I went to a punk rock show and all I got was a picture of the bathroom

Waited a half hour to be let into the venue, and another half hour to use the bathroom. The crowd there did not look like the type that would humor somebody taking pictures for their blog. I also didn’t want to embarrass my friends, who seemed to know a lot of the people. I did get a picture of the bathroom (above).

Punk rock, or No Bunny, or some combination of the two has an ardent following. It was interesting to see that this genre of music that I care nothing about attracts such a large number of people to the shows that the band had to switch venues at the last minute to accommodate the crowd. No Bunny wore a black leather thong, a wig, and a mask onstage and not much else. (I was not appropriately dressed for this event.) He was backed up by The Yolks. They were headlining and didn’t start playing until around 12:30. At the start of the set, someone threw a can onstage and hit one of the The Yolks’ guitarists in the head. He was knocked down and did the rest of the show with a nasty goose egg on his forehead. Someone tried to pickpocket me and I had to give her the evil eye (and the “menacing face”). Pushed and pulled in the crowd, we all danced like crazy and left with beer spattered all over our clothes and hair. It was sweet catharsis following a long day.

After the show, I spotted No Bunny leaving the venue — a guy in a thong holding a guitar in the frigid night, walking around Logan Square.

I don’t particularly care for punk rock music, live or otherwise, but the show was a fun and worthwhile novelty.

Damian @ Zebra Lounge, Lonnie @ Underground Wonder Bar

Waiting on my keyboard to arrive on Monday, and in the meanwhile was in the mood for piano bar hopping. Saw Damian Williams at Zebra Lounge. Apparently, most nights everybody wants to hear Piano Man and Brown-Eyed Girl, which must suck after a while for a guy playing six nights a week. He plays original stuff at Underground Wonder Bar on Sunday nights, and says he is followed by the best reggae band in Chicago. Damian @ Zebra Lounge hit the spot, but I ended up only briefly stopping into Underground Wonder Bar. The stage setup was great but the band wasn’t my taste.

I usually enjoy the commute, particularly watching the cars in the fast lane hurtle toward the city while waiting for the Garfield train, but having stayed up the previous night to complete a project, the trip back was pretty painful.

But still worth the effort. Before the invention of portable music devices, the culture of music was such that music was meant to be enjoyed in a moment. At live performances, most of  the audience were hearing the songs for the first time. Orchestra enthusiasts in the 18th century would be terrible at “name that Mozart piece” compared to your average classically-trained 8-year-old. We are becoming ever more musically literate, and with that literacy comes the price of reflection.

A couple years ago I read a modern philosopher, Adorno, who claimed that the way we listen to and appreciate music has changed, and that as a society we have mostly lost the capacity to truly enjoy music we hear for the first time. We have weakened that muscle that responds to the immediacy of participating in creative expression. It must be sad for the band when cover songs receive some of the loudest cheers and whistles, in contrast to new songs they reveal for the first time, which are met with lukewarm, uncertain applause. The literate audience wants and expects to hear what they already know. But live music, by its nature, is listened to for the first time, and that variability and spontaneously nuanced creation is (or should be) the enthralling piece of it, even if some of the songs are known. The Adorno essay lends itself to oft-repeated extrapolated theories about the increasing popularity of facile music and the usual criticisms that have now trickled down to music snobs everywhere, but at the time it was groundbreaking.

Being able to listen to favorite songs, perfected by the artist in the recording studio, is a mixed blessing. Indisputably, some bands sound much better on the recording than live, but another mixed blessing is repeatedly hearing what the song is “supposed to sound like”. The latter usually feels like more of a curse than a blessing.

(Updated 03/12/2010) I went to The Webelos show and all I got was this blank CD …

Me: “Hey, let’s try to slip in and out unnoticed if we can.”
Eddie: “Dude, we’re a pair of Asians at a rock club. We’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

The Webelos (Neil Candelora, Lennie Dietsch, Brendan Lazar, Danny Leavitt) played as the headliner at Martyr’s Pub in the debut show for their EP, Model Citizen. Circumstances were less than ideal for the start-up band, playing at a small venue on a weeknight at an hour when most are apt to call it a night. The hour notwithstanding, the turnout and staying power of the crowd were respectable. While rough around the edges in the opening couple songs, the band quickly picked up momentum and vocals and instrumentals for Lucky Roll and Peace For the Wicked were rockin’ and strong, the two best performances of the night. Lead vocalist Leavitt entertained the crowd with an on-stage costume transition into a bona fide Webelo Scout, authentic boots and all. I half-expected the trumpet line from the Salute Your Shorts theme song to start playing, but alas …

The band rounded out the evening with a new song (or, as they referred to it, a “new new song,” to differentiate it from the rest of the new songs) and a cover of Elvis Costello’s Peace, Love, and Understanding, to which they had most of the audience singing along. Of note, in striking contrast to his leisurely, unhurried air, Brendan Lazar was a superstar on drums.

Overall, a show well worth seeing. Eddie was a sport and filled in for everyone else who bailed within a few hours of the show, and tried not to look too embarrassed about donning a yuppie Polo jacket amongst …

Eddie: “What are they called again? Hipsters? Are those people hipsters?” (eyes the girls at the next table)

Afterward, I attempted to move the .mp3 tracks from the free CD I garnered at the show to my iPod and …

“DVD RW Drive (F:)    702 MB free of 702 MB”

Blank! Damn.

UPDATE (3/12/2010 @ 10:40 AM): Guess I am getting a replacement CD, and a manufactured one to boot. Never underestimate the snappy PR response of a start-up to an internet complaint!