.... probably one of the best places to catch music in all of Seattle: it was Screaming Trees night at the Columbia City theater.
And I sort of wish no one had connected those dots for me, because my night just kept slipping more and more into that most awkward of grunge moments - you know what I'm talking about. Where you're suddenly in the Bronze chillin' with Xander Harris and people are slow dancing, but you know it's still dark and edgy and vampire because someone threw a cello at it?
I'm sorry Rachel. Someday, I'll love one of your projects. And I swear, I love cellists. Just not when they're the token 'dark mantra moment' of the band.
Photo: The Young Evils, courtesy of Nicole (by which I mean, absolutely stolen from.)
So before Cobirds Unite played, we caught the Young Evils (genius band name) play their CD release set - a band I can only describe as 'absolutely and perfectly lovely.' And they look great on stage together - I always get a little lost watching the four members in the front, since they play together so well, and play off each other so well (they've mastered understated but commanding stage presence.) ... but ... I think it's the drumming that makes this band. Honestly. So many folk pop bands fall apart, and their drummer - who is Mark $#%$ Pickerel - holds the whole thing together. And you barely notice he's doing it (of course, until you do.)
....around the turn of the century, I went to alot of shows in and around Bellingham and Seattle.
One of them was this show:
(Anyone else remember shows at Local 46? That place was sort of awful, but represented so much progress for the kids in Seattle.)
One of the things that's weird about being a teenage girl, is trying to develop a sense of what is actually wrong and inappropriate, what is totally normal for the music scene given that you are all ages, and what is normal for the music scene for like, *adults*. That drink. And have girlfriends and sex and drugs and SIDEPROJECTS (that you might get to find out about first!). Usually, this led to a relative morality: If oh-my-god-rock-star-too-old-for-me musicians would offer you a cigarette and ask you back to the van it meant you were TOTALLY AWESOME AND PART OF THE SCENE, and if they would invite someone else to the van - even if it was one of your friends - it was totally creepy.
And at this show, my only lasting memory is seeing Mark Arm talking to a bunch of teenage girls, and thinking it was very, very, creepy.
Anyways, Subpop started this today: @shitmarkarmsays. I'm totally reading it.
(Sorry, I didn't take photos. I ought to become more of a real journalist and carry a goddamn camera.)
When I was a teenager (16, 17?) one of my friends from Youth Symphony (yep, that.) made me a cassette tape for my car of her favorite album by one of her favorite bands. (I think a previous incident where I had to explain that ripping didn't actually involve damaging the CD didn't sit well with her, and I was in cassette-land from then on.) She was out of real cassette tapes, so she was left trying to cram it onto one of those absurdly uncool 30-minute-per-side jobs, and the math didn't add up - so in order to fit the album on the tape, without a song getting cut in the middle by a tape flip, she removed all of songs she figured I wouldn't like. I don't remember the exact list of songs that ended up on my Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain cassette tape, but I do remember that I *wore that shit out*. And I also remember that for all of the songs that were on the tape (5/4 = Unity? Stop Breathing? Hits not to be missed apparently?) Gold Soundz was NOT on it.
She also didn't exactly tell me she edited the record, so I was really confused 5 years later when I heard the album in full. (Thanks Bittorrent!)
(And what do I project that says 'She probably won't like Gold Soundz', anyways?)
Yes, like all of us, presumably, I worshipped at the alter of Pavement until long after it was relevant, and immediately bought not one but FOUR tickets to their show minutes after they went on sale, and almost traveled to NYC to see them in Central Park. Which makes it extra confusing to me, that between earlier this summer and NOW, seeing Pavement went from being the MOST IMPORTANT THING I WOULD DO ALL SUMMER to something I completely forgot about and scheduled conflicting dinner plans.
Um.
I'm glad I was reminded, and I'm glad I went to the effing Paramount saw them play. There's always two ways reunion shows can go: Bands come across as washed up, struggling for money, playing pre-packaged hits (I'm looking at you, Black Francis), or they can be clearly *awesome*. Pavement was awesome.
I don't want to ramble on like a drunken teenager here (omg they wer sooo gooood), but I loved how they played some really tight versions of songs which would amble about aimlessly on record, and ended their most aimless songs with dramatic crash bang thuds (let's all talk sometime about how my favorite way that songs can end is to have no ending.) And The Hexx - a favorite song of mine for drinking tea and reading magazines like a civilized person, was the loudest song of their entire set.
Even though I almost forgot to go (oops) and even during the opening band felt a little grumpy and bitter about having to bail on my dinner plans (oops) and maybe I forgot to tell my dinner plans I bailed on them (extra oops) - I made the right move. Sorry friends, I'd bail again on you without notice all over again.
