Advice: Go to rock gigs

Spent last night watching a few rock bands in the company of a few dozen other people in a private space below the radar of mass culture. The bands were excellent. I was very happy. Are you nonplussed yet? Yes, the truth is that this a rather common scenario in many parts of the world. In fact, it has been a somewhat routine scenario even for myself in the past year or two. I hardly think it's sensible to go running to the Bags blog to report on every good show I see, especially because I go to an awfully large number of gigs, and when it comes to non-earth-shattering rock bands, I really don't think too many people here will be interested enough. So I try to restrict my post-gig blatherings to a modest number and make them count for something a little bit beyond the gig itself. The fact is I've never stood up and said "hey, I saw these bands and they were great and the people there were swell and life is a bundle of joy". Besides thinking it might be worth saying that at least once on a somewhat random occasion as a snapshot of a certain segment of current society, the gig last night crystallized a pretty significant idea that's been lollygagging about my mind for a good while. So while I have every intention of telling you how Trilobite, Stay Fucked, Wolf Vs., and People rocked hard and good in Philly last night, first allow me to make a sweeping demographic pronouncement I think you ought to know about even if you don't give a flying hootenanny about a bunch of underground rock bands.

It goes something like this. There's this whole mess of twenty-something persons in the world today who are broadly immersed in avant-garde music culture, often heavily investing themselves in the creative improv scene, and you know what really ticks our clock more than anything else? Rock 'n' Roll. Yes, I would like to frankly assert that we prefer to rock. Hard, at that. It's our music and we're not rocking out because we don't know any better, which is not to say that doesn't nail down a rather bloated demographic neighbor of ours. At this point I should start defending myself against accusations of utter inanity. After all, you might be thinking "sheeeit, who don't jam on some ______ [Kinks, Rush, Pixies, Fugazi, At the Drive-In, whatever] as a matter of course?". Rock music has been a mass culture presence since its aesthetic codification a half-century ago. It's an oversized umbrella of folk music in the musicologically worthwhile sense of the term. Its role in the lives of a certain massive segment of society hardly needs to be mentioned. Actually, I think obvious things can often be the most worthwhile to mention, but rock in all its cultural generality and inevitability is not what I'm talking about here.

I recently stumbled across a wonderful term for what I am talking about. Smart rock. Straightforward, functional, pragmatic, unassuming, unpretentious, it's a term too humble to even pay etymological homage to, but thanks to whoever had the good sense to slip it in somewhere. It's tempting to talk about "avant-rock", but it's too narrow for my purposes here; there's no avant-gardism in a lot of the creative, enjoyable rock music I'm celebrating today. It's simply beside the point for most people. "Postmodern DIY rock" really nails it down for me, but I'm not gonna lug that around. Matters of idiomatic specificity are really quite irrelevant to the smart rock scene I'm starting to grasp these days. I see people just as happy to enjoy the alternately twee and ugly detachment-rock of Deerhoof, the boyish, naive-prog Robert Wyatt / Gastr del Sol / ELO stylings of Make A Rising, or the not-far-at-all-from-Yngwie-Malmsteen prog-shred of Behold... The Arctopus. After all, these and so many other bands offer a wealth potential enjoyment we have no reasons to forego. There's also a sense of sociological unity as a grass roots subculture.

As I get sucked further and further into the creative rock doings of the era, a certain sociological pattern is continually reinforced. Basically, I go to these vaguely post-punk marginal rock gigs and sometimes it seems like half the people in the room would be happy to spend the whole night chatting about Xenakis, Bailey, Braxton, Kelley, Frith and similar worthy topics of avant-garde music. Rock music is often dismissed as a kind of mindless pleasure by avant-garde listeners who feel protective of their seriousness and resort to rickety fences like "art vs entertainment". The fact is that there is an incredible level of sophistication among the people I routinely encounter at rock gigs revealing their aesthetic home turf in the world of raucous guitars and pounding rhythms. I'm not talking about one or two eccentrics here; I've encountered dozens of people who fit this demographic, both musicians and listeners. Our roots and hearts belong to rock music, but we all inevitability explore aesthetic alternatives, often to the point of being fully functioning creators or sustainers of musics like non-idiomatic free improv, jazz, academic notationalism, etc. We are frequently seduced by the aura of high-art respectability that surrounds these self-consciously creative activities. We are biased by the aesthetic value systems of social institutions like universities. In the case of jazz, we're often inspired by the sociological symbolism of the ascendence of African-Americans to the status of society's master artists and feel a calling to stand on their shoulders. Most of all, though, at critical points in our formative years, we are exposed to the vast world of aesthetic options and become driven by the sheer inertia of excitement as we have profound aesthetic experiences in new and inviting domains. And in some cases, like mine, there are simply aspects of rock culture that we find objectionable enough to be soured to the notion of actively participating.

In practice, we all find our art consumer lifestyles scattered across the typical eclectic expanse of musics in the Zornian era. But when it comes to subcultural affiliations, there really is a confluence of factors that segment musics and require some consistent choices to participate in one versus another. Besides simple taste, there's the pull of a specific social milieu, the effects of relying on certain informational channels, and the inertia of acquiring a certain set of skills or knowledge as a musician or listener. So some of us more or less abandon an active participation in rock culture, while of course reserving a certain segment of our listening diet for it. I feel that's what happened to me. I got so immersed in jazz and creative improv, not to mention the usual mix of other stuff, in my late teens that I pretty much didn't have any time or interest to sustain my youth passions for various forms of rock, especially metal. My aesthetic options were expanded by college radio (where I discovered free jazz, Stockhausen, Indian music, gamelan, etc) and chance fruits of investigations into the post-prog avant-garde (like discovering the astoundingly rich world of music related to Henry Cow, Cuneiform Records, etc via its tenuous links to Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, etc). Once I found a niche in the creative improv community in the course of ordinary sensible living—going to gigs, doing radio shows, developing friendships, writing reviews, etc—rock music became aesthetically and sociologically superfluous and started carrying an expensive opportunity price tag.

So then a strange thing happened almost five years ago. I'd heard a reference here and there to some kind of unique and great hardcore band called Melt-Banana, but I'd pretty much ignored it because for several years I'd been devoting approximately zero attention to aggressive rock music (for me the best umbrella term in contexts where the differences between metal, punk, hardcore, grindcore, etc are irrelevant, which is almost every context I find myself in) and I was at the height of my intense and moderately snobbish preoccupation with avant-jazz. But still these things register in the back of my mind, and when I watched one of my favorite avant-garde improv saxophonists (John Dierker) perform (in duo with Jack Wright) wearing a Melt-Banana t-shirt one day, later hearing anecdotes about their amazing concerts attended by all sorts of people I routinely rubbed elbows with in the experimental music scene in Baltimore, I started to have some serious symptoms of left-out-of-the-party syndrome. It seems I follow a three-rec rule of thumb of sorts: if about three people independently express passionate feelings about a band, then I finally get off my arse and at least make a modest effort to check them out. Having never lost my hankering for all things fast and brutal, I couldn't stand my curiosity any longer and I bought a copy of Melt-Banana's live-in-the-studio classic on Tzadik (which is, incidentally, in my opinion the greatest rock album ever recorded). I couldn't believe what was coming out of my speakers. It was like a dream come true, the music of the spheres. Within ten minutes I knew the course of my life would be permanently altered and I had gone online and ordered every Melt-Banana album I could find. The great potential of aggressive rock music had been finally been fulfilled and I was apparently the last person in the world to find out about it. I made up for lost time rather agressively, playing that disc about a hundred times in that first week alone. In the ensuing years I found myself attending Melt-Banana concerts and meeting a whole new community of music junkies. I would always ask the knowledgeable folks whether they knew of any bands even remotely similar to Melt-Banana. I was hungry for more of this music. To this day, I've still never uncovered anything remotely comparable to Melt-Banana in idiom, quality, or innovation, but in the course of looking I've discovered a lot of amazing bands and their associated thriving smart rock scene.

I suppose I always knew there was a thriving creative rock underground, but it seemed a nearly futile exercise to stay apprised of it unless one was willing to let it dominate their art consumption lifestyle. It seemed like there was this ridiculous overabundance of underground rock music and a constant stream of gigs in all sorts of unappealing locations, and no reliable, centralized way to filter out the pointless rubbish and stay hip to the good stuff. You'd pretty much have suffer through unbearably many hours of disposable rock filler to get those few morsels. The most artistically vital bands would typically toil away in complete obscurity in their own micro-scene apart from each other, and finding out about them was rather like playing the lottery. I can't begin to recount the bands I've learned about years after they did their thing, and the number of opportunities I would've had to be part of their creative culture right in my own backyard so to speak. Even to this day the really important rock music I've been digging often suffers from an absurd lack of exposure. The potential audience for the music just doesn't know it exists and doesn't know there's a gig down the block that would blow their minds. The situation is the opposite of creative jazz and improv in most ways. You can pretty much just learn about a certain manageable list of musicians, labels, and publications and feel confident you're catching the vast majority of jazz and improv worth checking out. It's a very tightly connected and self-aware international subculture, whereas creative rock is an incredibly fragmented and localized bevy of subcultures. Even with the internet now, the situation has only improved a little bit. How do you find out about the great rock music of the day? Pitchfork? The Wire? Other publications? That'll get you about 5% of it if you're lucky, while drastically misleading you as often as it helps. Actually, in a way the information is really out there on internet publications, but there are literally hundreds you'd have to read to get the scoop, so it's really still just word-of-mouth and dumb luck for the most part. Even after several years of modest efforts to pay attention to rock music, I'm still only scratching the surface of the tremendous wealth of creative rock music I've missed just in the past decade alone.

Setting aside my personal path and these secondary issues, the main point at hand is that there's a very tangible demographic of astute, serious, creative people well-versed in non-rock musics who nonetheless feel that rock music is their music, and potentially offers as much artistic fulfillment as the other options they've considered. It's basically just being honest about their personal cultural experience and not trying to simulate the cultural experience of others who've been elevated to the status of cultural models. Many of us are part of a backlash against jazz culture, massively disillusioned that we've cast our lot with a cookie-cutter proliferation of musicians with degrees, pedigrees, credentials, resumes, etc who perpetuate extremely conservative and formulaic aesthetics under a facade of entitlement to an ever-undernourishing slice of the officially sanctioned pie of Tradition and Innovation. It's the same damn 12 notes over and over again, the same damn Euro-centric timbres, the same expressive solos in polite alternation, and the same facile interjections of vocabulary derived from 60s free jazz, free improv, academic music and other musics they feel the need to express their appreciation of without contributing to in any way. In the smart rock scene we find inspiring creative autonomy and a more digestible ratio of passion to careerism. We've figured out which tiny segment of the jazz world is really worth paying attention to and that's plenty enough. I personally believe jazz is a flourishing and vital art form—look no further than the last Vinny Golia Quintet release for some of the greatest jazz music ever made—but when compared to rock music the filler/gem ratio is about the same and at their best there's no difference in artistic sophistication. In other words, there's really no reason for a creative young person to pursue jazz if they can find equal creative satisfaction from the music that's closer to their hearts and cultural roots. Further, in practice the level of creativity in rock culture is vastly higher than jazz culture. Rock is a profoundly malleable form and a moist vat for homebrew aesthetics.

One trigger for these thoughts was meeting and chatting with Hank Shteamer at the gig last night. Besides being one of the most delightful people I've met in ages, I was fascinated to learn of his great connoisseurship of jazz and improv alongside his avid participation in the creative rock scene. Here's a guy who plays drumkit in a very unpretentious, straightforward aggressive rock band with a creative math rock edge while keeping well abreast of developments in avant-garde music. He even has some impressive writing to his credit, as I learned today by visiting Dusted and reading his excellent pieces, especially a thoughtful feature on Ken Vandermark. When we chanced upon the topic of Darin Gray I discovered that Hank was the wordsmith behind the fine Signal to Noise article I recall enjoying about the monstrously talented bass guitarist of the monstrously great Grand Ulena. In his own band, Stay Fucked, Hank finds creative fulfillment by accepting the constraints of a specific rock idiom. And for me as a listener last night, I found aesthetic fulfillment by accepting the same constraints and relishing the nuances that made Stay Fucked sound a cut above other bands of their ilk. It was a killer set, but more on that below. I hope Hank will forgive me for singling him out like this, but to my way of thinking he's a good example of the demographic I'm trying to bring attention to. Hank, me, and a good many other people in that room last night are truly tuned into rock music as a serious creative medium that holds its own against any other musical form.

It would be bad form to offer all these sweeping generalities without a clutch of further concrete examples to enjoy gravity with. I've seen more momentous gigs in recent memory, but last night was a real pleasure worth documenting and a sort of an ideal typical example of what I've been talking about. The evening started off with a brief set by George Korein's Trilobite. I'd never seen George perform before, but he's one of the ubiquitous eccentric connoisseurs of the experimental music scene in Philly who's been collaborating with Colin Marston in the production of schizo noise rock and ambient electronic splattering for several years as Infidel?/Castro!, and I'd listened to his new weirdo pop studio opus under the Trilobite moniker/persona. I feared the worst. My recounting of the set wouldn't have stretched past one sentence here if my fears were even vaguely justified. Turns out that George is a convincing vocalist and frontperson with some great boyish wails and slinky contortions up his sleeve. I was impressed. What's more, he'd gotten two entirely competent (a vast understatement in the case of Evan Lipson) musicians to play electric guitars (one bass and one tenor) alongside his vocals and laptop beats and samples, so it sounded more or less like a real band. Instrumentally generic, but at the service of solid songwriting. Goofy, naive, but solid and pleasant. You know, potential and all that. I had to listen to George's album again today after chatting with some friends about it last night after the gig. We all agree it's a ridiculous train-wreck of shameless and cheesy post-teen exuberance rendered with considerable studio panache, but specific opinions range from heralding it as an immersive pop masterpiece to conceding it would be a left-field retro 80s/90s/yesterday pop stunner if it were massively edited down to about 45 minutes or so. As far as my opinion, George has some serious producerly chops and an expansive, uncannily astute musical understanding easily discovered by querying his reaction to any music, especially after a gig, and for all its embarassing, awkward earnestness and solipsism, if the listener makes the required giant leap of entertainmental acceptance, the Trilobite album reveals itself as a tour de force of polished electro-pop genre-hopping. His new Infidel?/Castro! two-disc release is really nice too, edgy ambient excursions with some noise and media splat spicing, even flirting with some smart rock stylings here and there.

Stay Fucked was up next, a trio in the classic format of drumkit (Hank), electric bass guitar (Ben), and electric tenor guitar (Joe). This was a really pleasant surprise for me, because the band had a tight, dirty, heavy sound that made me think of the mighty Jesus Lizard and they also did some great math rock tricky stuff, which I'm a total sucker for. I also thought of the stunning math rock and metal masters The Fucking Champs, but I swear it had nothing to do with the similarity in names, which I only just noticed right now typing this. Honest. But keep in mind that my knowledge of recent rock music is so meager that when I say band x reminds me of band y, it's based on a woefully impoverished similarity metric. In any case, Stay Fucked really sounded like a mighty and powerful creative aggressive rock band on a good night. So I was a lucky guy to be there. Maybe you can start to understand my titular advice above: go to rock gigs. It's great! Well, you have to pick the right ones of course, but there are people who will be happy to help you out with this. I would definitely go to see this band again sometime, because it just felt really good. Previously a strictly instrumental unit from what I'm told, Hank has adopted a headset microphone to add some minor vocals into the sound.

Philadelphia's Wolf Vs did an extremely short set (couldn't've been more than 10-15 minutes) next. Bear in mind that anything I say about these guys is going to be seriously biased because these are people I hang out with on a regular basis. Far from hyping them, I have a bad habit of dismissing the project as a private workshop for the musicians to woodshed in the skronky free jazz and free rock hybrids characteristic of the late 80s Knitting Factory scene. You know, free jazz saxophone with some post-Sharrock guitar and energetic drumming. Maybe a little avant-funk in the mix. It's a kind of retro bombastic improv, but I personally have a taste for this kind of thing and the fact is these guys always come up with an impressive performance. Since it's very much a secondary project for the musicians, I always think it's gonna be a sloppy, amateurish mess when I see them, but to be completely honest, they always sound quite good! I tend to be an excessively harsh critic towards my own friends, but if I didn't know these guys and just walked in on a show, I'd think they were a really exciting band worth checking out in their own right and not just as an opening act. I don't know how they pull it off, but they wind up getting into some pretty hot vamps, unison themes, and math rock morsels in their sets despite a paucity of rehearsal and a lack of unified aesthetic inclinations among the members. I have to extend a compliment to the group for playing such a short set last night. They weren't especially well prepared but played a really forceful, hot piece, quitting while they were ahead instead of indulging in potentially lackluster jamming to stretch the set out to typical lengths.

Saxophonist Dan Scofield is really a talented hard blowing cat who's been working his craft in all sorts of situations around Philly in the reasonably active scene vaguely connected with the Sun Ra and post-60s jazz crowds. The lineup has been changing a bit here and there, and this was the debut of a new version after a twin-guitar phase with avant-shred prodigy Alex Nagle ran its course. To the core of guitarist/violinist Jesse Moynihan (who did some wild and great electric violin freakout soloing last night), drumkitter Julius Masri, and Scofield, they've added bass guitarist Evan Lipson to make it a quartet.

Evan's a good example of a career-minded general-purpose avant-gardist (studies with Mark Dresser, Robert Black, Michael Formanek, wide-ranging immersion in everything under the sun, etc) with massive technical and conceptual chops starting to find their way in the world. In fact, Evan and guitarist Mary Halvorson were the only examples in last night's crowd of this somewhat rare breed of musician heavily drawn to the creative rock world while simultaneously being leading lights of their generation of up-and-coming torch-bearers of post-jazz and improv aesthetics. They're the real heroes of the future avant-garde, musicians with the talent and personal vision to operate without relying on formulas and predetermined career paths. It's impossible to predict what they have in store for us in the coming decades, but I'm sure it will rock pretty hard sometimes. In fact, I've found Mary's experiences as a recovering-jazzer/improvisor and reawakened rocker strikingly close to my own, modulo not being a musician. It's hard to resist being taken under the wing of Anthony Braxton and having all sorts of great opportunities to explore post-jazz and free improv in the burgeoning Wesleyan/Brooklyn scene, but Mary has gotten a better grasp of her aesthetic calling after gaining some distance from her university days and coming to terms with the profundity she experiences in The Melvins, Deerhoof, Jesus Lizard, etc. From where I'm standing these days, that's good news. Really the last thing the world needs is another excellent jazz musician. We sure could use more avant-informed creative post-rockers though.

This brings us to the final act of the evening, People. It was certainly my main reason for attending, as I've had their debut album in heavy rotation for many months and I was keen on finally getting to see Kevin Shea in action on the drumkit. As it were, I'm apparently the only person in the Western world who's never heard his acclaimed and supposedly archetypically math-rocking erstwhile band Storm and Stress. People's self-titled platter is just what I've been craving these days: a set of catchy, creative, twisted avant-pop numbers heavily focused on vocals and songcraft. Really, the fact is that there's not much of this sort of thing in the world. It's a glaring gap in the world of music. Oh yeah, my cravings also required some kind of mathy or proggy edge to the proceedings. People delivered the goods big time and it's the kind of album that I wish people would've told me about back in the days when I was hopelessly out of touch with the rock world. If your interest in rock music can only stretch to a handful of albums per year, I'd say this is a good candidate for your attention. Their set last night sounded pretty much like the album with the great bonus of seeing Kevin go bananas pretty much non-stop. They've got a sound unlike anything else I've ever heard. Kevin goes bananas on drumkit and Mary Halvorson plays simple slowish guitar parts and sings catchy pop songs on top of it. I'd call it downright swank if it weren't so ugly and dissonant. I think the goal for an avant-pop ensemble should be to do everything possible to jeopardize and deconstruct the basic functionality of catchy pop tunes without actually losing that functionality. People's songs are highly memorable and addictive. Mary's singing is real singing, not the mumbly background half-speaking of a lot of 90s guitar rock, and it has some pretty powerful moments—she wailed so hard a few times the PA speakers were generating beats. Overall, I guess you could say her singing is kind of pretty and that she sings well. So, yes, the music is pretty and memorable. On the other hand, there's only a faint synchronization between Kevin's speed splatter chaos and Mary's bright and shiny dirges. It's really a pretty inaccessible sound for all its buried pop splendor.

The great irony of the group is that Mary is a sick guitar virtuoso bound to eventually make her way into the league of Nels Cline, Joe Morris, Christy Doran, Marc Ducret, etc, but in this group she gives no hint of it whatsoever and focuses on emotionally ambiguous chordal mushrooms within the technical reach of your local Jack and Jane rock guitar hack. I'm heavily biased towards the clean, spiky sound Mary exemplifies in her playing with Trio Convulsant, and I gobble up the occasional squiggles and darts in People songs, so my enthusiasm for the group is not unqualified given my guitar preferences, but at the same time I dig the unique moods that Mary's guitar playing generates here, and the total package is certainly a winner given I've found myself drawn back to the disc again and again. When it comes to these mixed feelings, I think what it boils down to is that I'm a huge fan of the Partridge Family and I really wish People would move their sound more in that direction. That's really my sound. I have a rough time with all this noisy, weird rock stuff. A mix of The Partridge Family and math rock. That's what I really want. While I'm at it, I want a math rock band with a Motown-styled vocalist. And all rock bands should have a balloon section to cover my rub/squeak quota. They should also have guest accordionists and bagpipers. Beggars can't be choosers, so in the meantime I'm really quite content with People. I don't want to mince my words here. This is one of the best creative rock bands on the planet right now and I seriously recommend lowercase people to lend an ear to uppercase People. In terms of songwriting style, vocals, and guitar timbres (but definitely not drumkit style), I'm occasionally strongly reminded of Thinking Feller's Union Local 282, in my opinion one of the all-time great rock groups of any era. I'd go so far as saying TFUL282 were The Beatles of the 90s!

What I really mean to talk about here is how Kevin is a monster, a beast, on the drumkit. One of the things I like most about modern society is the existence of drumkitters who go bananas. I drool over Hella, Yowie, Ahleuchatistas, and other holy grails of avant-rock. Fast=good. Crazy=better. Breakbeaty=best. Drumboey=I-fainted-and-left-a-pool-of-saliva-on-the-floor. But I'd really rather talk about The Partridge Family or how Trio Convulsant's Sister Phantom Owl Fish is one of the most profoundly beautiful and poetic records of the past decade I wish I could play everyday if I didn't have such an endless stream of other music I feel obligated to listen to instead. I've talked enough already though.

So, yeah, go to rock gigs. It can be great. I used to avoid them at all costs because of my passionate objections to loud volumes. Nowadays I just compromise more often and usually it's a low-budget, grass-roots situation where the volume is entirely reasonable due to the limitations of available equipment. These are the best gigs. I think Henry Flynt was on-the-money when he said: "Rock-pop became uniformly loud in a way which was vulgar, mechanical, and bloated". My great fantasy is that every rock band in the world would just turn way down and stop amplifying drumkits. One of the most inspiring live music experiences I've ever had is seeing Eugene Chadbourne and Paul Lovens do a cover of The Byrds' "So You Want To Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" at a volume so miraculously faint it could've been leaking from a house across the street. Playing loud all the time is like playing a C note all the time instead of using other pitches. This continues to be a major issue for me as I dabble in the rock scene more and more. I've seen performances (e.g. Melt-Banana) turn to utter worthless shit because of over-amplification, and it's business-as-usual for rock culture. Nobody questions it. Nobody takes a stance. Then (admittedly musically fantastic) dumbasses like Lightning Bolt fetishize their sado-masochistic excesses. In the end, my allegiance is first and foremost to non-idiomatic free improv on acoustic instruments, especially in a lowercase vein. When I recommend going to rock gigs, I don't mean everyday. And bring earplugs. And complain when you have to use them.

~Michael Anton Parker
September 4, 2005

Posted by maparker on September 5, 2005 12:34 PM