Jam With The Band

Black Dice, "Cone Toaster" - Ever been taken an interview only to have it end in you being tricked into tramping around the Agoura Hills business district doing nearly nine hours of door-to-door sales? Ever had someone two years your junior, within seconds of trying to sell a vacation package to some poor woman with the line "You like to eat? I mean, I can see you like to eat...", lecture you on your poor attitude towards the demands of position, only to suddenly pound on the steering wheel an hour later out of nowhere and bleat "What am I gonna do with my life"? Ever check your bank balance and see an awful lot of ramen in your near future? Ever get kinda excited about an opening band based on how some yahoo in line described them, only to hear them quickly reveal themselves as the least interesting early REM tribute band imaginable (which is actually kind of an accomplishment, I suppose)? Ever find the only bartender on the planet who can mix Ketel One with tonic water and come up with something that tastes like sour old ass? Ever find yourself instantly smitten with a random, intensely appealing indie girl in line outside the show and then spend the whole night observing yourself falling right in line with the endless parade of inept shitheads girls like that have to deal with?

Fortunately, science has come up with an answer to your problems, and that answer is "watching Akron/Family blow the motherfucking doors off the club". Last night's show at the Echo was easily the best show I've been to since That Art Brut Show late last year; I doubt there's too many bands who could play a set as long as a normal episode of Saturday Night Live without me sneaking a shitload of peeks towards the door, but it's nice to know that there's at least one. I assume that we're probably all well acquainted with my I Am More Intrigued By Production Than By Actual Out-Rocking schtick by now, but it's not like I'm immune to rock and/or roll - it's just that most rock groups that I tend to see seem to exist to earn adulation rather than to make a big-ass hellacious racket, and they tend to leave me feeling like I've just watched a girl deep-throat a dildo. Akron/Family was, needless to say, not like that at all; I'm sure they appreciated the audience's rabid approval, but just watching them play it was pretty obvious that their kicks came before ours. Normal bands, for instance, tend to give the audience what they want, playing the songs they know in a generally recognizable form; this is why nobody needs to see either Franz Ferdinand or the Kaiser Chiefs more than once, let alone more than once in the space of like three months (stupid hype-filled world). Akron/Family, on the other hand, took seven songs totalling about forty-five minute's worth of music and just blew the hinges off 'em; every song was tricked out with crazy psychedelic excursions, and eventually they just gave up and spent a half-hour plus making crazy noises come out of every instrument within arm's reach. I mean, fuck, in two hours, they played seven songs - I could go see them a thousand times and never get that show again.

I have to admit that this is somewhat terrifying, mostly because I made a promise to myself a long time ago that, if the world ever elects me to be the new Hitler, my first order of business would be to turn as many jam bands into black smoke as I could possibly manage. I've hated jam bands ever since eighth grade, back when all the girls who'd go on to take theater classes and reject me repeatedly in high school suddenly started buying Dave Matthews Band (ewww) albums; I was a pretty stupid fourteen-year-old all around, but I was sure smart enough to see a bunch of bullshit coming down that road, even if Dave Matthews Band (ewww) is about as "jam band" as Big & Rich are "country" (and that's without even getting into the fiddle player vs. Cowboy Troy!). If you're not a musician in the least (like me), musicianship for its own sake tends to come off like listening to a CPA doing play-by-play commentary on a normal day in the office; this is probably why most of my favorite jam-y stuff tends to be less about the performance than the cumulative effect. Fuck, I don't even like Hendrix (the honest truth!) - go on, I dare you ask me about Phish sometime when I'm drunk.

But even I can't deny the curative powers of simple, loud, abstract sonixxx every so often. Fuck, I'm guessing I wouldn't have enjoyed Akron/Family nearly so much as I did if their blistering whirlwind of sound hadn't been such a flawless counterpoint to all the concretely real-world stuff I'd been forced to deal with all day; screeching feedback sounds way more appealing than some salesman douchebag bitching about me wearing a skinny tie than you could ever imagine. Of course, it helped enormously that, unlike most jam bullshit I tend to encounter, Akron/Family made astonishing and copious use of the drums; at one point one of the guitarists (the one with the beard, not the one with the glasses - sometimes you are unavoidably at an indie rock show in 2006) gave up trying to contend with the bassist blowing everyone out of the water and jumped right in wailing away on the drum kit. My guess is that this what led my mind to get stuck on Black Dice, or more precisely 2003's "Cone Toaster", a song with which half of you are already intimately familiar and the other half will hate like a carton of milk from August lying in ambush in the fridge. To be perfectly honest, I don't really care for too much Black Dice stuff outside of "Cone Toaster", but if you're just going to like one of their songs, it's easily the best one to choose; every fragment of the song is just so discrete and precise that the cumulative effect can be overpowering, which I'd like to think would be my best excuse as to why it took me until Sung Tongs slipped its hand into mine and taught me how to appreciate sound for its own sake last summer before I woke the fuck up to this track (even though in reality I just used to be really impatient with music. Yes, even moreso than I am now). It's really probably the best example of "compelling noise" in my entire collection of music unless you want to get into stuff like Steve Reich's Six Pianos, and it's a testament to Akron/Family's mother-father-uncle-aunt-neighborfuckingly great show that it hit those kind of heights. I would vigorously encourage anyone who's never seen them to go check 'em out if they're in your neck of the woods, although you might have already picked up on that by now.

Oh, and to all my friends who missed this show by virtue of ignoring my repeated and strenuous emails promoting attendance (i.e. everyone except Joe Lia):

Akron/Family, "Moment"

Yeah, they pretty much OPENED with that. And then it went uphill from there.

(Click here to buy the "Cone Toaster"/"Endless Happiness" single or here to buy DFA Compilation #1 direct from the DFA)
(Click here to buy the Akron/Family and Angels of Light split direct from Young God Records)

ELSEWHERE:
- Again, I'm still in awe of The Prettiest Pony, who unearthed an incredible thing in Shit Robot's looming debut release for DFA, "Triumph", a few days ago and have a view towards dropping new MSTRKRFT any minute now. I can't say enough good things about the site; at the risk of stealing Nate Patrin's material, every time I go there I end up feeling like Springfield Milhouse meeting Shelbyville Milhouse for the first time.

- Oh, and while checking the DFA website, it just caught my eye that Hot Chip are going to be playing at the Echo in early March. Anyone have any takes on their live show? I'm still not a fan of Coming On Strong but I'm willing to be convinced that their live show could open my eyes.