Seeing as how I seem to spend the majority of my largely illusory (and thus more disposable) income on what has quickly become obsolescent, the compakt disk, and any remaining phantom funds to obtain secondhand instruments (such as doodads, gizmos, and whizzing whirring whatthefucksitdos) for the express purpose of composing and performing music, it's frustratingly rare that I actually get out and enjoy music like it's supposed to be enjoyed. This disparity between live and Memorex could have something to do with the stultifying effect of being me, dancing. You (or I) might think that I would be relieved then, that it's rare for me feel that pulse, that rhythm, the beat, the need to get up and physically act on what the sound is telling me to do, but no—I fucking love that feeling, I think we all do (assuming you and I, and the other yous that are not you, that we each have a soul). That's why this lacking in my life, a lack of the most pure expression of what is a vital part of my life, is frustrating, exacerbated by the unbearably lame self-consciousness responsible.
And so it is that I've decided to fill that chasm, bring disparity closer to a parity, and by the power invested in me by the almighty bullet-shaped signifier, chronicle my adventures in enjoyment of the good rock show as many an internetist has chronicled before, except with a far greater percentage of neologisms and legomenons (the hapax kind).
The sun rose on Thursday to reveal itself as actually being a Saturday (well, no it was still Thursday, but we, the marginally employed/gainfully self-employed can treat any damn day we please as a Saturday), a day to be spent with a group of friends and falafel pockets in the streets of Providence and then head south, with those very same friends, to catch a free show on the beautiful beach of Matunuck, headlined by the well-goggled, but less googled, purveyors of semi-sinister chase themes, Ebu Gogo. The show was generously put together by a group of youths appearing more youthful than they probably should and generously attended by youthier youths courtesy of the ever-popular all-ages denomination. Wearing their usual attire of abused irony, the kids know how to enjoy a good thing, and a good thing it was.
Now let me be concise in describing the venue: shit was fucking intimate. Can you understand how that emphasis resounds? If not, I'll explicate: I'm not talking cramped hovel that smells like piss and skunk-stench; where the stage is not a stage, just a slightly elevated extension of the floor that ultimately makes the band more cramped than the audience; where you can't actually hear the music above the din of people who just came to do "something" (except listen).
No, this wasn't like that at all. Probably because it wasn't a real venue at all, it was nature. Make like Mr. Rogers and imagine it if you would: you're standing on soft grass, grass that you could sit on too if you like, it's clean, no needles hiding among the blades. The band is set up on that very same grass, and you can get as close as you like, as long as you're not making anyone uncomfortable and/or physically ruining the performance, but maybe that's ok too, shit is intimate, just don't be an asshole. And everyone there is there because they came for music, reacting to the music in personal forms of exultation. And the beach behind you, it too is just there for the music, waves crashing quietly in the background; Neptune doesn't want to interrupt. Maybe this is the way to experience live music.
If you're unfamiliar with the sound of Ebu Gogo, get familiar. An extension of the cultishly-adored-by-those-that-know, Grüvis Malt, self-proclaimed innovators of Futurock currently on indefinite hiatus, Ebu Gogo has whittled themselves down to a lean, mean, instrumental machine, a Bass/Keys/Trap Kit combo engaged in the production of soundtracks to motion pictures of their own imagination. On their first album, Chase Scenes 1-14, they run through the fourteen breathless non sequitur in under 40 minutes, slowing only to add menace on "Never Ending Hole" and parts of "Mostly Evil, Totally Dead", a song so treacherous they added outtakes at the end so that we can feel drummer Brendan Bell's pain as he misses one of the many time changes ("Red Light Fever").
You can draw connections to a lot of the bands if you want, especially those they themselves acknowledge (I would choose the ones making linear structured mayhem), but you don't need to. They say This Heat, I prefer Massacre (if you replaced Fred Frith's avant-garde noise infatuations with good ol' NES-nostalgia; Ninja Gaiden's got'm cut in two).
For all the goodness of Chase Scenes, however, I never really listened it. The recording quality is admittedly low-budget, not in a teenager-with-a-four-track kind of way, but in a way that you know they're professionals that just wanted to get something out quickly. But meaningless qualms with the audio quality ("It's not warm enough") shouldn't really stop me or anyone else from listening to something, the biggest deterrent is that you just can't grasp how fun this music is until you see and hear it in person. That's what it's all about. No matter how immensely technical the music gets, and how utterly impossible it is to dance while completely disoriented, it is always about simple, retahded fun. After all, the core of The Goonies isn't a story about how much fun it is to follow a convoluted treasure map while being chased by incompetent criminals, it's the tale of misshapen mongoloid Sloth and his undying love for a chunky chunkster named Chunk—a love born from the bond of a shared Baby Ruth.
The sun now sinks as the Gogo finishes setting up. The preceding band, some talented young musicians dutifully attempting to integrate cello into what would otherwise be a two-man Don Caballero Jr., quietly try to gather up their own gear just as Gogo break into "Cuckoo for Bird Flu", the opening track off Chase Scenes and a seriously jarring attack on one's ability to refrain from having a seizure. As a testament to that fact, two clusters of South Kingston's finest mullet-coifed teens immediately developed into equally odd strains of spasmodic line-skanking.
Quickly the set becomes something of a blur. Standing front and center, behind a metalhead who knew what it meant to thrash, I try my damnedest to head-bang in time with the madness, but the always shifting nature of an Ebu Gogo song means I stumble on a few unexpected downbeats. "Spaghetti Chest Burn", with its epic Rocky IV power-synths, causes one kid to get down on one knee, fist raised, a display of allegiance to his new favorite band or signal that he's just had an aneurysm. The aforementioned "Mostly Evil" is played to perfection, and scattered throughout they perform some new songs off their forthcoming second album, including one that has me grinning ear to ear from Gavin's (the keyboardist) use of the pitch-wheel, giving it that early 90's West Coast/Dre vibe on top of the stuttering rhythmic interplay of Justin and Brendan. Fuck Girl Talk mash-ups, these cats do it live with fucking Ziggy Stardust powers.
As darkness surrounds us, the supervisory police inform organizers it was time to wrap it up. Brendan announces that they can play two out of three songs left, so we have to choose between "a heavy and a slow one" or "a heavy and our dance song". Amid cries for "heavy and heavy", it's decided that first would come the dance and then the heavy, as heavy is a given—the proper request would have been "heavy and a heavy-heavy".
"Dance Song" turns out to be heavily-syncopated dub-rebel anthem "Dikembe Bumbwembwe" (definitely one of my favorites off Chase Scenes [because I like to dance?]). Proving to not be anymore danceable than the rest of their material, it still keeps everyone having fun. And then the finale, another new song, tentatively titled "Take off all your clothes...or no, wait, put your clothes on the floor...no, no, but it's something like that." No one takes off his or her clothes (I wouldn't take it to heart, guys, blame mosquitoes and/or malaria).
And like that it was over. Everybody has to scuttle away lest our cars get locked in by the police, the band included, but I imagine everyone's left feeling like they've just huffed a tank of nitrous.
That's a good thing, when it doesn't involve dentistry.
Brendan Bell - Trap Kit Jr.
Justin Abene - Bass
Gavin Castleton - Keyboards
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