Now that I've got my affairs in order (i.e. putting $$$ in my bank and pulling my head out of my @$$), I'm back to write, pontificate, rant, wheeze, howl at the moon, and fling shit at enemies foreign and domestic. Not a lot has transpired in the last week (save for the occasional good film being watched: saw "The Departed" again with the posse, and I watched a wicked-cool old French horror film "Eyes Without A Face" a couple of days ago), so this evening's sermon from Mount Norton concerns a concert I went to last Saturday (and by last Saturday, I mean the one that came before the one that just passed us by).
The show: Japanese spazz-rock extraordinaires Polysics! Playing at the Clubhouse! Opening acts: Runaway Diamonds and some band from L.A. called The Outline!
I headed over to The Clubhouse with long-time accomplices Eric (math wunderkind and Slayer enthuaist) and Chris (future U.S. senator, wholesome in a Leave It To Beaver way). For those who have never been to the Clubhouse: it is located in a strip mall in Tempe that I like to call Desperation, Arizona (population: your sorry ass). The Clubhouse is crammed inbetween a sports bar with a hounds and horses vibe (few things scream upscale sophistication like off-track betting) and a building I used to visit twice a week, ZLB Plasma Services (whose tagline should be: "we'll pay you fifty bucks to stick a needle in your arm and watch 'The Incredibles' twice a week, every week"). There is also an employment office for construction work in the strip, along with a lonely U.S. Army recruiting center and a big-ass 711. The only thing Desperation needs to complete its vibe of barely-scrapping-by-ness would be if they added a pawn shop, an Asian massage parlor, and a check cashing place into the mix.
The three of us are waiting in line and talking about random nonsense like Adult Swim shows and politics when I notice two things that shake me to my core:
1) we're the oldest people there. All the other early birds look like they are high school sophomores.... and half of them look like they've read WAY too much manga (complete with terrifying anime/emo style hair that should be illegal in all civil societies).
2) in one of the corners of the front building, there was a large black bird huddled up against the concrete, standing perfectly still as though it were stuffed (indeed, I was unable to deduce that it was alive until it randomly jerked its head forward after I glanced at it for over 2 minutes). Chris and Eric both agreed that it was a pigeon; having never seen a black pigeon before, I was initially skeptical, but they were both so adamant over their classification that I must assume that they bird-watch on the sly. What wigged me about the bird was that in the hour we hung out outside The Clubhouse, it didn't move from its position. I felt like I was in "The Birds"; I kept waiting for the rest of its winged, taloned homies to descend from the heavens and peck me to death. The superstitutious man in me, the same man who couldn't sleep after finishing "House Of Leaves" and tends to get followed around by wild coyotes (3 times its happened to me!), was convinced that this still feathered doorman was an ill omen. I was right.
Upon entering the venue, I headed post-haste to the bathroom. For the record: with the exception of the bathroom stalls at The Marquee (aka Floor Piss City), I have never seen a Men's Room as trashed and dessicated as the one at the Clubhouse. The first lil'boys room I went to was missing a DOOR KNOB, which meant that I spent the entire time looking over my shoulder as I let my mighty stream loose, strategically placing myself in such a way as to hide my "valuables" from the unsuspecting eyes of random onlookers (oddly enough, in a family full of people prone to parading down the corridors of their home naked and using the restroom with the doors wide open, I am one of the few members of my clan to be discreet in regards to my bathroom use). Later in the evening, buzzed on live music energy and a bit of liquor, I tried out the second bathroom (like the first b-room, both are placed in the 21+ up areas only; apparently, the club owners assume that the underage crowd has bladders that put camels to shame). This one also had a few puddles and squares of toilet paper littering the floor, but it had the added distinction of having no lid on top of the toilet tank. Taken aback by the squalor of these restrooms, I decided to do my duty as a concerned citizen and protest the deplorable conditions of these restrooms by relieving myself in the tank of the bowl as opposed to the actual toilet. In your face, Clubhouse!
Wandering out, I was in for a pleasant surprise: I stumbled onto a fellow SGAZ member, norritt at the bar. We chatted for a bit; unfortunately, I couldn't hang for long because Chris and Eric were waiting up for me in the crowd huddled around the stage, so after a bit of catching up I bid norritt adieu and headed towards the stage.
Side note: Mr. N was classy enough to buy me a drink. This is now the second time that I owe a member of SGAZ a drink, as I refuse to let alcoholic generosity go unrewarded. My current social tab: 1 owe norritt a whiskey sour and doolittle a pitcher of beer. I always have to make a note of things like these, because I have a head like a sieve sometimes.
Now, on to the show:
Runaway Diamonds: the worst opening act I've ever seen (see? I told you the still black pigeon of doom was an ill omen). So incomprehensibly bad that audience members seemed to clap more out of politeness than genuine pleasure. Just the sight of the band was cause for concern: the keyboardist (the only one on stage playing an actual instrument) hunches over his board and looks like he'd rather be anywhere (even Baghdad) than up on stage at that particular moment. The two back-up singers (1 male, 1 female from Australia, a fact the lead singer harped on about at several points) were dressed all in white and looked like a Church cheerleading squad. And the lead singer... pasty white dude dressed in nothing but a big parka jacket and tighty whities. I groaned because in Arizona, anytime you see a douchebag on stage wearing only Fruit of the Loom, you know its going to be horrible hipster wankery (apparently tighties are THE fashion accessory of choice for Dadaist losers in this neck of the woods). Case in point: I Hate You When Your Pregnant, a previous Polysics show opener, which consisted of one smelly man who only wore You-Guessed-It and shouted song lyrics about eating Cheerios and the supple majesty of his johnson over retarded drum machine beats (better name for the now defunct-Pregnant: I Hate You When You Don't Wear Deoderant; seriously, I can still smell that dude's pits, and its been TWO YEARS!). The songs were horrible: El Douchebag Supreme would sing in a way-too-emotional voice about random nonsense (the only time he really made sense was when he started giving props to the Lord in song, which was the exact moment I went from being Really Annoyed to Really Creeped-Out) while his backup singers chimed in the most twee fashion imaginable. Imagine the rancid positivity of the most twee, the most cuddliest shit indie rock music stripped of any musical worth and shat out by a chain gang of Downs Syndrome kids (like Beat Happening, only not any good). At first, I was convinced it was an elaborate piss-take, since the singer kept talking about the glories of their "pop music" in between songs and raving about airing out "all our insecurities" in song. If it is indeed a joke, it fails to be funny (its the musical equivalent of Adult Swim's "Tom Goes To The Mayor": trying so hard to be eccentric and avant-garde that it forgets to be funny, therefore becoming avant-stupid). They're the kind of group that thinks its a good idea for the lead singer to randomly carry a huge pick-ax in the middle of a song for no good reason at all. They were so bad that at one point in the concert, the singer made it sound like they were about to finish... only to decide to stick around to play two more songs. At that point, I loudly screamed "NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" much in the same way that Shatner screamed "KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!" Sadly, my scream of despair failed to stop them from following through with their threat (if you want to have a slight inkling as to the horrors I was exposed to, check this out: Runaway Diamonds. It isn't half as bad as seeing them live... but it is still pretty horrible.
Inbetween sets, I head out of the club to pick up a soda at the 711, only to be stopped by a middle-aged, drunken concert goer wearing shiny pants and a black cowboy hat and looking like an uglier version of Motley Crue's Mick Mars who told me about how much he loved my shirt, where did I get that shirt, I used to wear that shirt a lot at my last job, etc etc. I was saved when his wife/girlfriend/old lady swooped and pried him off me. At least he wasn't as bad as the shouting old junkie I crossed paths with at the last Polysics show...
Second opening act: The Outline.
Not much to say about these cats. They played a set of straightforward dude rock (with some nice embellishments: the singer had an Irish accent and they occasionally started out songs by playing loud shoegazer-ey guitar drones). Solid set of songs from a decent bad. Only downside: the last tune "Shotgun", which displayed their lyrical originality by drawing comparisons between penii and shotguns and how they're both likely to "shoot ya in the face, bahybayyyy". Side note: I'm pretty sure that penises is the plural form of penis, but I prefer to use penii (it sounds like the kind of thing that would flock around an African river and munch on tall reeds, only to get attacked by crocodiles when they hang their heads too low).
The main event:
Polysics were fantastic.
They get tighter as a band with each year they've come back to the Valley (this is the fourth show they've played here, one a year, and I've been to them all). They attack their songs with real joy and intensity, as though they had never played these songs live before. They're the kind of band that randomly plays along to Devo's "Whip It" during sound check because the crowd wants them to (frontman Hiro later lead the crowd in an impromptu singalong of the chorus of "Don't You Want Me Baby" inbetween a pair of songs, just because we were dancing to when it was playing between band sets). Hiro chugs a beer between songs just because. Hiro is the kind of rock-n-roller that when an audience member randomly sticks her finger in his open mouth, he playfully bites it. They played new songs that were as good as their old songs, and they played their awesome cover of "My Sharona" (awesome in that it succeeds in making "My Sharona" not suck). Unfortunately, the section of the crowd we were in was not as cool as the band: little to no dancing while they played, not even a half-hearted attempt at creating a decent mosh. We were stuck in the "pretentious hipsters/overprotective boyfriends", which is pretty much a No-Moving-To-Music Zone. So even though Polysics played like they were on fire, I didn't walk out of the show drenched in my usual post-dance sweat thanks to being stuck in Squaresville.
So the verdict: the show was great. Still not as great as their first show at Modified Arts (which, even though its an all-ages venue and dry as a bone booze-wise, had the greatest audience ever: I had a blast mingling with that crowd), but it definitely makes me hope they come back again next year.
Oh yeah: when we left at midnight, the bird was STILL THERE.
*shivers*
Norton out.
P.S.
Some Polysics goodness, courtesy of YouTube.
The show: Japanese spazz-rock extraordinaires Polysics! Playing at the Clubhouse! Opening acts: Runaway Diamonds and some band from L.A. called The Outline!
I headed over to The Clubhouse with long-time accomplices Eric (math wunderkind and Slayer enthuaist) and Chris (future U.S. senator, wholesome in a Leave It To Beaver way). For those who have never been to the Clubhouse: it is located in a strip mall in Tempe that I like to call Desperation, Arizona (population: your sorry ass). The Clubhouse is crammed inbetween a sports bar with a hounds and horses vibe (few things scream upscale sophistication like off-track betting) and a building I used to visit twice a week, ZLB Plasma Services (whose tagline should be: "we'll pay you fifty bucks to stick a needle in your arm and watch 'The Incredibles' twice a week, every week"). There is also an employment office for construction work in the strip, along with a lonely U.S. Army recruiting center and a big-ass 711. The only thing Desperation needs to complete its vibe of barely-scrapping-by-ness would be if they added a pawn shop, an Asian massage parlor, and a check cashing place into the mix.
The three of us are waiting in line and talking about random nonsense like Adult Swim shows and politics when I notice two things that shake me to my core:
1) we're the oldest people there. All the other early birds look like they are high school sophomores.... and half of them look like they've read WAY too much manga (complete with terrifying anime/emo style hair that should be illegal in all civil societies).
2) in one of the corners of the front building, there was a large black bird huddled up against the concrete, standing perfectly still as though it were stuffed (indeed, I was unable to deduce that it was alive until it randomly jerked its head forward after I glanced at it for over 2 minutes). Chris and Eric both agreed that it was a pigeon; having never seen a black pigeon before, I was initially skeptical, but they were both so adamant over their classification that I must assume that they bird-watch on the sly. What wigged me about the bird was that in the hour we hung out outside The Clubhouse, it didn't move from its position. I felt like I was in "The Birds"; I kept waiting for the rest of its winged, taloned homies to descend from the heavens and peck me to death. The superstitutious man in me, the same man who couldn't sleep after finishing "House Of Leaves" and tends to get followed around by wild coyotes (3 times its happened to me!), was convinced that this still feathered doorman was an ill omen. I was right.
Upon entering the venue, I headed post-haste to the bathroom. For the record: with the exception of the bathroom stalls at The Marquee (aka Floor Piss City), I have never seen a Men's Room as trashed and dessicated as the one at the Clubhouse. The first lil'boys room I went to was missing a DOOR KNOB, which meant that I spent the entire time looking over my shoulder as I let my mighty stream loose, strategically placing myself in such a way as to hide my "valuables" from the unsuspecting eyes of random onlookers (oddly enough, in a family full of people prone to parading down the corridors of their home naked and using the restroom with the doors wide open, I am one of the few members of my clan to be discreet in regards to my bathroom use). Later in the evening, buzzed on live music energy and a bit of liquor, I tried out the second bathroom (like the first b-room, both are placed in the 21+ up areas only; apparently, the club owners assume that the underage crowd has bladders that put camels to shame). This one also had a few puddles and squares of toilet paper littering the floor, but it had the added distinction of having no lid on top of the toilet tank. Taken aback by the squalor of these restrooms, I decided to do my duty as a concerned citizen and protest the deplorable conditions of these restrooms by relieving myself in the tank of the bowl as opposed to the actual toilet. In your face, Clubhouse!
Wandering out, I was in for a pleasant surprise: I stumbled onto a fellow SGAZ member, norritt at the bar. We chatted for a bit; unfortunately, I couldn't hang for long because Chris and Eric were waiting up for me in the crowd huddled around the stage, so after a bit of catching up I bid norritt adieu and headed towards the stage.
Side note: Mr. N was classy enough to buy me a drink. This is now the second time that I owe a member of SGAZ a drink, as I refuse to let alcoholic generosity go unrewarded. My current social tab: 1 owe norritt a whiskey sour and doolittle a pitcher of beer. I always have to make a note of things like these, because I have a head like a sieve sometimes.
Now, on to the show:
Runaway Diamonds: the worst opening act I've ever seen (see? I told you the still black pigeon of doom was an ill omen). So incomprehensibly bad that audience members seemed to clap more out of politeness than genuine pleasure. Just the sight of the band was cause for concern: the keyboardist (the only one on stage playing an actual instrument) hunches over his board and looks like he'd rather be anywhere (even Baghdad) than up on stage at that particular moment. The two back-up singers (1 male, 1 female from Australia, a fact the lead singer harped on about at several points) were dressed all in white and looked like a Church cheerleading squad. And the lead singer... pasty white dude dressed in nothing but a big parka jacket and tighty whities. I groaned because in Arizona, anytime you see a douchebag on stage wearing only Fruit of the Loom, you know its going to be horrible hipster wankery (apparently tighties are THE fashion accessory of choice for Dadaist losers in this neck of the woods). Case in point: I Hate You When Your Pregnant, a previous Polysics show opener, which consisted of one smelly man who only wore You-Guessed-It and shouted song lyrics about eating Cheerios and the supple majesty of his johnson over retarded drum machine beats (better name for the now defunct-Pregnant: I Hate You When You Don't Wear Deoderant; seriously, I can still smell that dude's pits, and its been TWO YEARS!). The songs were horrible: El Douchebag Supreme would sing in a way-too-emotional voice about random nonsense (the only time he really made sense was when he started giving props to the Lord in song, which was the exact moment I went from being Really Annoyed to Really Creeped-Out) while his backup singers chimed in the most twee fashion imaginable. Imagine the rancid positivity of the most twee, the most cuddliest shit indie rock music stripped of any musical worth and shat out by a chain gang of Downs Syndrome kids (like Beat Happening, only not any good). At first, I was convinced it was an elaborate piss-take, since the singer kept talking about the glories of their "pop music" in between songs and raving about airing out "all our insecurities" in song. If it is indeed a joke, it fails to be funny (its the musical equivalent of Adult Swim's "Tom Goes To The Mayor": trying so hard to be eccentric and avant-garde that it forgets to be funny, therefore becoming avant-stupid). They're the kind of group that thinks its a good idea for the lead singer to randomly carry a huge pick-ax in the middle of a song for no good reason at all. They were so bad that at one point in the concert, the singer made it sound like they were about to finish... only to decide to stick around to play two more songs. At that point, I loudly screamed "NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" much in the same way that Shatner screamed "KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!" Sadly, my scream of despair failed to stop them from following through with their threat (if you want to have a slight inkling as to the horrors I was exposed to, check this out: Runaway Diamonds. It isn't half as bad as seeing them live... but it is still pretty horrible.
Inbetween sets, I head out of the club to pick up a soda at the 711, only to be stopped by a middle-aged, drunken concert goer wearing shiny pants and a black cowboy hat and looking like an uglier version of Motley Crue's Mick Mars who told me about how much he loved my shirt, where did I get that shirt, I used to wear that shirt a lot at my last job, etc etc. I was saved when his wife/girlfriend/old lady swooped and pried him off me. At least he wasn't as bad as the shouting old junkie I crossed paths with at the last Polysics show...
Second opening act: The Outline.
Not much to say about these cats. They played a set of straightforward dude rock (with some nice embellishments: the singer had an Irish accent and they occasionally started out songs by playing loud shoegazer-ey guitar drones). Solid set of songs from a decent bad. Only downside: the last tune "Shotgun", which displayed their lyrical originality by drawing comparisons between penii and shotguns and how they're both likely to "shoot ya in the face, bahybayyyy". Side note: I'm pretty sure that penises is the plural form of penis, but I prefer to use penii (it sounds like the kind of thing that would flock around an African river and munch on tall reeds, only to get attacked by crocodiles when they hang their heads too low).
The main event:
Polysics were fantastic.
They get tighter as a band with each year they've come back to the Valley (this is the fourth show they've played here, one a year, and I've been to them all). They attack their songs with real joy and intensity, as though they had never played these songs live before. They're the kind of band that randomly plays along to Devo's "Whip It" during sound check because the crowd wants them to (frontman Hiro later lead the crowd in an impromptu singalong of the chorus of "Don't You Want Me Baby" inbetween a pair of songs, just because we were dancing to when it was playing between band sets). Hiro chugs a beer between songs just because. Hiro is the kind of rock-n-roller that when an audience member randomly sticks her finger in his open mouth, he playfully bites it. They played new songs that were as good as their old songs, and they played their awesome cover of "My Sharona" (awesome in that it succeeds in making "My Sharona" not suck). Unfortunately, the section of the crowd we were in was not as cool as the band: little to no dancing while they played, not even a half-hearted attempt at creating a decent mosh. We were stuck in the "pretentious hipsters/overprotective boyfriends", which is pretty much a No-Moving-To-Music Zone. So even though Polysics played like they were on fire, I didn't walk out of the show drenched in my usual post-dance sweat thanks to being stuck in Squaresville.
So the verdict: the show was great. Still not as great as their first show at Modified Arts (which, even though its an all-ages venue and dry as a bone booze-wise, had the greatest audience ever: I had a blast mingling with that crowd), but it definitely makes me hope they come back again next year.
Oh yeah: when we left at midnight, the bird was STILL THERE.
*shivers*
Norton out.
P.S.
Some Polysics goodness, courtesy of YouTube.
VIEW 13 of 13 COMMENTS
SAY hey Dad I learned this all from you