"Wednesday Night Rock Show"

When I arrived at Soundlab Wednesday night for the Times New Viking show, Sleeping Kings of Iona were once again on stage as the first opening act. That makes it my third time seeing them open in...about 11 days. They've just been consistently awesome each time, and I'll definitely be making it a point to seek them out when I can, instead of only randomly stumbling onto them at other shows. During their set I couldn't help but watch this one girl in the audience dance her little heart out. She always has her boyfriend in tow, who stands next to her and bobs up and down awkwardly. It's in that way that all guys will half-dance when they feel they need to participate with their girl, but they don't want to go all out because no one else is dancing. What made it so adorable was that she was dancing like a little kid who was excited about going to an amusement park. It was this bouncy, jumpy, bopping all over kind of jig. Normally when a girl dances, it's all, you know, hot. This was just really cute, like a puppy hugging a kitten.

The next opening act was a rapper from Ohio called Envelope. He was an average looking white guy, but he managed to pull off the hip-hop act by being humorously self deprecating and completely humble. He was actually really good, the guy knew how to rhyme and had this funny and endearing style. My favorite line of the night was 'building my body like Homer J, drinking vodka mixed with ocean spray" After the show, I picked up his album and he gave me a free 7" and... a pint glass. That may be the most original (and useful) piece of merch I've ever gotten at a show.



Times New Viking were good, blasting through a set of their signature distorted noise-pop-punk. For a drummer, guitarist and keyboardist, they sure managed to make an impressive racket. Their albums are recorded on old-school reel to reel tape, so they have this texture of noise that musicians normally spend thousands of dollars trying to remove. Not these guys, they've embraced it...and not only that, they found a way to recreate it live. (At one point the drummer summed this up when he was mocking the guitarist for spending so long tuning, "if you've ever heard any of our records, you know we're perfectionists.") I can't remember the reason, but they also opened a bottle of champagne to pass between them and through the crowd. A few brave souls actually drank form it, but the rest of us were a bit too sober to go near that cauldron of backwash.

After people watching for a while, I started to think about the different types of people that show up to these mid-week rock shows. The only girls there are always part of a couple. Any time I've ever seen a lone female, she was either dating a guy in one of the bands, or was actually in one of the bands. That's the second component of the crowd, the band members who aren't actually on stage yet. Of the 30 people there for this show, 10 where band members. The rest of the crowd is made of of the guys like me. We're there to see the show, so we stand right up front with rapt attention during the performance, but inbetween bands we sit quietly by and nurse a beer, listening to the mix CD being played on the house speakers and waiting patiently for the next group to finish setting up. Occasionally we'll chat with each other or the bartender, but I think we all prefer to just chill. I don't mind too much, though I wouldn't mind having some company. The trick is finding someone that will stay all the way to the end, through every band and then hang out long enough to say "hi" to the musicians and buy merch. I used to drag The Ex to these shows, and she'd always make a fuss and complain enough to get us out of there early. Or, if we did stay, she'd make sure I knew how bored she was by sitting in a corner and knitting while the band performed. It put a sour note on some great shows. So, compared to that bullshit, I really don't mind occasionally going by myself. In fact, since I started going alone again, I've rediscovered how much I abso-fucking-lutely love live music. Ah, good times.