Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Seattle Styles Find Fans at the 506 (Chapelboro music review)

My favorite thing about concerts in small venues (and simultaneously my least favorite thing) is that awkward semi-circle of vacant space that sometimes materializes in front of the stage. It's like a bubble of audience hesitation, a buffer that persists until the opening band is finished wooing--although sometimes it isn't until the next band comes on that people have started to get over themselves.

It's up to the band--the dominant actor in this particular culturally-structured relationship--to put the audience at ease, smile, demonstrate an interest in how the audience is feeling, and maybe pick up the bill for dinner. An effective band can quickly build that sort of intimacy, drawing the audience closer in spite of themselves, provoking them into holding up their end of the social bargain--by which I mean cheering, for Christ's sake.

Then that uncomfortable void of fans and participation, left open as if everyone in the bar is waiting for the "real" fans to get there, finally fills in, thus creating space for something one might call "enthusiasm" to begin to take shape.

It's even worse when the "real fans" really are few, and the fans serving as crude substitutes all happen to be students here for a graded assignment. But I guess that's the college town curse?

It's Sunday Oct. 20th, and Local 506 is swarming with students coyly tapping their feet. The bartender eyes my ID warily, graciously nodding and letting her guard down once she decides it's trustworthy, mentally sorting me into the "in crowd," as opposed to the underage liabilities most of the bar is crowded with. The overpriced PBR tallboy isn't worth it, but it feels good to be trusted.

The lead singer of the Mercators, the first band of the night, is understandably bitter about the crowd. "I'm looking forward to the next two bands, as I'm sure you are," he says in a desperate attempt to fill silence between songs, which comes off as a sad attempt at angry irony. He glances quickly out into the crowd, searching for a hint of participatory feeling to grasp onto--several students look down as if to avoid his glare, dutifully scribbling observations onto notepads.

The Mercators are a straightforward, no-frills rock band from Durham, and they manage to put on a fine show. Perhaps they could've coaxed a slightly less studious audience out of its collective shell? Who knows? But it's Seattle-based psych rock band Rose Windows that really gets the crowd rolling--the 30-minute sound check somehow works to get everyone amped up and expectant, but on its face it still seems like a risky venture.

With all of eight band members on stage, however, I suppose a 30-minute sound check might be worth it. Rose Windows, once they finally get going, really get going. With their eerily layered harmonies, spastic instrumentation and creepy lyrics and attitude, their music takes you in like a '60s acid trip laced with hard rock rhythms and distorted bass guitar.

And after nearly an hour of coasting on Rose Windows' edgy melodies like a hippie trapped in a groovy industrial age, the final band takes the stage. The Moondoggies are another Seattle band, but stylistically they come from a far different place than Rose Windows. A colder one. Probably with mountains, too.

If Rose Windows are behind closed doors, sampling mind-altering substances and penning high-minded, introspective lyrics, the Moondoggies are piling in a van and coming down from snow-capped mountains, writing words on the run and building a sound out of what they found in the trunk--namely, fire tinder and two-by-fours of modern folk and electric blues.

But the weirdest part is that the Moondoggies and Rose Windows, despite the different paths taken, somehow get to the same place. It's clear from their sounds and attitudes that they come out of the same scene, which just gives the listeners some interesting extra context to consider as they're enjoying the distinct flavors.



http://chapelboro.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/seattle-styles-find-fans-at-the-506/

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Taking Stock of Shakori (Chapelboro music review)

How on earth are you supposed to communicate an experience with writing anyway? In a neat list of events, chronologically ordered? In one-word sentences and eclectic artsy sentence fragments? In a rapid series of photo captions and hash tags? Personally, I prefer the anecdote.

We were looking for a fire to warm ourselves on Friday, the first night I spent at Shakori, when we stumbled upon what we thought must have been the community fire pit we'd heard so much about -- I've never been good at reading maps.

We lay down our blanket and settled in, immediately welcomed by the variety of people already around the fire. We casually chatted with a neighbor about the bands we'd heard that day and his future career working with alternative energy sources (after getting his foot in the door of the industry by way of the nuclear sector, naturally), and just generally enjoyed the fire, their company and the oddly Halloween-y decorations in the trees all around us.

After an hour of chips and salsa and an extensive late-night meal of potato soup served in Solo cups (all courtesy of our friends at the fire), we went back to our tent to get some sleep, despite the loudly roving packs of teenagers wandering and the bands of baby boomers playing Creedence Clearwater Revival covers at all hours of night. But it wasn't until we started settling in for the night that we realized we'd just inserted ourselves into a random family's fire circle -- the shared fire pit was on the whole other side of the festival.

Like many families at the Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival, they've been going for years. For many young adults there, they are simply carrying on a tradition they've participated in since childhood. For them, Shakori and its semi-annual music festivals represent more than a chance to soak up some music and finally get some use out of your coozies -- it's a piece of their childhood.

That's the most striking thing about the festival: the shockingly wide range of ages and demographics. From kids climbing on train cars and getting their faces painted, to elderly hippies dancing in nothing but oversized overalls, there's something for everyone. (And sometimes a little too much.)

All I wanted to do was wander through and around and soak it all in. I'd settle in at the porch of the Coffee Barn, sipping some wonderful caffeine (of Larry's Beans, the Larry of which dropped in and actually did some roasting workshops over the weekend sa well), and then I'd just enjoy the drizzle and my neighbors' conversation.

I drifted by the poetry slam in progress and the festival-goers gathering in the meditative Peace Park, all the while letting the music mix and clash in the air. All at once I'd hear the drum circle back behind me, further into the woods, I'd hear something slow and brassy coming softly through the trees from the main stage, and I'd catch a funky blues riff on guitar or a long mandolin run soaring through the air from the field upwind. All those elements and more, countless characters all chatting and jamming on their respective styles and instruments, all blended together around and for me. Then I'd separate them and pick one to trace, like one chain of dazzling lights among many, tangled in a monstrous, lit-up ball of hectic seasonal tradition.

All that color, all that commotion, all that personality. It's a bit overwhelming, but it's something special.

The next Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival of Music & Dance will be in April. Healthy traditions in progress are like sturdy old trains in motion: they're oddly majestic and nostalgic to watch roll by, but nothing compares to the feel of being on board yourself. Everything seems so much less finite when your only angle is from the inside out -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.



www.chapelboro.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/taking-stock-of-shakori/

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Step back from the plate (Cries from the Peanut Gallery DTH opinion column)

 Rest assured, your mom meant well. But she might have been unwittingly throwing you into a self-destructive path to compulsive overeating. But hey! No harm, no foul -- only diabetes, heart disease and high cholesterol, right?

I'm exaggerating, but what's a little hyperbole among friends? Maybe I should explain before I start throwing punches, accusations and yo' mama jokes. Well, here we go:

Overeating is like having to fire somebody. When you first try it out, it sucks. It's gut-wrenching, time slows down, you start to tear up a little and you wish you could take everything back because what are they going to do now? Your stomach and your employee's adorable children all cry out for mercy, but you have to do it -- otherwise you don't get dessert.

After a few more times through, it gets easier. You gradually grow numb to the desperate, helpless whining of your unsettled stomach/suddenly unemployed underling. Enough gorging yourself or corporate downsizing and you'll stop feeling even the slightest twinge of guilt or bloated nausea. You even start enjoying it.

Allow me to illustrate: Once upon a time I was in Spain, living with a wonderfully grumpy lady who liked to make fun of my Spanish and regularly scold me for the way I dressed myself.

But when she wasn't busy making my study-abroad experience the amazing, life-changing, paradigm-rattling, blah yadda blah, multiculturalism, etc. experience that it was, she liked to make me and my roommates enormous meals of ham and/or mayonnaise and/or olive oil. (Spanish national diet in a greasy nutshell. Drenched in gazpacho.)

Naturally, she stuffed us like burritos -- which is odd, because few people in Spain even know what a burrito is. At first I was acutely aware of my appetite, wincing with every superfluous spoonful of lentils and fried pork I shoveled down my convulsive oropharynx, anxiously attempting to act with some semblance of courtesy for my host mother. (She really was great, I promise.)

It got easier later on, but I realized something had changed inside me once I left Spain and returned to the land of more reasonable portion sizes. (France. Not America by any means.)

Conditioned to turn off my satiation signals like silencing a phone, I found myself overeating by default. I would try to listen to my appetite and gauge my hunger, but it was like looking for gelatin in a ball pit -- by which I mean challenging, and a far bit more slimy and queasy than a needle in a haystack.

I've worked hard to strengthen that instinct again since, but I can't shake the feeling that training our children from birth to ignore these sorts of messages from their bodies might be a bad idea.

It's also funny that we manage to use global poverty ("There are children starving in Africa/Asia/the streets of any major city") to help inculcate bad eating habits and lay the lipidous groundwork for later binge eating and obesity.

But maybe funny isn't the right word.




http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2013/10/step-back-from-the-plate