n o i s e i s a r t

There’s something totally magical about seeing a band see the crowd. When you realize you’re watching the band realize that you (the audience) are completely in love with them.

Thomas Nagel wrote about Sexual Perversion in 1979… here’s how my old professor, Roy Soreson, describes what Nagel says:

“In addition to being aroused by Juliet, Romeo is aroused by Juliet’s being aroused, and Juliet’s being aroused by Romeo’s being aroused by Juliet’s being aroused, and so on.”

Something like that happens at a really great concert, between the crowd and the performer. It’s why we see live music – for the off chance that we might get to experience that.

Tonight I went to see a friend’s band, areyougone. He and I have talked a lot about music, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I liked the band – they were playing pretty exactly the kind of band I want to like: country-themed shoegaze. Apparently we’re calling it “Spaghetti Western” now.

Afterwards the guy from Highway had a solo acoustic set. I don’t have a lot of vocabulary to describe guys with acoustic guitars without bands, but he reminded me a lot of a Woodie Guthrie song I just heard again, and he was fucking great.

I talked for a bit with Colin, the bass player for The BJM after Highway’s set. Turns out he’s from Portland (I think I knew that) and playing in a Spaghetti Western band called Federale. I asked him about the heckling at BJM shows, and he says it’s died down a bit – that they’ve moved past that. Which is great to hear because as funny as the juxtaposition of super violent heckling and counter-heckling with slow sad love songs was, I’d really prefer to just hear the songs.

Then 1776 played. And the crowd totally adored them. It was amazing to be a part of. It was a tiny venue, and really not that remarkable, except for the moment after the first song where the band all kind of looked up in shock at the volume of applause. And they deserved it – they were great, and they killed it tonight. Kinks-esque rock, totally tight and with great songwriting.

Courtney Taylor*2 from the Dandys was there – Pete plays in Highway when they’re a band, and Courtney knew one of the guys in 1776. And I thought about the fact that seeing them in Amsterdam in 2001, and seeing them realize how apeshit for them the crowd was, made me understand why we see live music. I kind of regret not telling him “Your band taught me why we see live music.”

So I just saw the BJM again on Friday night, years later. It’s weird – DIG! seems to be haunting them far more than it seems to have affected the Dandys. Well, maybe because the movie ended up being about Anton. Anyway, the last couple of times I’ve seen them, they have attracted a peculiar breed of heckler who seem to be there just to incite Anton to break down. They are there to see the spectacle of Anton ranting and hopefully fighting. And it’s incredibly lame, because the rest of us are there just to see a really nice, slow, psych-rock show. In other news, Matt Hollywood (Formerly of the BJM, played a large role in DIG!) performed with them for one song. Anyway. Their shows are becoming stranger and stranger, as they have several reputations among disparate populations – most of the crowd seemed to be there because they’re heard the band’s name and didn’t know what to expect. They left early when Anton didn’t explode. Then there were the hecklers who, by screaming shrill obscenities over and over, eventually won out and got Anton to stop playing for a while. Then there are the people who are there to see the BJM play – judging from my experience, this population expect interruptions in the set and are resigned to wait patiently until the band get their shit together and start playing again. But the tension at their concerts is getting more and more interesting – you’ve got these hyper-agressive guys yelling at Anton who (I am sterotyping here) look like they ought to be copping feels on drunk girls at a Dave Matthews concert. And then you’ve got Anton, fill of fire and anger, responding to them, and there’s this immanent promise of violence throughout the whole performance. But then hen they play their music is incredibly gentle, and the lyrics are all about Anton’s enduring belief in real, true love. So I’m starting to think that part of the joy in watching Jonestown perform is in seeing Anton manage to avoid descending to the level of the shrill meatheads, and watching him choose, over and over, to meet their agressions with his faith in love. If that’s true, then the frustration in seeing them is all about the times when Anton doesn’t pull that trick off, and instead decides he’s done playing for the night if the crowd isn’t going to shut up.