A Report From the Field

I'm currently doing the conferencing, working, and visiting thing in Seattle, which is very cool, but also has been tiring and not left me with time or inclination to update.

That, and I haven't really had internet access, so that kind of prevents the whole update thing.

But now I'm sitting in a cafe that specializes in chai listening to an electronic duo who is currently mixing up some hip-hop and Godspeed You! Black Emperor with limited success (Seattle seems a bit hippie to my Chicago eyes...) and I wanted to give a field update.

First off, random plug: there was some hippie street festival going on (good food, naked people on bikes, shitty music and crafts) and I heard some random, awesome cello music coming from somewhere. I tracked it down and found some guy named Adam sitting on the side of the road rocking out. I bought a CD and it's some really cool melancholic neoclassical stuff. Absolutely the best random guy on the side of the road playing an instrument I've ever seen, so that was cool.

I also went to a pretty kick ass show last night. I just happened to pick up the local free weekly "The Stranger" (apparently run by sex columnist and all around cool guy Dan Savage) and saw that I just missed Wormwood's last show (with Iron Lung no less!) which fucking sucks, but I saw that Lair of the Minotaur and Amber Asylum were playing some bar called The Comet.

I was so fucking there.

So I show up at this show last night to check out some bands I like and as I watched the bar fill up with tattooed folks drinking the local beer (Rainier, named after the mountain) and hiting on each other I realized that music community folks the world over are pretty similar. That's not a criticism, just a comment. I just kind of felt at home, in that it wasn't all that different from shows in Chicago, or really wherever else I had ever been to a show. It was kind of funny to me, because it kind of made me realize that the same fucked-up, ironic mustache, weird tattoo, type kids are attracted to the same shit in every city where that sort of thing has any traction. It was kind of nice to think about that.

I was blown away by one of the opening bands, the Portland outfit Trees, who have a new record out on uber-label Crucial Blast. They were EASILY one of the heaviest things I've ever heard. REEEEEEEAAAAAL slow and menacing Khanate or Monarch! kind of shit, with a singer who used two different mics, which seemed to have two different sets of effects on them, which struck me as clever. They played two songs of this incredibly dense and suffocating doom metal which really sucked me in. I haven't been that blown away by a random band opening for other bands in a real long time.

I picked up their CD and it's pretty good, but it definitely doesn't do them justice. I'm not sure that a recording could. They were just that heavy and thick. I'm going to give a strong recommendation, however, that anyone who likes the above bands seeks them out and picks up the CD and/or catches them live. You won't be disappointed.

Lair of the Minotaur and Amber Asylum also both brought the rock, albeit in radically different ways. What was really funny to me was that I randomly knew someone in both bands. Our friend Woz from Chicago stoner-rock outfit Trifog is now rocking the drums for Lair of the Minotaur (I think I had been told that but had forgotten...) and our old friend Leila who used to be in sweet Midwest hardcore and metal bands Sutek Conspiracy and Memento Mori is now playing guitar in Amber Asylum. I got to say hi to both of them, and catch up a bit, which was nice, especially given that I haven't seen Leila in probably about 4 or 5 years.

When Woz saw me and we both had the "holy shit, what are you doing on the other side of the country" moment he pointed out that this is just what happens when you're a musician. You meet people, you make friends, you live with people, you write back and forth with people, from all over the country, and sometimes the world.

This kind of relates to what I was talking about in the introduction to my summer series thing: music communities interest me. Maybe it's because I'm a music lover, maybe it's because I'm a sociology student, but something about the way networks form and expand is really cool to me. It's cool to me that I can walk into a bar on the other side of the country and feel somewhat at home because the vibe is so similar to what goes on in my city. It's cool that I can know people there because our paths all happen to be crossing at the same time because of how tight knit the network is. It's cool that someone like Leila can pack up and leave Indiana, settle in the bay area, and find like minded people to hook up with and make music with. It's cool that people I know know other people I know without me introducing them.

When you think about it all, it's somewhat humbling. It makes me feel like a conduit through which this current just flows, or like some node on a huge web. Like the Leatherface lyric, "a very small drop in the middle of a big sea."

After the show I had a hot dog with cream cheese and grilled onions. The guy selling it on the street outside of the show said that Amber Asylum sounded like "funeral music." "I'm an atheist," he said, "so I don't like death." I'm not much of a god-believer myself, but feeling like such a small part of something so big kind of makes me less afraid of the big oblivion awaiting us all. I like to think that all the stuff I care about, all the stuff that makes me who I am, will still be around for other people after I'm dead and gone. I'm just someone who's keeping it all warm for someone else.