March Retrospective

March is winding down and spring is here, the days are getting longer and we've actually had some sun. Plenty of rain and wind too. While it's warmer than Winter, early Spring evenings are still best spent indoors, and watching live musical is one of the best ways to spend time indoors.

One of my New Years resolutions was to see lots of bands and blog about each and every one. Going to several shows a week and writing about each takes a level of creative discipline and consistency I haven't achieved before. I'm not even claiming to write good or interesting blogs, but I am getting the photos and videos uploaded, backups run, blogs written, edited and published and promoted, repeat as needed, so I can claim to be writing and publishing pretty frequently, even if it's only self publishing on a free blog that not many ever notice. The creative discipline and efforts of writing about the shows are good for me on many levels. I try to be more open to the musicians and the songs at the shows, looking and listening for interesting bits to comment on, seeing if I can find any themes or patterns between the bands at a show. Trying to be both in the moment living through the show and also in the collective space of ideas, metaphors, allegories, concepts and correlation to recent and past examples. I feel like it stretches my cognitive and writing mental muscles in a way that can only be good for me. I get a glow out of volunteering and creating on multiple conscious and unconscious levels that brightens my outlook and gives me many fond memories. I hope any readers out there get even a fraction out of this blog of what I get out writing it, and thanks for reading!

This March I managed to see 25 bands. Adding that to the first two months I have now seen 60 bands/sets/performances, 49 for the first time. Duplicates were PWRFL Power, My Parade, Kinski and the St. Marks choir performing a capella.

Highlights:
Playing with my new Nikon digital SLR at shows.
The Lonely Forest pumping out great song after great song sounding like they might be positioned to break out to national awareness.

Marnie Stern shredding, singing and bantering, so many good performances like Marnie and Tera Melos and Kinski - all in one show.

My Parade setup on the floor again, no hierarchy for them,
the haunting impact of Knowmad's the River Runs Deep.

Several shows with packed houses and the occasional sellout like the Knowmads kept things lively. The grace and the spiritually centered and comforted feeling granted to me at Ash Wednesday mass and the sense of coming home it kindles in me.
Yet another great Veracity show, best attendance yet and a variety of talented bands with several (most, 3 of 4) using horns.

Diamond Rings and PS I Love You on stage together with that surprisingly low voice from the lean and lanky young fashion icon adding some low end punch to the guitar riffing and wailing high end falsetto vocal coming from the big shambling hairy guitarist as the drummer smashes his way through the beat underpinning it all, I wish they did a full set as a supergroup!


The creative wacky Magmafest show with my first Skype-in and PWRFL Power on stage for the first time in years.


Pogo-ing until my feet hurt, and then pogo-ing some more at the Ex show.

Great volunteers dealing with messy customers professionally and well, noticing that my example gets some of the kids to get a little more focus and polish - mentoring and volunteering are very positive for my self esteem!

Conclusion:
Good music exalts us just a little, taking us out of our little internal rat races and exposing us to some corner of a larger collective creative universe in an immediate and sometimes powerful and urgent way. When the creativity somehow spans the audience and feeds back to the band with the positive energy flowing and the creation - to steal a beer company motto: life just doesn't get any better than that!

Marnie Stern, Tera Melos, Kinski and Dog Shredder at the Vera Project 3-15-11

I steered the Marnie Stern, Tera Melos, Kinski and Dog Shredder show at the Vera Project and got to see an excellent lineup with a good crowd on a weekday night.

I was a little worried when only 2 volunteers had shown up on schedule at 6:30. We delayed the meeting until 6:50, and by then we were up to 3 with another couple showing up a few minutes later. A little thin, but presales were mild so it didn't look like the crowd would be all that big, which was unfortunate since we had a great lineup. Luckily the walk-up business was brisk and we ended up with a good crowd for a weekday show.

Dog Shredder (cool name!) led things off. I was stuck at lead front door (selling tickets, since we were thin on volunteers) so I was unable to get video of their performance, which was too bad. They had a tough distorted/feedback sound with two guitars, bass and drums, or occasionally 1 guitar and keyboards. Fun loud metallish sound, made me want to bounce around up close - but I had to stay out by the front desk in case any customers came in. Dang! I did take a couple of pictures from a distance, nothing too special but you can kinda see the band:

I think the guy on the left is playing a bass but you can't tell from the photo. I was able to hear them, but not watch for the most part. Oh well, the price paid for volunteering and seeing it free is that you don't always actually get to see it. As Joe Walsh said, I can't complain (free music!) but sometimes I still do.

Next up was Kinski. I saw them a couple years ago at Bumbershoot in the Sky Church and enjoyed it, so I knew they'd be fun to listen to. I was able to get Chris to cover for me for a few minutes so I made it into the venue and got some pictures.


I got some video of one song, typical shakey video - in this case the shaking is mostly in time to the beat, which means they had me rocking out a bit and it made me unable to hold the camera still - not the worst problem to have, I suppose. I should remember to bring my tripod, then it can hold things steady while I rock out!

I like the musical approach, a good double guitar attack with an interesting melodic sound, mildly distorted but not too heavy. Good reasonably fast beat, not a lot of tempo variations, easy to move to. Fun rock music, if I hadn't had to work I'd have been down in front working up a sweat bouncing up and down to the beat - one of my favorite places to be - but we were a little too shorthanded so I had to go back out and sell tickets.

People kept trickling in and the crowd kept swelling. Quite a few customers did a double take when they realized that Kinski was playing, apparently they knew Marnie Stern and Tera Malos (the national acts) were playing; a quality local act (not to mention Dog Shredder, a less well known yet still interesting local (I think) act) on the bill was a bonus. After Kinski finished we got a few "Man, we missed Kinski? Shit, I didn't know they were playing!" reactions too.

Next up was Tera Melos, the joint headliners. (Hmm, I mean they shared the headline role with Marni Stern, it's not a drug reference, sounds kind of funny).

When my daughter saw the picture she laughed and said "plaid, hoodies, knit caps - what a typically Seattle crowd!" and she's right, although I'm so used to it I didn't even notice it at the time.

I only got a short window to record them, so I used my other hand to take some photos while I was at it, and as a result the video really sucks, sorry about that. The song I recorded had a fairly slow beat and took it's time getting started; by the time we get to the end of the 90 seconds allowed by flickr they were finally moving more into a groove, but still at a pretty slow beat. Different approach, not unusual - it was pretty well done but less likely to induce a crowd frenzy.

Tera Melos overall took a different approach, more odd sounds and a slower pace, less emphasis on the rhythm and more on the sound. Nice strange and spacey stuff going into the sound, definitely some interesting use of keyboards. My video for them is pretty crappy, sorry about that, but you can sort of hear what they are up to. Once again I was only able to see and record a little bit, I had to get back out and sell tickets. Their sound was consistently creative and imaginative, even if I could only listen to most of it. Cool stuff, I'll have to watch for another chance to catch them when I can actually focus on the band for the whole set.

Next up was Marni Stern, the other co-headlining act.

She has a reputation for doing some creative guitar work, including lots of right hand fretboard work that was made famous by Eddie Van Halen. She alternated the two hand work with more conventional runs, often doubled with the bass hitting the major notes at the same time, giving them a deep sound that was pretty cool.

In this video she's doing the traditional left hand fretting:

They had some challenges with one of the microphones (Rowdy the sound guy ended up catching quite a bit of heck, I don't think he deserved it since it all worked fine during the sound check; sometimes cables just fail). After using the bass player's mic for a song Rowdy got the second mic back up and running and the show continued with only a minor hitch. Marnie and the bass player used the pause to engage in some funny banter, but it was definitely the typical rock band Not Safe for Work stuff that I can't bring myself to repeat; sorry, you just had to be there for it!

I noticed that in both of these photos Marnie is dong the two handed fretboard technique, that overstates things a bit. I think she probably played more songs using a traditional left handed fret board technique, but those photos were fun so I used them.

So I ended up getting to see more guitar rock variants than I had expected, each a bit different in it's own way, and each totally worth checking out. Having to work for most of the sets limited what I was able to see, but it sure whetted my appetite for more from any of these acts - I already knew I wanted to see more Kinski, now I can add Dog Shredder, Tera Melos and Marnie Stern to the list.

I also have to give props to the volunteers, they all stayed late and helped clean up, mostly staying util close to midnight making sure the venue was cleaned up and ready for the next night's show - The Ex! But that's a subject for another blog post.

Naomi (front door assistant) in particular went above and beyond, having to clean up broken glass and mop up spilled beer from some loser in the women's room who couldn't handle her beer. I wish people were a little more considerate, but at least it wasn't a violent incident, just obnoxious.