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May 11, 2006
Foot Stomps, Dear Cavemen! Jason Webley @ Red & Black Cafe 5/9
With only the best of intentions I came home two nights ago all set to go see Jason Webley at Red and Black, then hoof it 'cross town to for Argumentix, Child Pornography, et al., at the Food Hole. Only half of this happened. I got home around 6 pm dead tired, but ended up gettin' lured out to New Seasons for beer by the roommates--one of the downsides of living with six hundred thousand people--of living in a "party house." So. Got home. Drank beer. Drank wine. Practiced w/ band. Drank more wine. Fell asleep face down on the carpet like a fucking bum.
Everybody split to see Webley around 9 and I straggled out a little afterwards not totally down for live music, or for crowds--or anything really.
Red and Black was packed with hippies and punks and old people and some kind of post-Suicide Girl/hippy hybrid that a friend was calling "Hippy Longstockings." Was not feeling it. Was not into it. But here's where everything flopped over and where the night became a great spinning globe of white light and fun and excitement and all-out unabashed love for life and music and sweaty strangers: foot stomps. Foot stomps. There's a lot you can do to get a crowd riled up but foot stomping--for whatever reason; I'm thinking some kinda primal, atavistic caveman beat throwback vibe--trumps 'em all. You can have the killerest drummer, the best drum machine, bassist, DJ, whatever, but you put a guy up on stage (hollow stage, wooden, works best) who knows the finer sides of stomping out a beat vis-a-vis singing and people go delirious. People lose their shit and inhibitions and GET HAPPY.
I've heard it said that it's a white people thing. That white people react strongly/stronger to simple, basic beats, beats they "can understand"--the tub thump of a jig band (a la Pogues, Rag and Bone Men), the easy hick boogie of bluegrass or old '50s rock 'n' roll--but that's reductive, a little racist, and... maybe it's true. Who am I to say? I've only met .00000000000000001327 percent of white people and most of 'em have struck me as cold and bitter and too tense. (Everywhere you go, white people walk around in public like they're either afraid of getting shat upon by birds, or have just gotten shat on, cleaned up in the Wendy's bathroom, and are now pissed at life in general.)
But JASON WEBLEY. He stomped. He played accordion gravediggers blues. He shook a plastic bottle of change and sung a capella. He made the crowd lock arms--the ENTIRE CROWD, no shit--and sway side-to-side, German drinking table style.
Last time I saw Jason Webley was in San Diego w/ the Faint and Now it's Overhead. This was five years ago. Couple weeks after 9/11. People, even at a leftist/leftish collective like the Che, were--understandably--a little bruised and shaken. But he stood on tables and channeled old dead buskers and shouted good and gravely about music that "tears itself apart" and saints being "taken out and shot" and all sorts of things that made these Che kids, these self-conscious, painfully shy kids DANCE; he made them sing along, dance, pogo, take up cans of pennies and shake them like they were resurrecting lost joy--some old secret joy they never knew they had but goddamnit they brought it back to life!
So, Red and Black was no different. Okay, some differences: he talked to the crowd more (he's been playing the same venue here in Portland for five years now), accordion'd out some fragments of songs off the Footloose soundtrack, and did this great trick that made us all suddenly piss drunk w/out touching a drop. (I'm not going to tell you how he did this; I don't wanna spoil anything. But suffice it to say, it was magic.)
But what I want to talk about here is crowd reaction. They loved it. Room vibe was a little clammy when I first got there--mixed audience, lots of strangers--but he brought them all in, pulled them up close then turned them into screaming, smiling, sweaty beasts.
I heard some mumbling in the crowd, words like "Tom Waits," "pirate songs," but none of it was said w/ any negativity/bad vibes. People seemed intent on explaining what they were seeing, either to friends--or more so--to themselves, so's they could wrap it up all tidy and have a nice compartmentalized package for themselves. I guess we need to define to help us deal w/ things like danger and reality and art (all kinda unknowable, right?) But I'm not going to do anything of the sort. Foot stomps. Foot stomps. Foot stomps. I can still feel it--if I'm quiet enough, and if I listen close to some ancient ache and need in my heart, the need for relatable rhythms, the ache for movement, and for shaking out doldrums like toast crumbs from bed sheets. Foot stomps. Foot STOMPS.
Posted by Adam Gnade at May 11, 2006 10:47 AM
