Last night I went to the Noise Against Fascism thing at the Black Cat. I was a little wary about driving into downtown DC on the night of the inauguration, but by the time I got down there around 9pm, traffic wasn't heavy at all and the only difference was a slightly higher volume of cop cars than usual. Although it was pretty obvious what the occasion of the concert was, given the timing and the location, I was thankful to not be confronted with too many Fuck Bush-type messages throughout the night. Not that we should be apolitical or complacent just because the election's over, just that I don't really feel like thinking about it that much right now. But there was definitely something pleasingly cathartic about standing around and listening to a bunch of shapeless noise be performed at insane volumes. Plus it gave me a chance to observe the noise dude in their natural environment that I've heard so much about on ILM's pickle bar. I've never seen so many beards on people under the age of 30 in my life.

I missed the first handful of bands, but the ILM thread contains a pretty complete recap of the show. Mirror/Dash (Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, respectively, a la their pseudonyms going all the way back to the Sister liner notes) were the 2nd or 3rd band that played after I got there, and their set was short and kind of underwhelming. Kim played an electric guitar, and Thurston had an acoustic and just kind of made a nice feedback hum with it. Kim strummed some nice sounding stuff and did her weird repetitive mumbly poetry style, mostly saying "hey cowboy, what's your name?" and "hey cowboy, what's your game?" over and over. I kept waiting for Thurston to reply "I'm hunting for little Mexican girls". But after a while, Kim let loose and did some wild feedback and flailing around, which was kind of cool to see since at Sonic Youth shows she usually is the first to stand off to the side or leave the stage while Thurston and Lee go off on noise tangents. Actually, it kind of looked like she was doing an impression of Thurston.

After that was Nautical Almanac, who are from Baltimore, and I've seen a couple of those people participate in High Zero shows before. They kind of epitomized the very enthusiastic and cheerful approach to avant noise that dominated the whole night. In between sets a couple times there was this weird pair of DJs wearing shapeless elephant man-style cloth masks with eye holes and making really brutal noise by distorting old vinyl and Led Zep riffs. One of my favorite sets of the night was by a drums/sax duo, Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty. They didn't really do anything out of the ordinary for a skronky improv noise combo, but they were really good at what they did, especially the drumming. Something I've realized is that while I'll always prefer structure over chaos in music, I can get with chaos too if it's intense enough to hold my attention. I don't have a lot of time for the minimalist stuff, but if you make a lot of noise and get in a ton of notes, it can be fun to listen to even if I can't tap my foot or hum to it. Plus they were pretty much the only act of the night that didn't make noise with any electric/electronic instruments, so they were kind of refreshing in that context. They got such a strong response from the audience they actually kind of came back for an encore. Magik Markers were alright. It was during their set that it occurred to me that almost every single I saw that night included at least one fairly attractive woman. So much for the noise dude stereotype!

The evening climaxed with the last band, To Live And Shave In L.A. I wasn't really familiar with them before, and I'm still not sure what their deal was, but their lineup, for this show at least, was: Don Fleming, Thurston Moore, Andrew W.K., Tom Smith, Ben Wolcott, Mark Morgan and a guy who goes by the name of Rat Bastard. Rat Bastard was the MC of the evening, introducing and talking between bands, sometimes just drunkenly rambling for several minutes at a time, and he kind of talked like and resembled a Darrell Hammond character from SNL. At one point, something vaguely beat-driven was being played on the PA, and he got off on a long rant about how industrial music is dead, and that DC needs to sever its connections with "mid 80s industrial shit" because "Al Jourgensen is a Miami Cuban, and he's a pussy", and that they should play Can or the Silver Apples instead. Whoever was in control of the sound responded to this by playing the Monkees.

Oh yeah, so anyway, To Live And Shave In L.A. They were awesome. 7 mostly 40ish-looking guys, making the most extreme, sloppy, punishingly loud noise: 3 of them on guitar, one hollering incomprehensible syllables in a strange oafish voice, 2 making sounds by pressing buttons on metal boxes, and one on drums (Andrew W.K., who at one point tried to get people to clap along in time to his thumping, tribal beats, but it never caught on). Almost every other band played for 15-20 minutes at most, but TLASILA played for something in the neighborhood of an hour. I was so close to the speakers that it became kind of an endurance test, but it remained pretty entertaining throughout. At the end of their set, Thurston grabbed a mic and started yelling about how it was time to fight and started asking various members of the audience directly in front of the stage, "hey beard, are you ready to fight?" and handing them the mic to reply. "Hey flannel, are you ready to fight? You, little beard, are you ready to fight?"

Labels: Baltimore music, concerts, music, Sonic Youth

This entry was posted on Friday, January 21, 2005 at 11:07 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.