Fresh Cherries from Yakima

if there is a better way to bring out the best and the worst in everyone than going to a punk show, i’d like to hear it. with an art form as visceral as loud guitars and drums, you can’t help but turn into a different person when the sound is kicking you in the chest and everyone is jumping up and down and pushing everyone else all over the place. group those things with the inclusion of sweat and a full house of monday-night-drunks, and you have yourself a great setup for one of the best shows i’ve seen in the last couple of years.

local opener idle times, who have a single out on woodsist, sounded a little more straight-laced live than a lot of their recordings, which, to be frank, is somewhat of a negative. midway through their set, frontman brian idle’s effects pedal was hashing out some harsh noise, and the song they were playing was cut prematurely because of it. that point of the show was a particular disappointment, because we all know how big of a noise-head douglas martin is, and to me, the burst of unwanted noise coming from his effects pedal provided a necessary garnish of art-damage to the band’s relatively straightforward garage-rock (”straightfoward,” that is, compared to their recorded works). it’s akin to what happened when wavves started touring and you realized that his music sort of sounds better when it’s outrageously blown-out.

san francisco’s thee oh sees make a very convincing argument for “best live band in underground rock” these days. when i saw them opening for the dodos in portland, i wrote: “john dwyer was a completely unhinged and fascinating individual. so much so, in fact, that during approximately a third of the set, even his bandmates had no clue what he was about to do, often staring at him with nervous anticipation while he messed with effects pedals and summoned feedback from his guitar.” although there were less nervous looks from his bandmates this time around, thee oh sees were just as electrifying as they were last summer. benefiting from the inclusion of a setlist, every member of the band was on the same page, with mike shoun excitedly keeping time, guitarist petey dammit on far-stage-left rocking out, and keyboardist/backing vocalist/all-around knockout brigid dawson playing her tambourine in tandem with shoun’s drums, but also playing straight-(wo-)man to dwyer’s manic stage presence. the inclusion of a setlist doesn’t necessarily mean a seamless show, especially when you’re talking about a band like thee oh sees: when shoun missed the cue for a song, dwyer stood over the ride cymbal and half-jokingly yelled at the top of his lungs, “ONE! TWO! THREE!” but as dwyer made the “smoking dope” gesture when shoun finally got it right, there was nary a hint of tension between them; lighthearted smirks crossed the faces of both band members and crowd.

as for dwyer himself, he represents the best kind of rock frontman: a brashly-defiant, exceedingly-energetic, whirling dervish of a dude; swallowing guitars, spitting upwards towards the stage lights, and whooping and hollering as often (probably even moreso) as he sang. mucus dripped from the lights as dwyer violently strummed chords and fucked around with the band’s collective reverb pre-amp, blasting through songs from new album help, as well as their seemingly endless back catalog (we’re talking nine albums and dozens of singles in their seven-years-and-counting run). dwyer, ever the appealing frontman, even got a few cheers from the city’s residents for admonishing the absolutely ridiculous “no alcohol onstage” policy, administered by the city of seattle, even running behind the amps to take swigs of beer between songs, which was still technically onstage. as my friend toby from the finest kiss wrote, the rest of the band were all business, with each member playing their part while laughing off dwyer’s onstage theatrics, which included shoun pulling his ride cymbal closer to him if it ever appeared in danger at the hands of dwyer, who got the last laugh at the end of the set, when he lifted it high above his head, and gingerly placed it on the other side of himself.

even as thee oh sees were a really tough act to follow, the crowd belonged to jay reatard. from the opening note of set opener “blood visions,” jay lindsey and band had the crowd in the palm of his hand, eagerly pogo’ing along and pointing out the significance of opening with “blood visions” when you’re playing a flying-v with blood all over the pick guard. reatard’s set was, as most good punk shows are, complete and utter chaos, complete with moshing, crowd-surfing, and liquids of various origin splayed, poured, and projected onto nearly everyone in the crowd. skinny bodies flailed about, bigger bodies pushed the skinny bodies into parts of the crowd with the highest concentration of bodies, and everyone lost their shit during the 1-2 punch of “oh it’s such a shame” and “see/saw.” towards the end of the set, two concertgoers got forcibly ejected from the venue for stagediving, a photographer in a coonskin cap almost got the camera knocked out of her hand by one of them, and reatard was pushed back onstage by security for diving from the stage himself. during the last song, a fan was brought onstage to “play” guitar during the outro, while reatard stuck his mic directly into the amp for maximum ear-piercing feedback. and then, the show was over, and you were just left with the house music and the ringing.

if you’ve never been to a punk show, if you’ve never been a part of the bedlam, the pandemonium, the romance of the push-and-pull of sweaty bodies swaying and jumping to such visceral and hastily-played music, and lived to tell about it, then you haven’t lived.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under punk is/is not dead, psych!, live review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.