All Ages Movement Project show at the Vera

Heather volunteered as a front door assistant and I volunteered for cleanup at the All Ages Movement Project (AMP) show in January. The headliner was Kimya Dawson (awesome!) but I'd never heard of the intro bands. I was checking out "My Parade" on youTube and enjoying some political punk music and the camera finally panned enough to the left that I saw a guitarist that looked familiar. I could swear that was Dustin, the guy who sits at the front door a the Vera Project. The camera tracked back to the middle so you could see the female vocalist and the rest of the band, so I wasn't completely sure but it sure looked like him.

The day of the show I ended up chatting with a dude I had never met before the bands started. I mentioned tracking down the band's video and thinking I'd seen that kid from the Vera Project - Justin (doh! I knew it was Dustin, I just mis-spoke). The guy laughed and said "yeah, Dustin is in the band." Turns out he was the bass player. I didn't know until later when they took the stage.

First up was these guys, they may be Silicon Girls but I'm guessing.


They put on a solid short set, and the Vera was lively with people staying from the AMP stuff and more dropping in to see the show. One guy came in all made up in green so I had to talk to him. He was coming from an appearance at a kids birthday party.


He asked about what we did at the Vera and I told him about music, the art gallery, the screen-print and recording studio.

"What about performance?" he asked, and I could see what he was getting at. We've had the occasional break dance show, fashion shows, and quite a few seminars. Not much in the way of acting or plays, and not a whole lot of spoken words stuff.

Next up was "My Parade" - the band with Dustin in it. The mix wasn't great, so it was hard to hear the lyrics or much else clearly over the bass, but the beat was fun and the band got the crowd moving pretty well. I got a CD from them so I can listen to their lyrics and hear the different parts.


We had Selector Dub Narcotic spinning disks, turns out he runs K-Records in Olympia so he's a local legend and a bit famous. He got a crowd up on the stage dancing for a bit right before Kimya went on.


...and finally Kimya took the stage. She was in rare form, comparing rose petal tea to bath water and playing her numbers briskly. The sound was a little ragged at first - there's a charming bit where she screams due to the feedback in this video:



...but they dialed in the sound after that and it was a classic fun upbeat Kimya Dawson show. She took a couple of requests and Yoda did yoga and ended up on stage for an extended bit with Kimya, riffing on corporate control and having a great time.


Kimya did a rap song that was interesting, she's always had a way with longer less repetitive lyrics and the rap format actually fitted her odd song structure approach fairly well. She had Your Heart Breaks playing a simple drum line against the rap for surprisingly effective result - quite political of course, which is what you expect from Kimya: intensely personal, highly political, life and death, suicide, depression and friendships, the subjects are what Kimya's passionate about.

She played a song I was unfamiliar with about a transgendered pre-op friend dieing of cancer that made me cry, and I discovered new depths in "I Like Giants" that made me cry as well. Really a very moving show and a great way to start out the new year.