I’ve been going to shows again. The question is “why” and the answer, carved to its essentials, is “why not.” I like it. Don’t bother me.
Anyway, here’s the shows I’ve seen since New Years.
Kay Flay and the Urban Heat
I rang in the New Year at the Empire Control Room with this one. The attraction, for me, was the Urban Heat — a goth / darkwave band I’d seen a few weeks earlier and really enjoyed. Kay Flay, a white, female performer of pop-punk rap-rock was largely an unknown quantity. The Urban Heat delivered, giving a pretty analogous show to the one I’d seen earlier: heavy synth, driving guitars, moody and passionately delivered lyrics about breaking up and shivering with the sensation of approaching doom. They play the kind of music that flatters the interior performer; all their tracks sound like they’d be playing in the background as one drives across town in a Lamborghini with a shotgun resting on the passenger’s seat. Except “With that Gun in Your Hand,” which is pretty transparently about gun control and stopping the violence and etc etc; Michael Jackson “Bad” kinda shit. On the drive up to Austin I’d been listening to Bob Dylan and the contrast between the Urban Heat’s anti-violence anthem and “Masters of War” really hit home for me as I watched the lead singer remove his shirt, marking the transition between the “Urban” and “Heat” portions of the evening. Taking on the military industrial complex, as Dylan did in “Masters,” is a way more ambitious target than the Urban Heat’s nameless and insecure young man putting “that gun” in his hand to augment his masculinity. Leave the poor guy alone, I thought. He’s got a small dick and no money and he seems to have enough problems without a goth rock band yelling at him.
Kay Flay fully satisfied her audience but it was not my thing. At one point, she offered the crowd a choice: bang straight through a predictable end of the set, or “go on a journey” and try out some of her weirder material. I cheered for the journey. The face of the friend I went with curled into a snarl of disgust. We were both highly irritated until the end of the show, which arrived slightly after midnight with an extended medley of classic rap songs performed by white artists. The bouncer gave us free shots and recommended that I listen to a hardcore band who, he promised, had interesting melodies.
Fidlar and Floats
Fidlar is one of my friend’s favorite bands, so we headed to this show together. Floats was the opener. I was familiar with neither and, sadly, don’t feel like I really attended this one. The people who did had a great time. Fidlar’s mosh pit was huge and there were too many successful crowd surfers to count. Sadly, the next day I planned to drive to the Mexican border to shoot a documentary and I decided to use the Fidlar show as a chance to get familiar with my newly purchased camcorder. Watching the band on an LCD screen changed the experience. My friend, fully committed, had a great time. But I had to be precious about the device and the task of filming put me at an odd psychic remove. It was not an ideal way to see a punk show. Floats, the opener, was pretty charming. I don’t remember a thing about their set other than they just put off a good vibe and they played a song under harsh green lighting with lyrics about UFOs.
Witches Exist and Ruby Haunt
This was a Thursday night show and Ruby Haunt is a chill band, so the feeling of the evening was extremely relaxed and comfortable. Texas warms up fast, but there was still a chill in the air that night — an autumnal kind of crispness predominated in both sound and atmosphere. Ruby Haunt encountered some technical problems, but in the laid-back emotional universe of the evening they were accepted with grace and good humor. I really like those guys. They remind me of turn of the century Yo La Tengo, but with a more pronounced sense of melancholy. Witches Exist was interesting — much more active than the headliner, but brought into the same orbit by a spacey gloss of synthesizers. The girls at this show were absolutely gorgeous, a fact that I took particular note of because I attended it alone.
I’ll admit that I felt some reticence, when I first started going back to shows, about being the creepy forty year-old who always seemed to be lurking in the crowd when I’d gone out to see music in my younger days. Truth is, being the forty year old creep is pretty fun. You get to listen to the same music without worrying too much what people are thinking about you. I know what they’re thinking! They think I’m the forty year-old creep at the show, and they’re right! It’s a tremendous relief.
That said, I really don’t want to cross the rubicon and become the forty-year old creep who chats up girls at shows. At this point I’m well aware of my limitations.
Yo La Tengo
Crisp night at the Mohawk. Friend I went with stopped the comedian Tom Green and asked him for directions on the way down. We ended up being some of the last people in, which left us on the terrace at Mohawk where you can’t see the band at all — just the crowd. This was no impediment to enjoying what was almost certainly the best performance I’ve seen all year. Yo La Tengo, on their most recent record “This Stupid World,” leaned into a harsh, Velvets-inspired sound. I love it. Going in, I was worried they’d slip back into a calmer style for the purposes of retrospective but they didn’t for the most part. They moved organically from song to song, reinterpreting their old hits to fit the new approach and providing a number of driving, extended psychedelic breakdowns. “Autumn Sweater” took me back in time and “Sinatra Drive Breakdown,” all seven minutes of it, was far more impressive live than it is on the album. As they played I watched the faces of the crowd. The Austin indie rock scene, I realized, is a white identitarian movement. Forget the tiki-torches. If the right wing is serious about getting white people to show up in force, they just need a few distorted guitars and some whispery lyrics about suburban ennui.
I got recognized at this one, which is always a harrowing experience. There’s like six things people might know me from and three of them are pretty bad. This fellow was perfectly nice, though. He did find me in a state of confusion. I shook his hand twice, which I still wince about. But, hey! If you’re reading, it was good to meet you. I hope you liked the show as much as I did.
After the nearly two hour set, my friend and I walked tipsy through downtown Austin, seeking out a pack of cigarettes. The air was cold, the sky clear. It was a night of ancient vintage. The last time I’d walked the streets around that imposing police station I was being tear gassed. Even the parking was good.
Shows are cheaper than movies these days, usually. And each one is a little story: a gift you can unwrap again and again as the years advance. One night of memorable gentleness can make up for a lot of unmemorable isolation. It’s a lesson worth repeating. I’ve learned it before and I’m certain I’ll forget it again. Time seems so intent on running out it’s hard to remember it can walk, too.
Hell, it can even amble.