Big Saturday show for the recently opened State House. I have been reading Byron Coley's music writing and record reviews for decades. He has written for Spin and Forced Exposure and holds down the monthly column "Size Matters" where he reviews odd formats ( 7", EPs, metal cassettes et. al.) for British zine Wire. Coley is a Northampton resident, like Moore, and runs the boutique record label FeedingTube, which gives label refuge to regional avant weirdos like Paul Flaherty, Chris Corsano, and Sunburned Hand of the Man. On this night, Coley read poetry. He reminded me of Charles Bukowski, Ginsberg, or Burroughs in that many of his screeds described life in Frisco. Selling plasma, delivering local ad-news, or general scamming for dope and booze dominated many poems. He had some hysterical moments, like a nightmare he had about living in Dick Cheney's penis, wanting to beat the shit out of Brett Kavanaugh, and berating Joni Mitchell because she was tooling around in a Lincoln Navigator.
Wobbly is the stage name of Jon Leidecker, a member of the SF-based art terrorist collective Negativland. Please google Negativland if only to read about the legal battle with U2. Apparently the boys from Negativland recorded "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" on kazoos over a famous hot mic profanity laced rant about U2 from the mouth of an aging Kasey Casem. Classic. Wobbly is an electronic artist who coaxes bleeps and blaps from a series of iPads. The music is jarring with no discernible beat or song structure. The tones seemed decidedly old school as if someone's Atari was humping a PlayStation 1.
The Thurston affair was billed as "noise explorations of two 12-string guitars". Moore and James Sedwards on guitars were joined by female bassist (no, not Kim!), and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley on drums. Churning, bubbling guitar ebbed and flowed at the conductorship of Moore. Thurston seemed to constantly be counting off "one-two" while nervously contorting his face to the dirge. Other than Shelley, Moore seemed to have 20 years on his bandmates and he led them around like a kindergarten field trip to avant skronk town. We know Thurston is in his 50s, but his demeanor is that of a junior high bad boy who just stole your lunch money while framing you for a flooded boys lav. The set consisted of one continuous "piece" that he said was inspired by Alice Coltrane and two female visual artists who I couldn't place. Good crowd for this unusual amalgam of outsiders.
No comments:
Post a Comment