My goal for 2019 is to write at least a little something about every show I see, preferably by the next day, we’ll see how it goes. I will compile weekly and post here as-is. If you prefer to get these reviews in your inbox each day they are written, email me and I’ll add you to my mailing list.
So, in that spirit, this is the eighteenth of hopefully 52 posts…
29Apr19 Träd Gräs och Stenar/Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band @ Rough Trade
There were a lot of heady options for a Monday night last night, but this was a show, a dream double bill, I had metaphorically-circled-in-Sharpie on my calendar since it was first announced and good lord, did I make the right choice…
I’ve seen Chris Forsyth many times and pretty much every single one of them I’ve left the show with two very clear thoughts in my head: 1) “where the hell is everybody?” and 2) “that was the best I’ve ever seen Chris Forsyth play!” Thankfully after his 60+ minute blazer of what I guess was an opening set the latter statement held true, because holyshit, that was a helluva set, and even better, there was actually a good crowd there to see it go down. Maybe people are getting hip to the wonders of the Solar Motel band.
The set was kind of split evenly down the middle. The first half was more “song” oriented. He commented at it midway through, but I definitely noticed that the band that usually digs in for 20 minutes at a time was actually a bit more focused around some song structure. The opening piece had a distinctly Beatles feel, like Garcia noodling no a Rubber Soul outtake. Forsyth’s jamming is very much a mix of the Dead, Allmans and Crazy Horse style, although he’s managed to take these roots and make his own thing. It seems after a couple years of tinkering, he’s settled on a trio format, last night with Peter Kerlin on bass and Ryan Jewell on drums, and it’s definitely the right fit for him, adding a little Cream or Hendrix Experience into the sound. Kerlin and Jewell were as much a powerhouse as Chris was, they’d lock into a very simple kind of rhythm as Forsyth ignited the place with his guitar and then the bass/drums would pick their moment and just gothefuckoff, sometimes on their own and sometimes together.
At that midway point, about 30 minutes in, Forsyth is more or less like “OK, now for the jamming part of the show” and the next 30 minutes was eaten up by two monster pieces of out-o-mind improv epics. For the first they brought up a keyboard player (name I didn’t catch) who was a bit low in the mix, but maybe by design, he was just whirling away with some almost-funky riffs, but the other three guys just seemed to ignore him, Kerlin and Forsyth turning in, the three of them huddled close and just going at it, relentlessly, bang, bang, bang, bang… this was barely even an up-and-down thing, they just clicked at a very high, raging level and jammed, ecstatically so. Damn, that was good. Did I say they were better as a three piece? Well, throw that out the window, the quartet thing was a deluge of rock and roll, but then for the final thing — “this is a thing we do sometimes” — the keyboard guy stayed and they brought up 3/4 of Garcia Peoples, adding a second drummer and two more guitars. The ensuing 15 minutes were of the call-the-babysitter-I-may-be-home-late variety, ferocious layers of guitar and drums with Kerlin somehow elbowing his way to the front for much of it, John Entwhistle style. If there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing, I can safely say that this was not that, it was good enough that it could have kept going and going and for a while I thought it might. “Can an opening band go over curfew?” was a thought that entered my head, because I didn’t think they would be able to rein it in, they were having so much fun, back and forth with the guitar solos and then solos on top of each other, Garcia-meets-Neil, then bass/double-drummer pummeling and around again. Earplugs-in, motherfuckers, this was some headknocker shit. Eventually they did bring it back to a head. Boompow, that was one nasty set of music.
So, how do you follow that? The stage flipped over in about 20 minutes for Sweden’s Trad Gras och Stenar, which means “trees, grass and stone.” They are basically a 50-year-old Swedish jamband, maybe they’re the Grateful Dead of the Eurojam universe, but have lost a few members along the way and have reformed with two old-school dudes (bass and rhythm guitar) and two relative-youngs, a guy on lead guitar and a woman on drums. You don’t see a bunch of women playing drums in jambands around these parts, but seemed terrifically on point for a Swedish improv outfit. Spoiler alert: she was fucking phenomenal.
Apparently the quartet had more or less just gotten off a plane from Europe were operating on negative hours of sleep and, not for nothing, were something like 6 hours ahead body-time, which was like 4 in the morning when their set started. They opened with a very low rumble, slow burner, snail’s-pace kind of noodling. It was as if the previous Forsyth jam had been turned inside out. They were barely even playing, just light cymbal tapping, a faint whiff of a bass riff and some tippy-toe guitar noodles. This built slowwwwwly, very slowly. It was kind of gloomy and a touch dark, the kind of music created by people who probably sit around getting stoned in the dark while there’s literally no sunlight for a good fraction of the year. Still, it was awesome, totally trance music, and for all its gloom, quite beautiful. It built strata by strata, layers of sediment compressed at the bottom of the ocean, pushed its way through the ear, down into the brain and then all over the body, a slow creep, sure but it got there, and as it built you got a sense of the genius of these four, the way they just got it, knew what they were doing and worked together to build something without a gesture or a word. This was the music of jetlag, of staying up through the night, a hazy reality, but one worth exploring.
As if to complete the Forsyth inside-out-ing, the first two tunes of the TGoS set went the same 30 minutes as the last two of the Solar Motel set. But that second piece from the Swedes… I mean {takes hat off and wipes browsweat} hooooo boy! I mean, holyfuckignshit. Apparently if you sit around in perpetual darkness for a quarter of the year, you also get to sit around in perpetual daylight for the opposite quarter and that second song, “something new we’re messing around with” was pure fucking perpetual daylight. A pure 15 minute bliss jam with just phenomenal guitar peaks and incredible 4-person improv, chills-inducing on-the-spot melody making from the lead guitarist, just sunshine-and-rainbows of shake-your-bones, Dead-circa-73 guitar glory. Seriously, one of the best jams I’ve seen this year. And it just kept going and you just didn’t want it to end (at least I didn’t). {pumps}fuck!{fist}yeah!
I know you’d love to read a song-by-song rundown of the rest of the set, but probably not going to happen. But suffice it to say, that second song was the peak, but not by much, everything was just ridiculously good. There was one song that they said was about “evil,” “Wall Street” was mentioned and then after “that was a song about war.” Pick your even, I guess, but damn, that was some Sabbath-esque, song-about-evil darkness. That was the thing about these guys, they really had some range, with the slow-build ambient thing, the major-key smile-smile-smile shit, the get-your-anger-out rage… there was a “ballad” of sorts that was actually cool as the guitarist played some sort of Indian violin/sitar thing for a different kind of sound.
Now, you could very accurately describe this band as “psychedelic,” but that’s true of a lot of bands, it’s a term I throw around quite loosely to describe a range of sounds and moods in music. But then there was a piece towards the end, maybe the second to last song they played that was psychedelic in the truest sense. Like the song felt truly mind-altering, listening to the band flitter around these themes and really jam out, I felt like the word had gone tie-dyed, my eyes rolled back into my head, this was music-as-drugs in the truest sense, like far out man! Deep, deep, deep, jams of the highest order by guys (and gal) who know what they’re doing and, for at least two of them, have been doing it at a high level for many decades. I think that jam made me smarter, or maybe dumber, but it definitely messed with my brain.
Yeah, they totally exceeded my expectations. The band really felt like a band, even though it was this bastardized version of whatever the original thing was. Everyone in the band impressed me, the lead guitarist was ridiculous, truly in the Anastasio vein in that he did so much with the instrument, amazing use of effects over a couple stretches, his guitar felt like some sort of alien instrument making noises that fit the music so perfectly, but not from this world, something out of Scandinavian folklore, Viking-conquer kind of guitar tones, but also could solo into some very beautiful places or build-to-peak, or get nasty and loud and distorted and so on…. the second guitarist was the anchor, he played rhythm, but also infused it with the melody of the songs, very Bobby-Weir-esque in that way, in a good way. The bass player was equally comfortable laying down a riff and just sticking with it for minutes on end, a consistent low end that you need for some of those jams, but then he’d also be all over the place, countering melody and pushing improv. He had a very laid back approach to his instrument, plucking the strings up high to create a very soft, gauzy sound. And damn, that drummer. During the first song she kind of laid low, it was a slow burner and she was barely doing anything, but by the end of the show she was totally raging, pushing things to their extreme, I think she was the most impressive of any of ’em. Between her and Jewell, that was some pretty good drumming on stage last night, and, as it so happens, Kid Millions was in the crowd, I wonder what he thought of those two.
A double bill with a lot of potential and both acts totally busted my expectations. Definitely one of my favorite shows of the year.
30Apr19
My Deer Tick review from last night is here.
These guys always, always, always kill it. One of the great American rock bands going. I also must say that the opener Courtney Marie Andrews was fantastic. Great songs, great band, great set.
2May19
Another absolutely stellar night of livemusic’n in the old NYC, where every night is Jazzfest if you try hard enough.
Bill Frisell, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wolleson @ Blue Note
{sound of a long exhale, not quite orgasmic, but not not that either…}
Bill Frisell is really about as good as it gets. I know he’s good because I will endure the awfulness of the Blue Not, quite possibly my least favorite venue in the history of shitty venues, to see him play. And Thursday not just him, but his “classic” trio with Tony Scherr and Kenny Wolleson. Frisell makes everyone sound amazing and really only plays with amazing musicians anyway, but there’s something about the comfort of the “og” trio that shone through last night, the sheer we-can-do-everything-we-know-each-there-so-well vibe was percolating in the air.
So, there are like 3 flavors of Bill Frisell, the sort of vanilla, chocolate, strawberry of his guitar work. He can play a damn melody like no one else. His phrasing, the pause that’s a little bit longer or shorter than you’re expecting, the way he seems to exude the notes he’s playing, as if they’re emanating from within him, not just his guitar. It’s something you can sense best when he’s playing a cover, because he takes those melodies, someone else’s melodies, and doesn’t quite take ownership of them, but rather bedazzles them with his shiny, multi-faceted Frisellness. Last night there were several amazing covers, from Monk’s “Epistrophy” to a barely recognizable “Moon River” to “Wee Small Hours of the Morning” to a my-body-is-covered-in-goosebumps version of the Beatles “In My Life.” He bedazzled the bejeezus out of all of ’em, taking those very familiar melodies and just remaking them. They also played some terrific originals, I wish I knew the names of them all, but a couple off “Unspeakable,” terribly groovy things that are so just so damn good.
The second flavor is the he can take a damn guitar solo. Part of it is his tone, it’s velvet and plush and smooth and flower-petal delicate, but strong and doesn’t fuck around. If you think of someone like Wayne Krantz (who we’ll get to later), Wayne is like a home run hitter, he gets up there and just knocks it out of the park, out of the stadium, into the parking lot, big goddamn swing. Frisell is more like the golfer with the immaculate short game, he’s golden from around the green, an ace out of the trap and never misses a putt. They’re both swinging sticks at balls, but completely different sports. We got plenty of guitar solos last night. Just astoundingly good. Beautiful, engaging, magical.
If Bill Frisell was only vanilla and chocolate, an amazing guitar player, with to-die-for tone who can take a good-from-100-yards-and-in solo at will… if he could only do those two things, he’d be one of the best in the biz (in my opinion). But he’s got that third flavor. That fruity, unnaturally-pink strawberry that comes out in the mushy middle, typically at the end of a song or between two songs. This is the Frisellian black magic sorcery where he loops and layers and textures and creates tiny windows into your soul, that you can peek through for a short bit and see your other side. He transcends the instrument, the genre, everything. He did a lot of that last night. The first four songs were all strung together, one after the other with lots of strawberry in between. The shit he did in the outro to the Beatles cover was next level, taking that little baroque bridge from the song (he plays this so damn perfectly) and layering it in at some high-speed rewind version, I can’t even describe it. Pure light and good, that’s what it is, the eye of god.
Hopefully I do not neglect the contributions of Messrs Scherr & Wolleson, who were top-o’-the-class from start to finish. There were a lot of smiles on stage last night, a lot of push-and-pull from all three of them. As mentioned, there was this vibe that Bill could just do whatever and he didn’t have to worry about the other guys, we’ve got your back, man, just gooooo. Scherr actually took the lead a few times, ess-curved back a few melodies back onto themselves, a true melodic counter to the guitar. And Kenny is a master. It is no coincidence that I keep running into Kenny Wolleson, that he’s been the drummer behind the kit for so many of my best-of-the-year livemusics this year and every year. Where Kenny Wolleson goes, that’s where I want to be. And that’s where I was last night, crammed uncomfortably into the goddamn Blue Note, but heart full of bliss, no worries, man, no worries at all…
The Bright Light Social Hour @ Bowery Ballroom
The Bright Light Social Hour are just one of those bands… first of all, a great lesson in always check out the opening band. Way back when I was reviewing a show at the Mercury Lounge and how could I not get there early to check out a band called “The Bright Light Social Hour.” They went from “hey, these guys are not bad” to knocked-me-off-my-feet in about 3 songs. They fucking rocked, they were groovy as heck, they jammed a little and they were hilarious… the bass player was wearing ripped-jean shorts and before every.single.song he would say “this is a song about fucking.” And then they’d rip through some ridiculously awesome original. Every song. It was funny as hell and moreover, I think he wasn’t joking, they really were all about fucking. I wish my review of that show was still up online, I’ll have to dig it up.
Between then and now I’ve seen TBLSH about every time they’ve played NYC, which, sadly, is a bit few-and-far-between, but suffice it to say, despite the many, many options Thursday night, I wouldn’t be missing this one. Sadly, the room was about half full when I arrived, set already in progress (just missed that damn train!), but the crowd would prove to be worthy, totally into it from start to finish, better to have a half-full crowd of people enjoying the music (even most of the chatter was about the band, which I didn’t mind) than a full room of whatevers. I think last night was the best I’ve seen them. They’re a little bit different than when I saw them that first time, mainly the original keyboard player is gone and replaced with a does-everything synth/second-guitar guy. And also their sound is a bit more evolved. They do an amazing job balancing psych-rock, blues/southern rock with a progressive dance sound and they’re funky as fuck as well. The other thing that happened, sadly, is that the band’s tour manager and friend and the bassist Jack O’Brien’s brother committed suicide. It’s quite tragic, I honestly can’t imagine too many things worse than that happening to a guy like O’Brien. I mean, you watch that guy play bass or follow him on social media and you know that all that guy wants to do is have fun and help other people have fun. He is one of the most fun musicians to watch play, because he absolutely owns it, The whole band is all about creating a party atmosphere… although they also fucking rock. I mean, what do you want in a live show? Killer guitar — check, Curtis Roush is a slinger, part psychedelic jammer, part southern-rock rager. He’s efficient and consistently awesome and getting better… that first show I saw him, there were some long-as-fuck guitar solos which were great, but now he’s a blast of sickness without getting too tangential and it works. How about drums, you want good drums, right? Joseph Mirasole is totes legit and, like Roush, has learned to reign in his far-flung tendencies. But still, he proved again last night that he’s the engine that makes this thing purr. You like to dance? I danced my ass off last night, the band is surprisingly funky. And they’ve got damn good songs, playing a bunch of Space is Still the Place and their new one, Jude Vol. 1, dedicated to Jack’s brother Alex.
Last night, the new wrinkle was their light show. They actually had a woman on stage running the visuals, which I thought was cool. Made her seem like part of the band, which she totally was. They had projections on the screen behind them, but then these strings of LED’s, like magical beaded curtains that lit up in conjunction with the screens. It was like some sort of retro-futuristic porn film from the 70’s which is just about the right way to describe the band’s sound and ethos. The whole show was perfect, the set they constructed just worked from beginning to end, the crowd was smaller than you’d like, but not uncomfortably so, and there was plenty of room to dance which many people were doing. If they were playing the same exact show in the same room again tonight, I’m willing to bet a bunch of people would be like ‘hell yeah, I’ll do that again!” without thinking a moment about it.
They played the Sneaky Pete theme song, a show I don’t watch, but their story about them doing that song was pretty funny and it was a great song. They did an older one to start the encore with just Curtis and Jack both playing guitar and then finished the encore with a great cover of the Beatles “Tomorrow Never Knows.” It was an interesting juxtaposition to hear “In My Life” played by Frisell, taking a gorgeous song and somehow making it even more beautiful, impossibly beautiful, and then hearing TBLSH take a completely different Beatles song and go the other direction, totally Brightlightsocialhour’ing it into a sexy groove machine without losing their psychedelic edge.
I freakin’ love this band and I think you’d dig ’em to. Their albums are awesome, but they are a quintessential must-see-em-live-to-fully-appreciate band. I hope they come back sooner for their next show than they did for this one and that you’ll go check ’em out.
Axxa/Abraxas @ Pianos
I had a small gap between the final 55Bar destination and a band I’ve dug in the studio was playing around the corner from Bowery Ballroom and not too far out of the way, so… stopped by Pianos to check these guys out. They were fine… they’re from Asheville, a sort of psych-rock thing with some good songwriting. They were a 4-piece, two guitars, bass and drums, two women, two men. The song part of their songs was a bit rough, maybe it was the vocals or something, but then they’d “jam” or rock out a bit and that’s where their true strength lies. They actually gave a bunch of different feels in the 20–30 minutes I was there, some sort of punk-meets-Talking-heads vibe, some Strawberry-Alarm-Clock energy and then, the last song I heard before leaving, a real raga-esque instrumental thing. Somehow what I saw last night didn’t feel like it lined up 100% with the albums I’ve heard (their new one is actually very, very good, definitely recommended), but they’re also young and a lot of potential. This is a band you might have seen opening up a show at the Wetlands if you bothered to get there early, or maybe playing downstairs. I miss bands like that. I’ll go see them next time they come around.
Wayne Krantz, Ari Hoenig, James Genus @ 55 Bar (late set)
Waaaaaaaayne! So good last night. That thing about the comfort you get when you play with someone all the time, that Frisell-Scherr-Wolleson thing? That was in abundance last night at 55 Bar, Wayne playing with two guys he’s played a bunch with, two guys he trusts completely. You could just feel the comfort in the room last night for the late set. The vibe in the room was kind of electric for some reason, a lot of randos up and dancing and totally into it in a very good way. I love the late set, it’s almost completely upside down from the early set… there was terrific energy in the room last night which either drove the music or vice versa or both, but another late-Thursday humdinger to say the least.
The jamming felt very melodic to me last night. The band seemed to arrive at these moments where they just synched up and it was like they were playing a new song, Wayne inventing new melodies out of thin air, Genus creating a squishy low-end counter and Ari staying in frame, not just losing his shit, but playing the shit. If Krantz were the kind of person to record every set and turn them back over, review what he played, I’m thinking that trio “wrote” about 5 or 6 new Wayne Krantz originals in their jams last night. They rocked, they grooved, they raged, they did done it all… there is nothing better than the late WK set. Nothing. The jams last night were also kind of compact, and somehow were better for it. I mean they got out there, but they didn’t go on for double-digit-minute lengths at all. I mean, I love it when they jam longtime, but it was a refreshing change of pace because the quality was so damn good.
It truly is amazing how similar each week can be and yet how very, very different they can be. And I’m already looking forward to next Thursday. See you there?
4May19 37d03d (PEOPLE) @ Pioneer Works
Everyone puts up barriers, I do it, you do it. We use humor and sarcasm and a disaffected mask at everything around us. But, I mean, it is just a mask. Everyone loves and wants to be loved. Making those barriers disappear was a theme of the amazing show at Pioneer Works last night, the whole weekend, the whole week, I suppose, although I was only there for the Saturday show. The show started with the Resistance Choir standing in the middle, literally no barrier between the music and the audience, the choir inviting everyone to sing and also, more symbolically, to enter their space and dance with them, and vice versa. This set the tone for a night where no barriers seemed to exist. Not between genre, not between the audience and the musicians who mingled in the crowd when they weren’t playing. It wasn’t so much that the show “smashed” barriers, it’s more like it refused to acknowledge them and, in that way, made them disappear from the collective consciousness.
The space itself reflected this, Pioneer Works a sort of urban oasis with an indoor/outdoor space. Outside is a nice little garden, with paths and a tower built from shipping containers and hidden nooks and pieces of art, almost like a small city park. Cool. Inside a large warehouse, last night set up with two stages on either end with no barrier between them, just two sides of a single coin. Inside reminded me of a very large version of the Museum Stage at Newport Folk Festival, maybe that was a stretch of my imagination, helped by the collaborative vibe, the energy that placed the music and the community on the same level, a level above and beyond everything else. That was the spirit in the room. If “lack of barriers” was one theme, “exploring” was another. The space all but invited you to walk around and discover its little secrets, to observe the space from different angles, places to get comfortable and places to maybe not be quite as comfortable as you’d like. Suffice it to say, the night was filled with metaphors and symbolism and sheesh, I do love that shit.
While music was the purpose of the event and the reason I was there, it was a multi-sensory happening. I’ve mentioned all the things to look at, but there was also a rather simple but hypnotic light structure hanging from the middle of the ceiling. There were almost always things being projected on the walls, both behind the two stages and on other walls and what was projected was clearly not random, although it gave the feeling of being random. There were flashes of words and phrases and there were photos that were taken during the week of the musicians in the very space where we were standing, but they were distressed or digitally altered to kind of blur the barriers of reality. It was kind of trippy, like an unfolding mystery movie, watching these images flash up and realizing that they were of the people you were watching perform or of the space you had been wandering around. And then there was some weird nightmare-hallucination imagery, like digital field recordings and bizarro animation. A lot of all this felt juxtaposed with the space itself which was some old warehouse or factory or something in Red Hook. There were so many windows and the 7pm start time meant that it was not yet sundown when the room was filling up. The light coming in through those windows as the sun went down was some sort of magical, dusty thing, otherworldly light from the distant past, the days when the building was used for something besides an experimental performance space. The barriers between past, present and future seemed to be nonexistent. And it wasn’t just sights that accompanied the sounds, there were the flavors of the IPA and the rather decent nachos I had at the start and then, the smells… first the fragrance of the outdoor garden but later, when some fires were lit in the outside space, the smell of campfire basically permeated the indoor performance space. There is nothing quite as nostalgic as the smell of smoke from an outdoor fire.
Alright, alright, enough rambling, neddyo, what about the music, man? Well, if you’ve read this far you are probably aware that I am a person who likes to get the most out of an evening out livemusic’n in NYC, the city provides such a palette of sounds, bands, musicians of every size, genre, style and age, musicians from the city and those from the corners of the USA and from overseas, playing in rooms big, small, weird and normal and little makes me happier than bouncing around to two, three, four or more of those in a night, filling my basket with the sonic delights of the city. Well, last night was like doing all that but having it all come to me in a single room. The music started at 7:30 and went until midnight with only a couple short breaks in between. It started with a choir in the middle of the room and ended with 5 guys on laptops simultaneously, creating some sort of post-apocalyptic avant garde dance party. In between was almost anything you could imagine (OK, maybe not quite everything, but…), all those corners of the NYC universe condensed into a single bill, indie pop and electro and jamfunk and experimental let’s-call-it-jazz, and folk, sometimes it was alloyed together in a single band, sometimes they stood on their own, but there were no barriers, no definitions, no silos to containerize all that music.
A group-by-group summary feels superfluous, but there was a killer funky thing with Sinkane and Greg Fox and Shahzad Ismaily and Stuart Bogie that was marvelous. Greg Fox was actually a highlight of the night, just a freakin’ machine on the drums, somehow getting weird while keeping things in that rock-funk-awesome place the entire time, not doing any slower or lighter than hard-and-fast-as-hell. Damn, he was impressive every time he was on stage. This is the Kit was a supersized supergroup with Kate Stables playing her excellent music backed by Eric (Fruit Bats) Johnson and Aaron Dessner and more or less the rest of the Bonny Light Horseman crowd (minus Anais Mitchell). JT Bates who played drums in that outfit was great every time he was on stage as well. The This Is the Kit set was a highlight for me, but also the biggest disappointment, because for some reason you had to strain to hear Kate’s vocals and, like, I shouldn’t have to work to hear the lead vocalist, at all. The penultimate peak set was the Big Red Machine thing which last night was Dessner and Bon Iver backed by Bates and Ismaily and occasional backup vocals. They were much better than I was expecting, like indie rock mixed with Garcia-guitar… Dessner was pretty great on the guitar and the whole thing was a touch jammier than I was expecting. They brought the choir back up and really, this Resistance Choir is a rather powerful group, they were like the moral center of the night, almost literally a Greek chorus somewhat explicitly singing out all these underlying themes going on.
Like a good festival, the details didn’t matter quite as much as what you felt before, during, after the thing. So much music, so much good energy, so much this-should-be-its-own-band discovery, so much I-forgot-how-awesome-Josh-Kaufman-was (did I forget to mention, forget to mention Kaufman, home of sickness and guitar ridiculousness…), there was no way I wasn’t going to leave the whatever-it-was without a smile on my face, without a huge, swelled heart and soul, without the words “that was fucking awesome” leaving my lips. There was no way, it was almost predestined from the moment I finally got my hands on a ticket yesterday morning. And yet, it was much more than that. Early on in the night, before it started… you see, it was supposed to start at 7pm and the previous night it probably did start close to 7, but last night the music started at 7:30, but it really did start at 7, because those 30 minutes of walking around, of exploring, of watching the barriers disappear, that whole 30 minutes was the key to everything and so quite near the end of that “opening” it finally clicked for me what 37d03d meant. See, that’s what the show was called and maybe it’s obvious to you, but man, I had no fucking clue what that meant. I figured that it was some random insider-baseball shit and gave up trying to figure it out. But after about 20 minutes of just traipsing around the space, sipping a delicious Threes Brewing IPA and then I look at these random numbers and letters and it just clicked. It was the word “PEOPLE” upside down, no barrier between up and down, inside or outside, musicians and audience and from that moment on I realized it was going to be a night beyond whatever music I heard. And that it was.
