good. There were a lot of vintage shortsleeved button up shirts on the guys, the kind that truly nerdy computer engineers wore in the 1980's, and a lot of FeverDog haircuts (including Baker, who went with us, but he knows he's a goddamn hippy) which just don't look right unless they are unironic which in this type of crowd irony is implied. Amazing, really, how hip these people are trying to be. They drink (God do they drink!) and smoke and know deep down inside that everyone is watching them and that everyone realizes just how truly interesting they are and how special and how heartachingly hip. This guy in front of me (who resembled a balding Carl from Dazed and Confused kept turning around during Spoon (getting ahead of myself, but that's SOP) and telling his ladyfriend How Much It Meant To Him To Hear This Song Cos Geez Sweetie It Means So Much To Me and kept making comments about how much he liked this line and that line and he was doing that dance that hippies do (shaking more than grooving) and his hair was just way too fucking too and he drank some kind of tonic mixture from his plastic cup but he might as well have had a martini glass the way he was carrying on. And it just dawned on me (with help from Mjarcie) that I don't want to be hip, if that's what hip is. If hip means buying records but not listening to them or going to five shows a week just for an excuse to be seen and get lit or growing an ironic hairstyle or wearing those
truly awful cowboy styled shirts from the 70's that are coming back in (There's a reason Don Cheadle's character in Boogie Nights was sad to behold, and it wasn't his personal life) or talking about music to a girl who looked so bored her ears were coming unhinged or just being an all aroudn tool, then I don't want it. I'd rather be considered a dork by 75% of the people at shows like this than become one of them.
On to the music. John Vanderslice was truly superb. Played half new songs from his excellent
Life and Deat of An American Fourtracker and half older songs. His voice holds up live, and his backing band was. His backing band was. Well. Rick wanted to kick the teeth out of the drummer, who was. Well. He was a bit.
Strange. He definitely was the only thing you could look at, mostly cos he was up front on the stage and had one of those really high cymbals and had this truly awful haircut and a polo shirt tucked into a pair of ill fitting jeans. An excellent beat keeper, however. And John's songs translate live in a way you wouldn't think was possible and the crowd loved him and he won over quite a few of the crew. Highlight was definitely
You were my fiji, which stretched a 2 minute track into a nice, longer piece (and with a lyric like "Fucking whale sunk my van", how can you lose?) and "From Out here".
I had a vision that Rock had Risen and I named that vision Spoon; or what happens when magic, luck, and a voice find a place to live together, a list
10. They opened with "Chicago at Night". No better way to set a mood, in my opinion.
9. I had one beer and one shot cos it was Lindsay's birthday and she got it for free. Sad fact: I was fairly drunk. The room was moving, and it wasn't just the groove. Sad. Drunk off one beer and one shot. Sad.
8. The singer's shape, size, and demeanor in no way match any expectation you could have of him. He's tall, slender, and looks quite a bit like
Bob. This man produces This Magical Rock Voice which oozes sex and violence and power and soul. Though he sounded a bit sick, his voice holds up live. He was drunk, which added.
7. They played every song I wanted to hear. Every one. I went in to the Abbey thinking there were ten songs I wanted to hear: "Anything You Want" (check); "Chicago at Night" (check); "Everything Hits at Once" (check); "Utilitarian" (Check and Fucking Check--what a song); "I could see the dude" (Check); "Lines in the Suit" (Check); "The way we get by" (Check); "johnathan fisk" (Check); "car radio" (check); and "fitted shirt" (Check). Plus a Wire cover.
6. The bass player was Doug Flutie. Ask Mjarcie. Fucking 5 foot 4 and black hair and skin tone and everything. Doug Fucking Flutie.
5. As a band, possibly the most cohesive unit I've ever heard. Had fun, rocked out, and know all about setting a mood. Those keyboards add 1000%.
4. The girl in front of me kept blowing smoke up instead of away so that it all ended up in my hair and on my shirt which I washed (my hair) three times this morning and I can still faintly smell it. And she kept backing up, which is a phenomenon I'll never quite understand, so that I ended up ten feet from where I started. I could still see, though, which is a testament to the HQ of the Abbey Pub.
3. Not really about Spoon. We drove all around the city trying to find the place until we finally figured out that we could ask Lindsay (baker's "friend") how to get there cos, well, you know, she lives in the fucking place. She got us there, but parking she could not do. So we drove around and around with me yelling out "THERE's ONE!" all the time but they were always driveways or fire hydrants or the like until we were about to give up and this Explorer pulled out of an actual spot with lines and shit that was quite literally next to the Abbey. Two second walk. Eggsellent.
2. Also not really about Spoon. We parked and went up to this Lindsay's apartment to use the bathroom and she lives in this tiny studio apartment which me and Mjarcie could not stop saying "Jeez this place is small!" and she had to keep politely laughing until there was no more laugh in her and so we walk back outside and the front door to Mjarcie's car is open cos Baker forgot to shut it. In Chicago. At Night. On the street. Forgot. To. Shut. the door. Laughs only cos nothing got stolen (had I lost my bookbag with all of my work for the next two weeks Baker would resemble more of a dead hippie than a hippie).
1. Really about spoon. I can now honestly say: My favorite band is spoon. If one of my students asks, I have a response. Spoon.
Next five: "you were my fiji" by john vanderslice; "wrecking ball" by creeper lagoon (i think jv's bass player played in CL); "waiting for the kid to come out" by spoon; "i should never have listened to you about the car door" by lois lane; and "something hot" by afghan whigs.
in the stereo: John Vanderslice
I'll be in the back room drinking my half of the beer.
So now then. Spoon, John Vanderslice last night. Abbey Pub. Now my favorite club to see live music in Illinois, taking over
Metro and The High Dive. There is something to be said for a wide open space that slopes downwards towards, rather than away, from the stage. There is also something to be said for sound, which last night was top notch. There is also something to be said for putting two outstanding acts on the same bill, back to back, balls out. We can disregard David Singer and the Sweet Science, who opened, cos, well, they sucked. They were, really, awful. Just bad. The David Singer guy is a chubby accountant looking dood, which wouldn't matter, but he's up there acting like TheFuckingReverendAlGreen, and singing these Ben Folds rip-off arenarock songs and his backing band consists of five (!!!!!) likewise mannered and dressed doods, which wouldn't matter, except they're up there acting as if they're the Staple Singers and the whole scene could've come out of a ten-year high school reunion where the band that was together at 18 comes back and tries to recapture the magic. There were synthesizers and tambourines and those bowling pin looking things that have grooves on them and it was just awful. He did have a line from one song about a recurring dream in which he crashes his car that was fabulous (thinking back it was, i think "I got out of the car/brushed the glass from my hair/and took a look at all of the goddamn stars) but mostly he just sucked mostly. And he had this crowd that he must have invited along that was full of DBags who were all going nuts after his songs and talking really loud.
So the Abbey Pub is excellent, even if the ambiance, at first, was less than stellar. What struck me about the crowd (and Mjarcie too) was that everybody there seemed to be way too hip for their own good. There were a lot of vintage shortsleeved button up shirts on the guys, the kind that truly nerdy computer engineers wore in the 1980's, and a lot of FeverDog haircuts (including Baker, who went with us, but he knows he's a goddamn hippy) which just don't look right unless they are unironic which in this type of crowd irony is implied. Amazing, really, how hip these people are trying to be. They drink (God do they drink!) and smoke and know deep down inside that everyone is watching them and that everyone realizes just how truly interesting they are and how special and how heartachingly hip. This guy in front of me (who resembled a balding Carl from Dazed and Confused kept turning around during Spoon (getting ahead of myself, but that's SOP) and telling his ladyfriend How Much It Meant To Him To Hear This Song Cos Geez Sweetie It Means So Much To Me and kept making comments about how much he liked this line and that line and he was doing that dance that hippies do (shaking more than grooving) and his hair was just way too fucking too and he drank some kind of tonic mixture from his plastic cup but he might as well have had a martini glass the way he was carrying on. And it just dawned on me (with help from Mjarcie) that I don't want to be hip, if that's what hip is. If hip means buying records but not listening to them or going to five shows a week just for an excuse to be seen and get lit or growing an ironic hairstyle or wearing those
truly awful cowboy styled shirts from the 70's that are coming back in (There's a reason Don Cheadle's character in Boogie Nights was sad to behold, and it wasn't his personal life) or talking about music to a girl who looked so bored her ears were coming unhinged or just being an all aroudn tool, then I don't want it. I'd rather be considered a dork by 75% of the people at shows like this than become one of them.
On to the music. John Vanderslice was truly superb. Played half new songs from his excellent
Life and Deat of An American Fourtracker and half older songs. His voice holds up live, and his backing band was. His backing band was. Well. Rick wanted to kick the teeth out of the drummer, who was. Well. He was a bit.
Strange. He definitely was the only thing you could look at, mostly cos he was up front on the stage and had one of those really high cymbals and had this truly awful haircut and a polo shirt tucked into a pair of ill fitting jeans. An excellent beat keeper, however. And John's songs translate live in a way you wouldn't think was possible and the crowd loved him and he won over quite a few of the crew. Highlight was definitely
You were my fiji, which stretched a 2 minute track into a nice, longer piece (and with a lyric like "Fucking whale sunk my van", how can you lose?) and "From Out here".
I had a vision that Rock had Risen and I named that vision Spoon; or what happens when magic, luck, and a voice find a place to live together, a list
10. They opened with "Chicago at Night". No better way to set a mood, in my opinion.
9. I had one beer and one shot cos it was Lindsay's birthday and she got it for free. Sad fact: I was fairly drunk. The room was moving, and it wasn't just the groove. Sad. Drunk off one beer and one shot. Sad.
8. The singer's shape, size, and demeanor in no way match any expectation you could have of him. He's tall, slender, and looks quite a bit like
Bob. This man produces This Magical Rock Voice which oozes sex and violence and power and soul. Though he sounded a bit sick, his voice holds up live. He was drunk, which added.
7. They played every song I wanted to hear. Every one. I went in to the Abbey thinking there were ten songs I wanted to hear: "Anything You Want" (check); "Chicago at Night" (check); "Everything Hits at Once" (check); "Utilitarian" (Check and Fucking Check--what a song); "I could see the dude" (Check); "Lines in the Suit" (Check); "The way we get by" (Check); "johnathan fisk" (Check); "car radio" (check); and "fitted shirt" (Check). Plus a Wire cover.
6. The bass player was Doug Flutie. Ask Mjarcie. Fucking 5 foot 4 and black hair and skin tone and everything. Doug Fucking Flutie.
5. As a band, possibly the most cohesive unit I've ever heard. Had fun, rocked out, and know all about setting a mood. Those keyboards add 1000%.
4. The girl in front of me kept blowing smoke up instead of away so that it all ended up in my hair and on my shirt which I washed (my hair) three times this morning and I can still faintly smell it. And she kept backing up, which is a phenomenon I'll never quite understand, so that I ended up ten feet from where I started. I could still see, though, which is a testament to the HQ of the Abbey Pub.
3. Not really about Spoon. We drove all around the city trying to find the place until we finally figured out that we could ask Lindsay (baker's "friend") how to get there cos, well, you know, she lives in the fucking place. She got us there, but parking she could not do. So we drove around and around with me yelling out "THERE's ONE!" all the time but they were always driveways or fire hydrants or the like until we were about to give up and this Explorer pulled out of an actual spot with lines and shit that was quite literally next to the Abbey. Two second walk. Eggsellent.
2. Also not really about Spoon. We parked and went up to this Lindsay's apartment to use the bathroom and she lives in this tiny studio apartment which me and Mjarcie could not stop saying "Jeez this place is small!" and she had to keep politely laughing until there was no more laugh in her and so we walk back outside and the front door to Mjarcie's car is open cos Baker forgot to shut it. In Chicago. At Night. On the street. Forgot. To. Shut. the door. Laughs only cos nothing got stolen (had I lost my bookbag with all of my work for the next two weeks Baker would resemble more of a dead hippie than a hippie).
1. Really about spoon. I can now honestly say: My favorite band is spoon. If one of my students asks, I have a response. Spoon.
Next five: "you were my fiji" by john vanderslice; "wrecking ball" by creeper lagoon (i think jv's bass player played in CL); "waiting for the kid to come out" by spoon; "i should never have listened to you about the car door" by lois lane; and "something hot" by afghan whigs.
in the stereo: John Vanderslice
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