rock n roll
May. 1st, 2005 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I actually went to a rock n roll show last night! Wow!
The trip was fun. We just got on the Thruway "westbound" and headed south, through miles and miles of grapevines. The country out there's pretty flat; it's the extremity of New York huddled up against Lake Erie, and there's nothing to stop the lake effect.
Everything was misty green. It was a rainy day today, and we set out at seven. The sun was long gone, hadn't been visible since morning, and so dusk was a long slow gradual change from pale blue to dark blue. By Hamburg I saw six deer standing beside the road. ("Don't make any sudden moves," Dave whispered, as we whizzed quietly by at a cruise-controlled 68.)
At one point we found ourselves on the Rez, but when I asked Dave which tribe's reservation it was, he didn't know.
Beside the highway was a large statue of an overly-muscled Indian making what looked to me like the Nazi salute. ("Don't make any sudden moves," Dave whispered.)
The Thruway is, down there, much like everywhere else: flat, straight, and a bit mind-numbing. Down there the sole rest area is under construction. We hit some bad fog and the whole world was a dark muzzy blue, and I kept my eyes on the tiny red pinpricks of the car that preceded us to see whether the road kept going.
Erie PA is notable primarily for its utter lack of signage. There was no way to tell what street you were on, and many of the cross streets weren't labeled either. But it wasn't lack of street signs that made us miss the venue the first time, but rather the quaint custom of the businesses not to post their address under any circumstances. It took me six blocks before I saw the first address: we were looking for 25-something, it was 211-something, and it took me another four blocks before I saw 15--something and determined we were headed the wrong direction. People! Post your frickin' house number!
The venue had listed the show's start time as TBA, and when we called them earlier today, their answering machine informed us we should check the website. So we had to randomly guess, having no way to know. We got there halfway through the opening act, some local band called Spooner. They were playing a cover of Spindoctors' "What Time Is It" (... "four thirty. That's not late. No, no, no, that's early.") They had a really good bassist, one of the ugliest babyfaced fat men I've ever seen, clad in a sideways baseball cap, oversized everything, and a button-down-shirt printed with the Debbie Does Dallas poster. He rocked, and I think the best part was that his mouth was moving the whole time, like he was talking to himself.
The venue was cool-- sizeable but not huge, intimate but not crowded, with varied seating and kinda funky but understated decor. Dave and I got a seat at a table in the back corner nestled up under the sound booth, and it was awesome because the sound was perfect right there and nobody stood in front of us because it was a passageway. "It's the power seat," Dave said, for all the world sounding ilke he'd been smoking pot. We played with his beard, and got some wings, and some beers, but to my sorrow, never once availed ourselves of the perfectness of that snug corner for makeouts.
Possibly because of our disgust at the table just a few feet in front of us, where a middle-aged woman was obsessively canoodling with her date, who was certainly saying all the right things and returning her kisses and putting his hands up the back of her shirt and stuff, but his body language was all "Get off of me you crazy old bitch!" Everyone else in the place besides the cute young barstaff was all middle-aged and oddly lumpy.
And oh, one bummer: it was in PA, so they could smoke in the bars. Icky poo, I'd forgotten how foul that shit smells.
So the opening band left, and for a while there was the usual taking down setting up boring crap. Dave and I determined that the Forward Hall has really good honey bbq wings, just the thing to fuel a two-hour post-midnight return journey.
We were just sitting there rather unsuspectingly when two dark-clad men got up on the stage with a guitar and a bass, and began sound-check. "Mm," Dave said, "they rock." "Who?" "The sound-check guys."
Abruptly they began playing a song, an Indigenous song, and the lights came up like the light guy was surprised too, and we realized it actually was Indigenous. Apparently despite the album cover there's just three of them now; they got rid of their cousin Horse on bongos, I guess. Bummer.
Turns out their drummer's a chick, who knew? (Her name is Pte; it's not like you can tell from the liner notes.)
There was no fuss or frippery, or in fact intelligible words from them. Occasionally the frontman would exclaim into the microphone what might have been "thanks!" or "how y'all doin" or some random greeting like that. i think at the end he said "see you next time". But he wasn't exactly, well, he doesn't really have very clear diction. He's a blues man, what can I say?
The show rocked. They didn't really bother introducing songs, they just played them. They didn't bother introducing the band members, they just played. They didn't talk about themselves or the tour, they just played. The bassist (whose name is apparently Wanbdi) didn't bother moving, he just leaned against his amps and played. The drummer sang along with all the songs, but not into her microphone except occasionally; mostly she just mouthed the words. Which was helpful, as I could read her lips to figure out what the singer was saying. (She was hot in a kind of sharp-jawed full-lipped pouty kinda way, so it was easier to read her lips than the hot in a no-lips so-very-manly kind of way singer who was being thick-voiced and incomprehensible as is his trademark style.)
The crowd was laid-back but pretty into it, which is probably a good way to describe the music as well-- they played everything very downtempo but with a lot of energy. Cmon Suzie got a pretty good reaction from the crowd, and I finally understood the words to the first verse because Pte's mouth was moving a lot more than the singer's (his name is, apparently, Mato).
They played a bunch of their own stuff, and then did Voodoo Child, which rocked pretty hard. Mato played his guitar upside-down for a little bit, played it behind his head, rubbed it over the amp, played it behind his back, etc., but to my disappointment refrained from setting the guitar on fire and humping the amp. He was, apparently, not fucked-up enough for that. Actually, in contrast to the opening band, Indigenous were all drinking out of water bottles, and none of them actually looked like they were on any illicit substances. (The opening band's members were hanging out around our table during the show, so I can say definitively that they pretty much all were.)
At the end the audience demanded an encore so they played Hendrix's Red House, which was pretty good-- more of the guitar-behind-the-back sort of thing, and very solid overall. Dave figured out how they get that really low-end muddy quality to their playing: apparently they detune their guitars so they're lower. It's a pretty neat effect; they're kind of a sonic wall of Hendrix/Stevie Ray Vaughan kinda blues, and it's quite effective at making your fillings vibrate.
The audience made enough noise until they came back a second time, but the bassist didn't bother coming back: just Mato, and Pte sat there and hit the bass drum sometimes while he played John Lee Hooker's "I'm In The Mood For Love."
It rocked pretty hard, overall; Dave used the phrase "stupid good" several times, and we cruised back to Buffalo on an iTunes playlist of Stevie Ray Vaughan turned down kinda low, and we couldn't hear in the bass register anymore so I kept my leg leaned against the door so I could feel it instead.
I took a few photos, went right up to the stage during Voodoo Child but I was moving positions when he played the guitar upside-down so I didn't get a shot. I don't think any of the pictures came out very well; I was more interested in enjoying the show (and eating wings) than in practicing my craft as a photographer.
Oh, for more about the band, here's their iTunes Music Store page. Their own webpage is www.indigenousrocks.com. They'll be back in the area (by "area" I mean Southern Tier NY, in some little shithole near Elmira) Aug 6th.
The trip was fun. We just got on the Thruway "westbound" and headed south, through miles and miles of grapevines. The country out there's pretty flat; it's the extremity of New York huddled up against Lake Erie, and there's nothing to stop the lake effect.
Everything was misty green. It was a rainy day today, and we set out at seven. The sun was long gone, hadn't been visible since morning, and so dusk was a long slow gradual change from pale blue to dark blue. By Hamburg I saw six deer standing beside the road. ("Don't make any sudden moves," Dave whispered, as we whizzed quietly by at a cruise-controlled 68.)
At one point we found ourselves on the Rez, but when I asked Dave which tribe's reservation it was, he didn't know.
Beside the highway was a large statue of an overly-muscled Indian making what looked to me like the Nazi salute. ("Don't make any sudden moves," Dave whispered.)
The Thruway is, down there, much like everywhere else: flat, straight, and a bit mind-numbing. Down there the sole rest area is under construction. We hit some bad fog and the whole world was a dark muzzy blue, and I kept my eyes on the tiny red pinpricks of the car that preceded us to see whether the road kept going.
Erie PA is notable primarily for its utter lack of signage. There was no way to tell what street you were on, and many of the cross streets weren't labeled either. But it wasn't lack of street signs that made us miss the venue the first time, but rather the quaint custom of the businesses not to post their address under any circumstances. It took me six blocks before I saw the first address: we were looking for 25-something, it was 211-something, and it took me another four blocks before I saw 15--something and determined we were headed the wrong direction. People! Post your frickin' house number!
The venue had listed the show's start time as TBA, and when we called them earlier today, their answering machine informed us we should check the website. So we had to randomly guess, having no way to know. We got there halfway through the opening act, some local band called Spooner. They were playing a cover of Spindoctors' "What Time Is It" (... "four thirty. That's not late. No, no, no, that's early.") They had a really good bassist, one of the ugliest babyfaced fat men I've ever seen, clad in a sideways baseball cap, oversized everything, and a button-down-shirt printed with the Debbie Does Dallas poster. He rocked, and I think the best part was that his mouth was moving the whole time, like he was talking to himself.
The venue was cool-- sizeable but not huge, intimate but not crowded, with varied seating and kinda funky but understated decor. Dave and I got a seat at a table in the back corner nestled up under the sound booth, and it was awesome because the sound was perfect right there and nobody stood in front of us because it was a passageway. "It's the power seat," Dave said, for all the world sounding ilke he'd been smoking pot. We played with his beard, and got some wings, and some beers, but to my sorrow, never once availed ourselves of the perfectness of that snug corner for makeouts.
Possibly because of our disgust at the table just a few feet in front of us, where a middle-aged woman was obsessively canoodling with her date, who was certainly saying all the right things and returning her kisses and putting his hands up the back of her shirt and stuff, but his body language was all "Get off of me you crazy old bitch!" Everyone else in the place besides the cute young barstaff was all middle-aged and oddly lumpy.
And oh, one bummer: it was in PA, so they could smoke in the bars. Icky poo, I'd forgotten how foul that shit smells.
So the opening band left, and for a while there was the usual taking down setting up boring crap. Dave and I determined that the Forward Hall has really good honey bbq wings, just the thing to fuel a two-hour post-midnight return journey.
We were just sitting there rather unsuspectingly when two dark-clad men got up on the stage with a guitar and a bass, and began sound-check. "Mm," Dave said, "they rock." "Who?" "The sound-check guys."
Abruptly they began playing a song, an Indigenous song, and the lights came up like the light guy was surprised too, and we realized it actually was Indigenous. Apparently despite the album cover there's just three of them now; they got rid of their cousin Horse on bongos, I guess. Bummer.
Turns out their drummer's a chick, who knew? (Her name is Pte; it's not like you can tell from the liner notes.)
There was no fuss or frippery, or in fact intelligible words from them. Occasionally the frontman would exclaim into the microphone what might have been "thanks!" or "how y'all doin" or some random greeting like that. i think at the end he said "see you next time". But he wasn't exactly, well, he doesn't really have very clear diction. He's a blues man, what can I say?
The show rocked. They didn't really bother introducing songs, they just played them. They didn't bother introducing the band members, they just played. They didn't talk about themselves or the tour, they just played. The bassist (whose name is apparently Wanbdi) didn't bother moving, he just leaned against his amps and played. The drummer sang along with all the songs, but not into her microphone except occasionally; mostly she just mouthed the words. Which was helpful, as I could read her lips to figure out what the singer was saying. (She was hot in a kind of sharp-jawed full-lipped pouty kinda way, so it was easier to read her lips than the hot in a no-lips so-very-manly kind of way singer who was being thick-voiced and incomprehensible as is his trademark style.)
The crowd was laid-back but pretty into it, which is probably a good way to describe the music as well-- they played everything very downtempo but with a lot of energy. Cmon Suzie got a pretty good reaction from the crowd, and I finally understood the words to the first verse because Pte's mouth was moving a lot more than the singer's (his name is, apparently, Mato).
They played a bunch of their own stuff, and then did Voodoo Child, which rocked pretty hard. Mato played his guitar upside-down for a little bit, played it behind his head, rubbed it over the amp, played it behind his back, etc., but to my disappointment refrained from setting the guitar on fire and humping the amp. He was, apparently, not fucked-up enough for that. Actually, in contrast to the opening band, Indigenous were all drinking out of water bottles, and none of them actually looked like they were on any illicit substances. (The opening band's members were hanging out around our table during the show, so I can say definitively that they pretty much all were.)
At the end the audience demanded an encore so they played Hendrix's Red House, which was pretty good-- more of the guitar-behind-the-back sort of thing, and very solid overall. Dave figured out how they get that really low-end muddy quality to their playing: apparently they detune their guitars so they're lower. It's a pretty neat effect; they're kind of a sonic wall of Hendrix/Stevie Ray Vaughan kinda blues, and it's quite effective at making your fillings vibrate.
The audience made enough noise until they came back a second time, but the bassist didn't bother coming back: just Mato, and Pte sat there and hit the bass drum sometimes while he played John Lee Hooker's "I'm In The Mood For Love."
It rocked pretty hard, overall; Dave used the phrase "stupid good" several times, and we cruised back to Buffalo on an iTunes playlist of Stevie Ray Vaughan turned down kinda low, and we couldn't hear in the bass register anymore so I kept my leg leaned against the door so I could feel it instead.
I took a few photos, went right up to the stage during Voodoo Child but I was moving positions when he played the guitar upside-down so I didn't get a shot. I don't think any of the pictures came out very well; I was more interested in enjoying the show (and eating wings) than in practicing my craft as a photographer.
Oh, for more about the band, here's their iTunes Music Store page. Their own webpage is www.indigenousrocks.com. They'll be back in the area (by "area" I mean Southern Tier NY, in some little shithole near Elmira) Aug 6th.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 02:13 am (UTC)