One week ago yesterday I loaded some gear into my car, picked up Dave Wren (Moulttrigger) at his house, grabbed some beer, and drove up to Boone, a small town west of Ames that a couple old friends come from but that otherwise doesn’t usually have much going on, where I took part in one of the most epic noise/experimental music gigs I’ve ever been to.

I consider “Zeitgeist 2012″ one of my great triumphs of 2012 even though I honestly don’t feel like I did a lot more than show up and play. But that’s the beauty of it, it came together so organically everybody just put in what they had to offer, though the biggest contributor was no doubt Trent Reis (Juxwl) who hosted it at his occasional show space known as the Elephungeon. I think it was also his PA that we used. Trent really came through big on this. Hell, there was even free food. Going into that weekend I knew this thing would be a success even if this bunch of freak sound artists just ended up playing for each other, because great things were bound to come of our just meeting each other in person, and honestly this scene is very participatory; we don’t care a whole lot about the artist/audience distinction; one thing I’ve noticed happens an awful lot when someone becomes exposed to this scene is that immediately want to start their own noise project. That’s probably why Henry Rollins said in that LA Weekly piece that noise is more punk rock than punk rock ever was. Turned out we got a few people who came just to check out the show, and I think they left with some great tapes and CDs and their minds reeling with sound and freedom. Zeitgeist was the kind of experience that really makes my synapses light up.

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There’s this Facebook group called The Contact Group Of Homemade Experimental Electronic Music And Noise. (I propose that the acronym “CGHEEMN” be pronounced like “schemin’”). It is by far the most kick-ass online musician community I have ever been involved in. Usually these kind of forums just degenerate to people self-promoting posting links to their shit but not really participating or reading or responding to what anyone else is saying. On CGHEEMN there’s quite a bit of that too, but there’s enough great conversation and real involvement and community that it actually drowns that stuff out. I think noise musicians and software developers are on the forefront of culture right now. In this group we’re constantly discussing the things that hit the really big questions like just what the hell art is anyway, and we have big laughs doing it. I’m quite honored to be included among this bunch.

Here’s where the real win is for musicians being active on social media: just go on there and be your own interesting self. Have fun and look to meet interesting people. We’re at a point in the developed Western world, the 20th century corporatist mass-media hangover, where we’ve become conditioned to what the proper “professional” way to present oneself is, but at the same time we are completely anesthetized, from overexposure, to that “professional” style when it’s used on us. We’re genuinely surprised and delighted when someone talks to us like a person. Isn’t that sad? So now businesses and artists alike think they need “social media experts” (read: douchebags with no real job skills) to tell us how to do what boils down to just fucking acting like human beings. Here’s how you do it: quit trying to put up a fucking front all the time. People are desperately seeking a break from being talked to the way a company does. If there’s one place they rightly ought to be able to find that, it’s music.

Plus, if you’re a performing musician/band, get shows and then play the hell out of every one of them. That creates more, and more lasting, “buzz” than any bullshit media hype.

Top-whatever best-of-whatever-year lists as a general concept kind of bug me, but certain people bug me for mine. I don’t like to put one together until the year is really over, because you never know, someone might release an album on December 31 that blows your mind. A lot of writers would just put it on next year’s list. I’d be interested in discovering the optimum date near the end of the year to release an album that it would establish a presence on two different years’ lists. Also, there’s more music coming out than people can really keep up with. At the end of every year I find myself with a long list of “meant to check out but didn’t” and “listened to once, thought it sounded rad, then never got around to a second listen.”

I’ve assembled a long playlist of stuff that came out in 2011 and also lined up some links to stuff I can only get at in streaming form right now. I’m listening to it and writing a little bit about each here. By the end I hope to have a top ten decided on. It may take several days.

Joe Jack Talcum & The Powders / Samuel Locke Ward & The Boo-Hoos Just Add Tears split LP Joe Jack’s palpable sense of longing and Sam’s raging punk sarcasm turn out to be great foils for each other. Both frontmen share much of the same band on this record as on their recent tours together, The Powders being a kind of reconfigured Boo-Hoos rhythm section with Sam on keyboards, and both wrote some amazing songs for this release. The album was performed and recorded pretty much live-in-the-studio to keep it raw like Sam likes it. Wistful melancholy and sardonic fun whipped into a parfait.

Mutwawa Mayan Mutations cassette/download EP – An intriguing stew of hypnotic, pseudo-ethnic/cultish electronic beats and other synth tomfoolery.

Elder Dead Roots Stirring – Elder grow to head and shoulders above the stoner-rock pack. An album made up entirely of long epic tracks that always jam but are never merely “jammy.” Nailing the sweet spot where rock can be compositionally ambitious without being pompously pretentious. Fuzz meets melody perfectly. I could listen to stuff like this all day.

Ed Gray The Old Bending River – Tom Waits and Jason Molina snowed-in together in a remote farmhouse with fuzzboxes.

You Are Home … – a tour through musical landscapes of astonishing, delightfully weird, sometimes maddeningly repetitious Neu-age beauty, that ends with a sucker-punch to the balls.

Graveyard Hisingen Blues – These Swedes basically seem to be operating in the spirit of everything cool about early Led Zeppelin, and/or a more gritty-blues version of Witchcraft. It’s damn good. It’s interesting how this kind of throwback bluesy heavy rock basically has two separate scenes that are into rarely-overlapping sets of bands that nonetheless bear a lot of common sonic ground, the dividing line seeming to be somewhere in the areas of the headcount of the band, the tightness of their playing, and how much mystical, fantasy, or occult shit is in their lyrics. Particular corners of the metal scene made a lot of noise about this album, and well deserved, but ye indie-rockers who dig on such as Pack A.D., The Black Keys, or the venerable ol’ Stripes would be well advised to check it out too. Also gets bonus points in the cover art category.

Het Droste Effect s/t EP – Fuzzy space-rock instrumentals with hooks ‘n’ concepts ‘n’ shit.

I never know how to deal with these situations where someone I barely knew but didn’t like very much dies and an outpouring of sincere sympathy emits from tons of people I like and/or respect who apparently liked them quite a bit. I didn’t know this dude and the only interaction I had with his band Woods Of Ypres left a sour taste. Maybe he was a super nice guy and just the rest of his band were dicks. Fetal Pig got booked to play a show with them at Vaudeville Mews, before which I’d never heard them. I downloaded their new album to get a feel for what we were in for and determined that it was a really well-done album, a bit overlong but full of really catchy songs, very radio and major-label ready, but I failed to see what was “black metal” or “doom metal” about it as stylistically it mostly sounded to me like the same old whiny petulant post-grunge Active Rock crap, but all that really only meant that it just wasn’t my kind of thing because the songs definitely were catchy and there were some pretty decent riffs too and I know tons of dudes who would have loved it and I really got the sense from listening to it that this band was right on the verge of a big-time breakthrough. Then they came and played the show and were totally unfriendly, completely ignored everybody and buried their faces in their laptops the whole time, started their ridiculously short set by announcing to to all in attendance “all right let’s get this shit over with!” and just generally acted like they were oh so put out to have to be playing this shitty gig for this small crowd in this redneck town. Then afterwards they put out a mean-spirited tour-diary video on YouTube bagging on my city and the bands that opened for them. Real fucking classy, Anyway, the founding mastermind of the band (and only original member, I believe) died a couple days ago at age 31 in some kind of accident. So that’s news. Rest in peace, guy I saw once; if there’s a life after this one I hope you’re happier in it and find better people to associate with there.

Things are tough all over the place. The economy sucks and one of the ways it keeps sucking worse and worse is the rising cost of health insurance. It’s squeezing working people everywhere. A couple weeks ago I got a packet in the mail from the company that handles my company’s HR concerns informing me that the insurance company our plans were through was getting out of the business entirely and we had to pick a new plan from the new provider. Every comparable plan on the list both cost more in premiums and had higher deductibles and copays, so we’re paying more on both ends.

But today I’m reminded that I’m lucky to even be able to complain about that. Craig Schumacher, owner-operator-engineer of Waveland Studios, where he engineered the 2nd Why Make Clocks album Midwestern Film, and has worked with tons of musicians beloved by myself and many others, has a cancer situation:

Craig Schumacher is a wonderful engineer and needs some help. He is the owner/operator of WaveLab Studios in Tucson where, among many others, he has recorded; Neko Case, Calexico, DeVotchKa, Animal Collective and Iron and Wine.

Earlier this year Craig was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. His doctors believe that with the proper treatments (which have already begun), he stands a good chance of beating this. The bad news is that the treatments are painful and costly. The out-of-pocket expenses will be enormous, not to mention the fact that there will be periods in which Craig will not be able to work.

Last year, Craig’s wife Karen was diagnosed with breast cancer. Following treatment she is currently cancer-free. Needless to say, these back-to-back cancer diagnoses have been tough on them, emotionally and financially.

Now, I don’t know what his exact coverage situation is but I do know from being around musicians and also having grown up in a small-business family that usually for people who make their living in music it’s not good. Musicians and people who run recording studios, labels, etc., along with other self-employed people and small-business owners, instead of being able to get in on a big company plan, have to buy their insurance as individuals. If you think your plan’s expensive, that shit is fucking inhuman and still leaves you paying a ton more out-of-pocket. I’ve looked into it. And musicians, by and large, apart from the mega-famous ones, tend to make pretty crap money, but still too much to qualify for Medicaid and the like. So a lot of them can’t afford insurance at all and just do without and pray that shit doesn’t go bad. Then, for the unlucky, it does, and it’s a mess. Me? I’m just a weekender who pussed out of trying to make a living in music and became a computer programmer instead. Guys like Craig Schumacher who have the dedication to stick it out and devote themselves full-time to making the world a more beautiful sounding place, are straight up heroes as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve never met the man himself, but his talents are readily apparent from the records I’ve heard that he’s had a hand in, including Midwestern Film, which Dan raves about having worked with him on, and any friend of Dan’s is a friend of mine.

Here’s what Dan had to say on Facebook earlier:

Please take a minute to visit this page to help out our friend Craig Schumacher.

Long story short, Craig Schumacher is an all around great guy, a phenomenal engineer that has definitely left an imprint on modern music whether it be through the fantastic records he’s recorded and they way they sound or his numerous contributions to Tape Op magazine over the years.
Among numerous others, Craig has worked with:

• Neko Case
• Iron and Wine
• Calexico
• Giant Sand/Howe Gelb
• Richard Buckner
• The Jayhawks

On a more personal note for me, he recorded/mixed most of Why Make Clocks 2nd album, “Midwestern Film”, and the time we spent working with him, is still one of the best times in my life.

Please go here and chip in what you can to help the man out. Every bit helps. I don’t have a lot but I’m going to send in something.

Disclaimer: this post is only about as serious as the video.

I’m pretty sure this video was inspired by me about two days ago. Apparently bartenders are some touchy motherfuckers who get pissed off over really trivial shit. Come on, man, the tape was two feet away. What else were you doing with it? Oh, sticking it on your face, well, obviously that’s much more important.

I mean, I don’t always or even usually forget to bring tape, but dude, sometimes shit happens. You mention all the other things a band has to do: gassing up the van, writing the songs, practicing, booking the gigs (not to mention lugging heavy equipment in/out/on/off of vans, stairs, doors, stages, etc). You fail to mention that we also have to do all that shit in addition to and around our day jobs. Whereas the bar is your job. We’re not even getting paid to play the fucking gig, and then we still have to get up and go to work in the morning.

Having all that to juggle is all the more reason why occasionally a detail like tape might get overlooked as we’re jetting out the door to try to get some posters hung up quick in the five minutes we can steal before we have to be somewhere else. We don’t expect to be resented for troubling our fellow man for a couple measly little pieces of tape. We thought we lived in a world where people are willing to help each other out with little things sometimes. So much for that famous Des Moines friendliness, I guess. Sorry I interrupted your sitting-around-magazine-reading.

Here’s an idea, bar: put up some fucking corkboard and keep a few pins stuck in it. Nobody bugging you for tape, plus your wall doesn’t end up looking like shit from old tape bits and fucked-up paint. Problem solved. Or you know, don’t be such a whiny pussy, that works too.

So this supposed metal band from Canada came down, on the latest of several DIY tours, promoting their fourth proper album. And they come to Des Moines, spend the whole show dicking around on their laptops and ignoring people, intro their set with “let’s get this shit over with” then put out a video on their tour blog wherein they slag on Iowa, insult the opening bands and bitch about the paltry size of crowd they had to play for and how they sold no merch and made next to no money. OK, these guys were jerks, but their complaining did get me thinking, because the real surprise to me was that after how many years playing music and touring, they weren’t already so used to having bum shows that they wouldn’t just let it roll off their backs and move on, and instead made a bitchy video about it. Because playing for 6 people and making no money is, let’s be completely honest, not at all an unusual thing to have happen when you’re an indie-level band. Most bands find this out pretty quick and learn to take it in stride and develop a little perspective; after all, if you’re playing your cards right, there should eventually be enough good shows to make it all worthwhile.

Still, I wonder if there’s something we can do to help this situation. I don’t want to see things get to a point where only the independently affluent or lucky are able to get by as musicians. Already we’ve hit a point where it seems like one can be serious about one’s music, or have a family, but not both. So many talented people are driven to write songs and record them and play them in front of people but see themselves as stuck just playing hometown gigs at the same venue over and over until they die. But that’s the macro-level view of the problem. At a smaller level where we might be able to do something, we have to ask: how can we make gigs work out better for the musicians?

Often times we’re so used to the way we do something being just “the way to do it” that it doesn’t occur to us that the formula might be out of whack for our situation. And the formula I’m talking about in this case is: schedule some bands to play on a given night; charge people some money to get into the venue; use that money to pay the sound man, the door man who you hired to collect said money, and then maybe, if there’s anything left, the bands. Never mind that the door man and sound man are working for you part-time, and live just around the way where there’s food waiting for them in their refrigerator — whereas the bands have hundreds of miles to drive by tomorrow, have just lugged hundreds of pounds of equipment into and out of your establishment and probably haven’t eaten all day. Yeah, shit, where did we go wrong with this plan?

I think this formula was developed under a set of assumptions that don’t hold up under scrutiny. Those assumptions are: any band you book is already well known enough that people in your town are chomping at the bit to see them; and they have money pouring in from records being sold at stores all over the country. This comes from the layman’s view of the music business, where as soon as you see guitars, you immediately free-associate to all the trappings of the rock-star mythos. This thinking probably works if you’re booking a big venue in a big city that brings in big bands. It’s a fallacy that I’ve seen happen in other kinds of businesses as well: the idea that because your small business aspires to be a big business, then the proper way for you to conduct business is to imitate what the big boys do that seems to be working for them.

Here’s some numbers I’m completely pulling out of my ass but that I suspect are not far from the truth: 99.9% of people have not heard of 99.9% of bands. And given a random person A and person B, of the .01% of musical acts currently in action that A has heard of, there is no telling how little the .01% that B has heard of overlaps A’s. Now take that set and find its intersection with the set of bands sending press kits to your little venue and you’re extremely lucky if have more than zero. So relying on people coming to your venue because they want to see the bands is pretty stupid unless you’re booking big-time acts. There just aren’t going to be that many people in it for most bands. And trying to increase turnout by cramming more bands onto the bill doesn’t help; it just hurts the overall quality of the show.

I’m going to propose something radical here: let’s get rid of the cover charge. You ask me, “then how am I going to pay the bands?” Newsflash, genius: you’re not paying them now. I’ve seen so many people turn away at the door of a venue simply because there’s a cover. People don’t want to part with $7 just for the privilege of walking into a place to hang out and have a beer just because some joe shmoe they never heard of is on the stage. It’s not because they’re lame-asses, they’re just acting rationally: they have no idea if they’ll like the music or not, and if they don’t, they’ll have wasted money that could have gone toward a couple more beers, and there’s another bar next door that they don’t have to pay to get into where they know that even if they don’t like what’s playing on the jukebox, they can ignore it easily because it won’t be as loud. On the other hand, if you could get them into your venue, you can be pretty sure that they’re going to buy drinks, and there’s at least an outside chance they’ll enjoy the band enough to buy merch from them (provided it’s reasonably priced; if the band’s trying to get $20 for a 7″ and no one’s biting, that’s their own idiocy hurting them).

What I’m saying is, it doesn’t make sense to expect all your potential patrons to be showing up because of the bands. You’ll still get those people showing up, but that’s a small group of people who are already pretty plugged-in to the indie music scene. How many of those people there are in your city is up to you to figure out because if music is part of your business plan you should probably be paying attention to that kind of thing. What makes more sense to me in most cases is to bet on people’s curiosity: “oh this place has live music tonight? Wonder if it’s any good.” Save the cover/ticket charge for the acts that warrant it — which acts those are, again, depends on your community; I think the rest of the time it would pay off better for everyone if you just let people come in and check it out.

Any thoughts on this out there? Am I missing something big here? Am I crazy?

Via the We Hate Music podcast, I heard of a new website out there looking to pull together information about Des Moines music and musical happenings in one convenient location, Quarter After 5. I really dig the idea. Hopefully it doesn’t become merely another outlet for all the same local bands you already hear about everywhere else. Since it seems to be open to submissions, I’d say that’s only a matter of who gets involved with it. So please, go submit your band and help this thing be awesome.

They have a pretty interesting blog over there, and I was reading through some recent posts, and something really struck me. First there’s this bit from an interview with Brent Dean of La Strange:

Q: What’s your take on the local music scene?
A: The local music scene in Des Moines is really frustrating. There are so many bands and it seems like anyone can get a show and that anything passes as a band. I remember once I went to a show on a Tuesday night and the band opening came on an hour late, then the next band came on late and I was really pissed off because I was going to either miss seeing the band or stay up until 2, so I started shouting the name of the band I wanted to see. I guess with La Strange I just never want to be the guy people are waiting for to get off so they can see the band they came for.

Now, I’m not one of these guys that gets my panties twisted up if somebody dares to say something about local music that isn’t 100% glowing positive cheerleading. In fact, I hate that “if you don’t have anything nice” attitude, I think it’s poisonous and lets mediocrity flourish. I think if you think a band sucks, you should say so. It will either spur them to get better, or help them to weed out the element that doesn’t “get” what they’re trying to do. And I don’t know this guy, and never even heard of his band. But reading this bit, apart from the very last sentence anyway, just kinda made me think “geez, this guy sounds like a dick.” “Anyone can get a show and anything passes as a band”? Well dear sir, please do enlighten us on what your definition of a real band is, so we needn’t waste our time with anyone else. Also, guess what dude, at rock shows, sometimes shit happens. It sucks that a band you like got one set delayed because some noobs of the sort that play opening slots on Tuesday nights at the sort of the venues to whom it wouldn’t occur to just move one of the other bands’ set up to fill the time, couldn’t get their shit together. But this anecdote hardly serves as evidence that the local music scene as a whole is “really frustrating.” It seems to boil down to that this guy’s perspective on the music scene is that he’s bummed out that his amazing self has to slum it among lesser talents. Well then, go move to a city where only bands that measure up to your personal standard exist. Good luck finding it.

Then, the very next article, an interview with the always awesome Patrick Tape Fleming of Poison Control Center, we get this very contrasting perspective:

It is so important to say how incredible the Des Moines, Iowa, music scene is right now. The best bands in American [sic] are in Iowa right now and I think we need to make it a point to tour and show the country what we got going on here. I mean, coming back from SXSW, we played in Arkansas with Utopia Park and Mumfords and people were saying “holy shit, what’s going on in Iowa?” It’s incredible. I think it’s great we can roll into a town and they say it’s amazing. I can list at least 25 bands that are so great in Des Moines and Ames alone right now.

This might be verging on the cheerleading I called out above, but I can tell you that Pat’s enthusiasm is genuine and what he’s voicing here is closer to my experience of the music scene in central Iowa right now. It’s got areas in which it could use growth, but the number of quality musicians and projects they engage in is really something right now.

It seems like Pat’s attitude toward music and what makes it good is very different than this Brent guy’s. It is my personal theory that an environment closer to “anyone can get a show and anything passes as a band” is exactly what causes a thriving music scene. It gives new musicians and new ideas a way to get started and gives existing musicians room to experiment without needing an official stamp of approval from people who think that their idea of a real or good band has to apply to everyone. Without that, a lot of people who would otherwise have a chance to grow into great musicians might instead just conclude that music-making is for other, special people. And that would be a damn shame.

Last Saturday night April 2nd, if you’re a Des Moines music fan who wasn’t at either Gross Domestic Product, or the English Beat show at 504 Club, or seeing the classic Guided By Voices lineup at Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City, or at whatever Residents show Matthew Dake of You Are Home said he was going to, chances are you were either at home or where I was, the Jucifer show at Vaudeville Mews. Apparently that’s a few of you because it was a decent crowd.

The first thing people always think/say about Jucifer is their volume level. They bring along an epic wall of speakers for Mrs. Jucifer’s guitar, show up hours in advance of the show to set them all up and test them out, and they sit there taking up half the stage while all the opening bands play. It’s pretty impressive and I don’t envy their job lugging that gear around and setting it up night after night, but it’s easy to end up thinking that that’s pretty much all there is to them. But the experience is a draw in itself.

Longshadowmen, in the Isaac + drummer duo lineup, opened the show, Isaac bringing his Leslie and an Ampeg 8×10 bass rig to play his guitar through. Apparently he adjusts the presentation to suit what he’s booked with. This setup gave his blues riffs a sound of rusty machinery. Sad Fucks were pretty meh for me, except that something about what they seemed to be going for reminded me of the Eggnogs. But they could stand to cut loose and variate things a bit more. Their multi-color-mohawked bassist graciously lent me his bass when I broke a string on mine during Fetal Pig’s set and couldn’t get a new one installed quick enough. It was his backup though, because he had also broken a string during their set. Coincidence. After our set came Midnight Ghost Train, touring with Jucifer, who brought the southern-fried riff-crunch. I wonder if anyone at, say, The Obelisk or Meteorcity has yet turned on to these guys, they were pretty great.

I think the acoustics of the Mews favored Jucifer better than the last/first time I saw them, when The Cactus Rats opened for them at The Reverb (old location in downtown in Cedar Falls) a bunch of years ago. It was loud but not as painfully so as before, so I was actually able to make out the guitar riffs clearly enough to get that what they’re doing is actually rather musical. Being able to let one long chord ring out for several seconds and then nail the next one dead-on without even looking at each other is quite a skill too. Given that I had fully expected to be in a grouchy mood by this time, they actually cheered me up a bit and were engaging enough for me to stick around for their whole set.

Week before last had some fun goings-on in it too. Tuesday the 22nd Dan and I did a two-piece acoustic-ish version of Why Make Clocks in between Longshadowmen — this time as acoustic guitar through the house system, Longshadowlady’s ghostly backup vocals, and some dramatic/spastic guest drumming from the drummer of Spirits Of The Red City (supposedly known as a free-jazz guy from Chicago) — and the headliner Spirits Of The Red City. Next to nobody showed up so we had an intimate evening of playing music for each other. There is little “city” about Spirits Of The Red City, they come off like some plains cult based out of a remote old farmhouse, standing or seated all near each other, wearing antique clothes, talking amongst themselves, playing spooky ghost-folk, inviting the audience such as there was to sit on the stage with them. For their first number, a musical setting of this weird old nursery rhyme, they also included a puppet show, which they set up from an old suitcase with a scrolling backdrop, using marionettes made from animal skulls. These crummy blackberry phone photos probably don’t do it justice, but it was very nicely done. They turned out to be a quite friendly crew, I get the impression Isaac is old friends with them.

That Friday Fetal Pig played an early all-ages show with The Great Sabatini and Omens. Both were great. We got asked to play last, which is usually a bad sign, but not so much this time, as people stuck around. Omens is local, includes Luke Rauch of Druids on guitar, and has a little more hardcore vibe in them than does Druids but no less sludgy detunedness. The Great Sabatini were another loud stoner-doom band with no bass guitars — actually their bassist couldn’t make it, so the guitarist with the super long hair and whimsical wax-curled mustache filled in some low end with an octave pedal. They were probably one of the nicest friendliest bands I’ve ever been on a bill with, but that matters less to you as the music fan than that they rocked hard, putting up an amiable fun approach to big cosmic gloomy doom riffs.

I went back out the next night because the bill had two bands on it I love. When I’d heard locals Rhonda Is A Dead Bitch had a show coming up I was like “yeah I want to go,” and then when I later heard Pharmacy Spirits (from Lincoln) were on the bill too, it became more of a “HELL YEAH I want to go!” Opening band Kong Vs. Kong was kind of a cheezy punk rock cover band that I think I heard was basically the guys from Horseshoe Spatulas. I mean, who opens their set with “Search And Destroy?” You’d better be a Grade-A Badass to try and pull that off. Their playing was tight, but what they were doing seemed out of place. I think Betty Buzzkill already kinda does it better, or at least more believably.

Rhonda were set to go on second but someone tried to talk them into going on last. I am just so sick of this happening. Forgive me if I sound bitter, but it’s been done to me dozens of times. Basically what happens is either the headliner(s) are feeling lazy and want to finish early so they can go party or something, or there’s a particular band that they’re irrationally scared will clear the place out (if there were a “local band most likely to clear a room” title, admittedly Rhonda would be a strong candidate, and proudly so), or I don’t know what, but for some reason they have the soundman or somebody approach some little-known, ill-respected or challenging band on the bill and ask them to “headline,” which sounds to an inexperienced musician like you’re getting a kind of promotion from “opener” status, but by which they really mean, play to an empty room at 1 in the fucking morning. Maybe this happens because somebody overbooks the show in the first place. No 10PM show should have 5 acts on it and I personally think 4 is pushing it and 3 is the sweet spot; if I were booking I would require a pretty compelling reason to add a 4th act to any show. Bookers need to focus on putting together a quality show for the music fans instead of on trying to be a nice guy doing favors for every friend-of-a-friend in a band that emails asking if they can jump on some particular bill (usually one that happens to have a particularly tasty headliner). It’s also confusing for the people that come out for the show too, when the order of bands gets shuffled around at the last minute. Fucking booking guys should try being in bands and see how they like that shit getting pulled on them when they go play out of town. Rant over.

Thankfully Jason and crew stood their ground and went on second like originally intended. They could stand to work on the speed of their set-up, but we’ll just leave that there. First time I saw them I liked them because they made such an unholy racket. Then they surprised me by coming out with a record with a heavy presence of 70s electronics vibe on it, and at the release show they pulled in a tight succinct set of short guitar-noise-pop numbers. This time they were in a cosmic shoegaze mode like a mashup of My Bloody Valentine with Hawkwind. Logan, on sound, seemed to have difficulty dealing with Jason’s wall of distortion. The loud noise jams over hypnotic repeating chord progressions meandered into trying-your-patience lengths until the house lights were brought up on them, much to Jason’s delight. And, as it turns out, the room didn’t clear out after all.

I love Pharmacy Spirits’ Teen Challenge album, which they now had vinyl copies of for sale. Under better monetary circumstances I’d have likely bought one. Their lineup was down to a three-piece this show, and I’m not sure Jim Reilly is accustomed to doing the lead guitar parts, as he seemed to have an excessive predilection for just randomly flailing at his guitar making noise instead of the great melodies they usually have. They went at it with reckless energy to spare, which went over gangbusters with most of the crowd, but for me seemed needlessly sloppy and tossed-off, and as such a little bit disappointing.

Look Out Loretta did a cowpunk kind of thing and did it quite well. My friend Ben M down in Dallas would really dig them. They’re worth keeping an eye on. The headliner (official as well as actual) who went on at 1AM, but to a house that was still rockin’ with rowdy music fans, was a fellow named St. Christopher, also from Lincoln, who I guess was going to some kind of punk-bluesman thing, standing up on stage by himself in a suit playing a hollowbody guitar through a Marshall, stomping on an amplified board and shouting tunelessly about getting drunk. Didn’t really turn me on much, maybe I was tired.

No shows coming up as of now. I’d really love to get out around Iowa and play some gigs, preferably clumped into little mini-tours to make it worthwhile, but I have inadequate transportation equipment to the purpose and am ill-situated to do anything about it. If perchance I can ride along in your van for a few days, get in touch. I’ve just recorded a bunch of stuff, both Distant Trains and Chuck Hoffman material. Meanwhile, we’re mixing the Fetal Pig record in a couple weeks and we have some really trick-looking Fetal Pig t-shirts available, designed by Nathan Thrailkill and printed by Nate Fetus, and every one we sell gets us a little closer to putting out the album.

I could write about Askalndaganza, but I wasn’t there long. I wasn’t able to make it for the early-show portion, and then when I finally did get there was apparently the worst possible time. I arrived as Wolves In The Attic were striking their final chord. Minutes later it was 9:00, which at the Mews is normally the gap between the early all-ages show and the later 21+ show… last night they didn’t hustle the crowd out the door, but they did inexplicably retain the practice of the bar not serving from 9:00 to 9:30, despite the sizable crowd still in the place. So basically as soon as I got in the place, I had to stand around and wait before I could get a beer. Dan had left about that time to get Jasper and some of The Seed Of Something’s gear home and didn’t make it back for an hour or so, and Derek Lambert & The Prairie Fires didn’t get started until about 10:20. So all in all I pretty much stood around for an hour and a half with no one to talk to and nothing to do while Bob Nastanovich played records. There were acquaintances about, but I find conversation awkward at best with the vast majority of people, even ones I like. Bob played some good records of course. Whenever he does one of these DJ things there are certain songs he seems to strongly favor that happen to be some of my personal favorites, such as “Our Swimmer,” one of my favorite Wire songs, and a lot of stuff from New Order’s Power, Corruption, and Lies. All the same, I was bored out of my skull and the place kept getting more crowded and the crowd more annoying.

Derek Lambert & The Prairie Fires were great, though. This was their debut gig, but I recognized some songs from Derek’s recent acoustic lo-fi cassette/download album The Forest Floor. I like those songs, and the revved-up cowpunk arrangements the band gives them worked really well. Derek and the other guitar player even did a sweet harmonized lead or two. The drummer is Chris “Conquered” Ford, of whom the only complaint could be that his fills tend to rush a bit, and the bass player is that guy from the Atudes, who I know to be a genuinely good guy, pleasantly gregarious even, and really knows his way around a bass guitar, but is also the irritatingly overexuberant guy at a party who has to yell “WHOOOOO” every couple minutes, and that one guy in a band who mugs it up way too hard. But still, they rocked and I want to see them again. I finally found Dan after their set, we hung out and talked for a while, but the crowd was so wall-to-wall packed that I couldn’t stand being there and we both ended up going home. Apparently I’m getting old, or maybe it’s that I’ve always been a little less than easily sociable. So if you want an account from someone less jaded, socially awkward, or old and grumpy, you should head on over to Des Noise. It was a pretty sweet party, if you like that kind of thing.