when will i quit

Such a debate raging: Tres Chicas are playing at Iota tonight and I’ve suddenly become my own devil’s advocate. This is what happens when you get older and less interested in seeing performers more than once. It’s a Thursday night and show time is 9pm with an opener slated. I figure it’ll be 10:15 before the gals hit the stage and suddenly beyond midnight before I get to bed. It all figures to be a five-hour sojourn for a 90-minute show and that’s the rub. I could get two hours of apartment cleaning done, have dinner, wash the dishes, get through an episode of Deadwood, and be in bed by 10pm. I find that fewer and fewer artists can pull me out on weeknights.

I had a blurb written about the Neko Case show a few weeks ago but never published it…gun shy. The gist was that she’s a one-of-a-kind singer, I love her songs, the show was nice, the crowd very good (including the much anticipated calls of love and marriage)…it wasn’t earth-shattering. The Neko crowd would never take anything but praying at her altar as a valid input. Along those lines…
This week’s episode of Musicheads at the Current included weekend DJ Tony Lopez pointing out, quite rightly in my opinion, that any CD running 74 minutes will make him run for the door. No matter how good the music, and it generally doesn’t hold it’s quality throughout, it becomes too much. As is well documented, I have a similar live show parameter – about 100 minutes. Beyond that run I’m thinking about the twenty to thirty minutes of dregs any artist pulls out during live shows that run too long. Suddenly they’re pulling me beyond two hours (two-and-a-half with encores) and my mind keeps wondering why they’ve done it. In my defense, I’ll point out that I’m perfectly happy to let the artist play whatever bevy of songs they choose for the evening – I’m not one that needs to hear everything I’d put on the play list, and it’s that mentality that leads to people getting all roped up in three-hour sets. My question is this: would you rather have 90 minutes of killer performance or 2 ½ hours that alternates between dribs and drabs? There isn’t really a choice because there are few performers that can hold attention for that kind of time – hit me with both barrels and let’s head out. What made me think of this was the dcist.com review of the Neko show that included the fact that the set was 75 minutes. Very nice.

And I’m adding this little online input / discussion with the Washington Post staff writer (J. Freedom du Luc) from the WaPo website – hitting the nail on the head about all crowds at all shows:

Writer:“My question is one of 9:30 Club etiquette...we showed up about half-way through the opening act for the Neko show (too bad, b/c he was really good). We head upstairs and there is room to stand along the railing towards the front of the stage, with folks sitting in that first row of steps. We wander over and stand along the railing, and a guy sitting on the stairs behind us freaks out and tries to convince us that he is sitting there...but is also planning to stand against the railing once Neko comes on. We finally convince him that you can't both sit and stand at the same time and he's gotta give one of his spots up. I always stand downstairs at the 9:30, so the upstairs world is a bit new to me--is this common for 'upstairsers' or is this guy as big a -&%$# as we think?”

J. Freedom du Lac: “I'm with you here. Dude can't do the long-distance ownership thing. If somebody leaves their space along that rail and nobody's holding it for them, then it's fair game.”

My corollary to that discussion is the process at the Birchmere in Alexandria. (I know, you can tune out whenever…) The Birchmere main room is all tables, no standing, and the doors generally open about 60-90 minutes before the show – first come, first serve for seating with each table each seating between 6 and 10 people. For the sold-out shows they hand out numbers to folks as they arrive even earlier than doors opening and start calling numbers as the doors opening – it’s all very orderly. What generally happens is that there might be a group of 8-10 attending the show together but only one nugget shows up early to snag a number and then get seats for the rest of the monkeys. This guy ends up holding an entire table for the rest of the party that prances in about 20 minutes before show time…and it pisses me off. Here’s my rule: you can hold an equal number of seats as those of you currently sitting at the table. Call it my “you’re on a date” rule. If you want to hold eight seats then at least four of you have to be there. Period. If I walk up and decide to sit down at the table that you’re either laying on, or is covered with your purse, your jacket, one or your shoes on two seats, your hat, your effing umbrella, and your socks…I’m sitting down. Tipping the chairs up doesn’t count, nobody holds a seat for someone in the venue by tipping the chair against the table. There, I’ve said it. Stuff it.

This is the most useless entry ever.

alternate universe

There was a rather lively debate on Minnesota Public Radio’s February 27th Musicheads show (I just listened to the podcast a few days ago) concerning not only new music, but the “band hitting it big” debate that’s raged for decades. In the days since the early 1980s when alternative (or alt rock and its derivatives like alt.country) came to the fore as an umbrella term for indie, goth, punk, ska, Brit-pop, etc., there have been war-like attacks and counter-attacks on what the term means – and what bands fall under the club’s moniker. I think long diatribes on the genealogy of the term are for for times (preferably when I’m not around) since I’ve jumped onboard with Musichead Mark Wheat’s resolution to stop labeling music (with my amendment of still being able to use good music and/or crappy music as descriptive terms). What made the show so interesting was Wheat’s statement that he didn’t want to see the Irish band The Frames become popular because he didn’t think their music was worth the popularity, or in fact, that they were alternative, since he felt they were catering to the masses and simply toting the alternative name along with them. This is the opposite of the ideal held by alt music fans from the 80s who didn’t want his or her band to become popular because he didn’t want to lose that bit of hip/cool/love that had been mated to that band. By my reckoning this is a wholly new idea…and one that I embrace. The equations, comparatively, look something like this:

Alternative band > becomes famous > I lose something I love
“Alternative band” > becomes famous > I get something I hate

The importance? The quotes I’ve put around the second equation is indicative of a band taking advantage of the alternative label in order to highjack the grass roots movement that follows alternative music. Believe it or not, even in this day and age, there are tons of bands hammering the pavement, trying to survive, making very little money, and selling small numbers of CDs – bands and artists that are exponentially better than 99% of what is mainstream – and this was never a problem. It was easy to hate the Britneys, N*Syncs, Mariahs, and Shanias of the world because they were bad, we knew they were bad, and we just ignored them. This new idea lays bare a claim that there is an ark of bands from the last 10 years that have played the alternative name (see Coldplay) while producing something that isn’t cutting edge, isn’t alternative, and quite honestly, isn’t very good. Unfortunately, it lumps a lot of bad music in with scads of really good artists and brings down the entire level of quality. What we end up with is a battle for a limited number of music listeners, buyers, concert goers, and promoters through a spectrum full of mostly crappy artists. The greater the promotion (paid for and crammed down our throats by bigger record companies), the greater the chance of success. The labeling of music as alternative intrigues lots of spenders into thinking they can go to a nice, big venue and live on the edge while listening to some artist labeled 'alternative' instead of heading over to Iota or Jammin’ Java where they could save a ton of money, enjoy themselves, and contribute to the cause.

Maybe I fold this into some pertinent to the issues of today...

Sam Brownback can call himself a liberal all day if he wants – that doesn’t make it so.

Peace,

T.D. "Leader of the Conservative Movement" (did it work?)