The cathartic dance party marking the evident end of Sleater-Kinney—the poli-psychotic punk trio announced an indefinite hiatus after this tour early this summer—felt like a turning point, an end of the innocence for a fanbase that has stayed remarkably loyal for more than a decade. The band represented teenage kicks and college mix tapes for much of the crowd, whose through-the-roof enthusiasm made it clear just how much these three ladies meant to them. Sleater-Kinney’s fans might largely be proper grown-ups with 9-to-5 gigs now, but tonight was all about harnessing the energy of a bygone era. To say the audience was sometimes more fun to watch than the band is not an insult.

The band, for its part, ripped through a 24-song, two-encore set without losing steam or focus, opening with, appropriately, “Start Together” as the crowd’s en masse pogoing made it clear this was a uniting event. Five songs in came “Light Rail Coyote,” S-K’s love song to our shared hometown of Portland, Oregon, and when Corin Tucker sang about borrowing her parents’ car to cruise up Burnside, I was a high school junior again, in my dad’s Explorer, listening to “Call the Doctor” while driving to the coffeeshop. Ten years later, in the Webster Hall balcony, I was in tears.

“Coyote” might have been my emotional high point, but the band was just getting started. Carrie Brownstein, a dead ringer for a teenage boy despite being in her thirties, did a series of guitar god rock kicks that would’ve shamed the Rockettes during “Hot Rock,” while drummer Janet Weiss busted out a harmonica for “Modern Girl.” The song’s chorus, “My whole life/Is like a picture of a sunny day” seemed to resonate with the mid-heat wave attendees.

As a final parting shot, the band jumped right into their first, and for perhaps many fans still biggest, hit: “In one more hour I will be gone,” Corin began, letting everyone know that the end was really here. Later in the song, she sang “Don’t say another word/
About the other girl,” and all implications for the future state of “women in rock” aside, the only names on our lips right then were Corin, Carrie, and Janet.

Awesome pictures are at: http://www.brooklynvegan.com

My friend Jess and I trekked out to the Red Hook for the event. We survived the B77 bus and swooped down like the good little culture vultures we are on the catering table and the bar.

After about two hours of schmoozing, boozing, and running in to a former Spinane (Rebecca Gates moved to Brooklyn. Everybody's doing it!), BSS took the stage. And man, did they rock it. The first half of the set was a little more "hey, we're the indie-rock Dead," but then the girl from Stars came out and they cranked it up. There were all sorts of horns and tambourines and two drums and it was like America (the band) for cool kids. I'm not familiar enough with their songs to give a rundown of the setlist, sorry.

They're playing Letterman tonight and Prospect Park next week. I'm glad I gave them a second change.

Pictures:

Whip, which is Jason from Timesbold and a buddy backing him up, gave us all some nice, spacious, quiet Americana. And not the hokey kind; this was old-feeling folk about new and relatable topics, all anchored by Jason's lyric writing which slays most all of the competition.

After walking an hour (it was what? 90 degrees out) to get to the Artistery, Whip's set was cooling, a nice chill down after a weird and brutal day. Their last song, which Jason introduced as being 30 seconds long but ran closer to a minute I'm thinking, was one of the best things I've ever heard them do--just a sparse, intelligent, sweet little ballad sung for his parents, who were in the audience. Go see them sometime. Whip. Not Jason's parents. Go see Whip.

Also, I'd like to send a message to whoever's selling his or her used Dirty Projectors CDs at Everyday Music. Why? Why, and how could you diss the still-cresting genius of Dave Longstreth for a couple bucks? Are you a junkie? Does your mom need an operation? I'm poor as anybody and sell CDs all the time too, but I would never do that to the Projectors. Just the same, thanks. I'm buying whatever you sell. Even if I already have the record. They make great stocking stuffers.

Is "stocking stuffers" a euphemism for sex? If it isn't, it should be.

A while back I ordered two copies of James Sumner's Getty Address film he created as Dirty Projectors videos. The combination of Dave and James' megabrains together is a crushingly beautiful and original thing. Did you see the screening Towne Lounge did back in... maybe March? If so, you know where I'm coming from. (Check out photos of it below.)

The heatwave is over, but the sun is out. I'm off to walk around in it for a while.

Good… what else? Good VENUE for throwing real shows for real humans and making us feel thankful to (and for) them.

Good is a word that’s lost a lot of its meaning and hitting power; it’s an old, punch-scarred, heavyweight champ that now sits in the back of the Hi-Dee-Ho Bar and Lounge in Lawrence, KS, dull-eyed over a sweating glass of whiskey, and is ignored. And it’s a fine word that should mean something stronger than the more hyperbolic “greats” or “awesomes” or “perfects,” a word Hemingway used to mean “safe,” “sublime,” satisfied,” “centered,” among many other expressions of The Right On. A biblical word. An ancient word. A word farmers use for soil quality and old cowboy rancher men like my Grandfather say to describe waking up alive once again.

Watery Graves at the Artistery. Sitting on the floor watching piano, drums, sax music. Five bucks for touring bands. Warmth and white Christmas lights. These are all good things. Now, sun.

I’m writing about this for Team Tinnitus because Eva and I’s bands share the same PR and doing it anywhere else might be a conflict of interest. (I think. I don’t know. I’m going to find out.) And I’m writing about it now because, before any summer plans get made, I’d like to put a call out for a Portland show. Anywhere. All-ages would be great. The record, a collab with Lemon Bear, is called The Birds in the Bushes, and it’ll be out on 5RC August 22.

Good art, good personal expression gives you big reactions, visceral ones, the kind that aren’t summed up by writing or thinking “journalistically,” and Jackie O took me in some strange and heavy way. It was somewhere I’d been before, not exactly foreign territory, but it wasn’t my usual stomping grounds.

I guess I should say I couldn’t see the band. There were a lot of people at Tube, many of them yeti-basketball-tall, so I stood in the back with Dan and Eli and closed my eyes and just let it all froth over, around, and into me--the drum rolls strafing down like potshots from a Fighting Tiger, the vocals aching out and warped into… what? Into what? A sax solo played by a whale. Not to be cutesy or anything; that’s just how it felt…. low, moaning, stricken, inhuman but natural, pained, sorrowful, anxious while the guitar picked out some deep deconstructed twanging boogie and the overall, overriding sound (again, couldn’t see where or who it was coming from) droned and swelled and shimmered.

So it got to me, hit me “where it counts.” (Which, really, is an unknowable place; don’t let anyone try and say What Is or compartmentalize it for you.) On the way to the bus-stop, passing by all the rich drunks staggering out of bars, and poor drunks in doorways with shiny yellow dead faces, I got to thinking about some of the music I give my time to and about how a good bulk of it is nowhere near as real, original, contradictory, or experience-orientated (does that make sense?) as a good Jackie O show. Bands that hold fashion above substance, singers that preach and pimp self-destruction as a marketing tool… all empty, dry husks and a king-hell waste of time. (“I came all the way from Texas for this shit” said a guy behind me.)

After the big ride down Division, staring out the window into black and streaked yellow and white lights, I got home to find my house cold and my pet tortoise, Tat’yana, dead. He’d been sick for a while, lungs full of fluid, eyes swollen shut. The vet bills had been high, recovery more or less doubtful, but my housemates and I had been giving it our all; shots once daily, various medications from tiny white tubes, hand feeding, lots of love and worrying. But it was, after all that, not enough. Tat’yana went away somewhere between yesterday morning and last night.

I can’t help, then, but feel like Jackie O’s set was some kind of –pre-eulogy—at least for me—a funeral before the funeral. This is probably not what you want to read in a show review, but fuck it, that was the experience I had, and I want to tell the truth as it came to me. I’m not a big fan of hokey, tidy, standard music writing, and there are a lot of writers that’ll dish it out in spades… so I give what I can and I’m not going to try and be anything I’m not. I hope that’s okay with you.

Dragging an Ox was great as always and a super appropriate choice to maintain the plunky acoustic guitar + effects vibe. Brian just seems to get better and better. And his pretty little seven inch vastly improves a quiet Portland morning.

Rookie mistake: I forgot my camera. Visuals next time fo sho.

They're playing again Sat, June 17 at the Know. You should really check these guys out. Also, it took me 'til now to listen to it, but how fucking great is Paranthetical Girls' CD? Wow. That shit really steamrolled me. Zac Pennington made a damn good thing with that little pink album. Buy it post haste if you have the means.

The man's gone walrus on us; all he needs now is a handlebar mustache and he'll look like somebody's dad.

His blues... they were... there's no way around it, they were cheese-ball. And he didn't do much of anything but play slippery little leads, smile every 10 minutes, and squint into the audience. (Is Seagal blind now? He kinda looks it.)

The crowd was full of middleage men with ponytails doing the powerdance, just wild, arms flailing, nowhere near in time with the music, danger dancing. Danger.

Friend's role-call: Erik didn't get in. (Guest list F-up.) Chas was buried in the crowd. Scott got there late (who knew the show would be over by 10fucking30pm.) So I lone rangered it up front and watching our action hero rock out like a drunken slug. Which is a long way of saying, best show ever. Fucking Seagal, man!

With a sound this discordant and evil, I realize Argumentix isn’t for everybody, but it works for me and I’m gonna preach it: check it out here, here, and here. Also, next time James plays go to the merch table and buy the collaboration CD he did with Dragging an Ox Through Water, which is like free jazz and free folk made even freer with James’ kill-the-world-with-kindnoise production, and weird, animalistic brass/horn asides. Argumentix’ next show is this coming Wednesday (May 24) at the Food Hole. Go support the local weird.

BHH's songs--their new ones anyway--are based around National Geographic articles. But, again, there's no gimmick involved. They feel just as tense or sad or pissed off or happy--whatever the band's trying to convey at that moment--as any "personal" song. Here's what Andy told me about that: "There are a couple of ways I come at the songs. One is that I read an article and find what I think is the most dramatic but glossed-over moment, then write a song summoning up all the emotions I think would come out of that moment. These old NGs are very rosy, you know, there's never any controversy or sense that what's going on isn't necessarily okay for everyone involved. Like I think a grizzly bear mother would be really angry if her baby was shot with a tranquilizer dart then locked in a cage and probed and tagged and shit. And the more I think about it, the more I can imagine and sing about that anger.

"The other way I approach these songs is looking for my emotions in the stories. I start singing about what I'm feeling over some guitar chords, come up with a few very general lyrics, then find an NG article that those emotions would fit in. With both methods, writing songs like this has been a refreshing experience. I don't have to rely on my emotions and experience so much, which is what I always used to do."

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.

There are so many good local shows I should've taken the chance to spill words/blood about--Dirty Projectors (see below) with Dark Yoga, Mates of State, Scout Niblett's last couple dates, Macaw, Morbid Angel, the Better to See You With--but I'm gonna wait 'til something fresh (as in new, because fuck ironic slang) comes along.

Tonight I'm gonna go see Jason Webley at Red & Black, then--if I can get a ride--later on, Argumentix with Mattress (they're releasing a split CD-R), Child Pornography, and Erebus NYX & STYX at Food Hole. Did I mention I love Food Hole? I didn't. But I do. One of my favorite venues. People can talk shit about "oh it's so small" and "oh hipster this, hipster that" but fuck 'em. It's the perfect size, shape, smell, everything.

So maybe I'll write up one of those. I'm pretty posi-core, so I generally won't be writing about shit I hate. Love's so much better. Which is to say, Hi. Hello. My name's Adam and I'm gonna be typing here in the near future.

Portland's fantastic Plants are in New York this weekend doing shows at various locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I took some friends who don't really share my taste in music to their Friday night show at the Kingsland Tavern in Greenpoint, and am happy to report three new converts to the church of psychedelia. They played a mellow set of mostly new stuff bookended by older stuff, and despite the low turnout, Josh and Molly poured their hearts in to every song. We stuck around for an Icelandic band called Jeff Who?, who sounded like the Hives and played a cover of "Let's Twist Again" to close their set. My friends and I danced and I, as per usual, looked like a bunny on crack hopping around the floor.

Last night, I trekked out to "East Williamsburg" to see Plants open for Akron/Family. Ok, first: East Williamsburg is actually Bushwick, no matter how you slice it. Yeah, it's east of Williamsburg, but so is the ocean, and you know what? The fishes don't live in East Williamsburg. Anyway, point is that the walk from the subway to the loft space was all dark, deserted streets, and not so much fun, especially for a petite woman who carries her ipod and cellphone on her at all times. My reward was seeing another fantasic Plants set, similar to Friday's show, only this time in a sauna. My bonus prize was losing a few pounds of sweat because the room was so damn boiling. Yay for multi-tasking. Who needs pilates when you have overcrowded rock shows?

There is a reason that I wrote (sorta) next to A/F in the title. Plants ended their set around 11:15, and by the time my friends got sufficently pissed off and we split at 12:30, they still HADN'T PLAYED A GODDAMN SONG. They did get up on stage and jam for a minute or two, and then stop. They took their shirts off, as they are wont to do. They did Neil Young karaoke. Had they been the local bar band, it might have been cute. But people payed twelve bucks and hiked out to an industrial park to see this show. Not cool.

I guess Akron have the "The Planet The" disease. Both bands are clearly talented. Both bands put out really good records. And both bands could give a rat's ass about their audiences, as is evidenced by the fact that they pull stupid stunts rather than playing actual music. The most frutrating thing is, both these bands are great, and could put on really stellar shows. But due to some combination of drunkeness, arrogance, or desire to be "quirky," they do stuff that will end up turning audience members off. Big polished arena bands might not be hip, but I'll get down with their respect for their audiences any day.