My tally for the weekend: 12 bands, one rave, and a nerve-jangling run-in with the cops. It's a few hours 'til twilight on Monday morning, and the last sleep I had was four hours Friday night. I'm burnt to a cinder.
So I say again, thank God for Deepak Chopra, M.D., for if he hadn't mailed advance cassettes of his soon-to-be-released three-disc set The Magic of Healing Music, I'd probably wake up an hour past deadline with a keyboard imprint on my forehead. I'm playing the Kapha disc, chosen for its "fast melodies ideal for invigorating," as opposed to "medium melodies ideal for calming" (Pitta) or "slow melodies ideal for relaxing (Vata)." I'm confused about whether to play section one ("morning") or two ("evening"). Best just to loop the CD and hope for the best. Chopra's letter said Kapha music would enable me to "join in the cosmic dance." While I don't feel quite that pert, with these synthesizer storms crashing around me, I think I can ride this one out.
A few weekend highlights:
Started off Friday night at Chez Nous, where I caught a 40-minute set by the soulful, good-time R&B cover act of Richard Lee and Paul Stubblefield. Followed that up with a short cruise down Indian School to the Mason Jar, where Trunk Federation closed down the place. The Federation served a potent, savory brew--frothing and violently catchy.
(Quick aside: In just a few weeks, I've become a Fred Astaire at the song-and-dance ritual between bouncers and patrons at closing time. When I first got here, I'd obediently surrender my drink the first time anyone told me to leave. How foolish. I've since learned that you can stonewall most bouncers into asking you four, five, sometimes even six times to split before they even change the tone of their voice. The true party strategists, however, slam their last drink at 12:50 and rush to the nearest drive-through liquor window to score a sixer for the after-hours party. A newcomer's take: This 1 a.m. closing thing is rank.)
Saturday found me wishing I could replicate myself like that blue nuclear mutant Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen--there were simply too many shows and too few music editors.
Punched in to the Teen Lifeline multiband benefit at Boston's around 9:15, just in time for Ginger, one of the more lustrous fragments of the long-splintered Sidewinders. Ginger's a good lull and storm band with a nice sense of when to lay back and when to explode. They gave a fine set, especially considering most of their gear got ripped off the night before and they were using borrowed instruments and amps.
According to Ginger front man David Slutes, someone broke into their Tucson rehearsal space last Friday night and "pretty much wiped us out." A PA system, several amps and guitars, "thousands of dollars' worth of gear," he says. Two of the more distinct stolen instruments are a '57 Les Paul Jr. reissue, yellow with a black pickguard, and a lefty sunburst Fender Strat. Award one "kick 'em while they're down" cold prickly to the sticky-fingered swine who made off with a blue canvas bag full of Ginger's remaining cords and effect pedals after the Boston's show. "Some nice icing on the cake," says Slutes, sighing.
Six full loops and I'm sick of Kapha music. Ministry will have to do--jack it up to a volume just shy of fatal and forge ahead.
Saturday . . . Saturday. I know I had fun that night, but where and how?
Ah, the Ramones. That was my next stop. I arrived late to the sold-out show, and the only parking left was in the far, back corner of a desolate field about a half-mile from the Party Gardens. Picture hundreds of cars not designed to go off-road doing so. Now picture many of them driven by stoned people.
I honed in on the distant neon palm tree and covered the distance in five minutes flat. Waiting for me inside was the meanest mosh pit I've ever seen, a lot of longhairs and shaved-heads with their fists in the air, and the Ramones' usual relentless blitzkrieg. The show's "final tour" cachet kept the crowd manic, but the band seemed mechanical and flat. Oh, it was still a Ramones show--a loud, seething concert--it's just that the band exhibited a subtle lethargy that made it tough to ignore how simple-minded their music is. The beauty of the Ramones was that they came out with a stripped-down sound in a time when rock was leaning heavily toward polish and gratuitous intricacy. The Ramones pulled rock back from the brink with three-chord shout-along anthems, and they deserve major respect for doing so. Judging by Saturday's show, though, they're hanging it up a little too late.
