The Living Rockumentary

Whatever Henning's doing right now, it probably doesn't require a shirt or shoes. He sure as hell ain't sitting indoors wearing a coat because his desk is right next to the drafty freight elevator shaft.

Very busy at work but I wanted to tell you chaps about The Pelicans show on Saturday night. There were a few problems that marred things somewhat. First off, although Ari had heavily promoted 10 pm as a start time, they were ordered to go on promptly at 9:30 and were done by 10:20. I luckily was early and missed only a part of the first song. One other big problem was the many bass dropouts. I thought it was just me, that somehow from where I was sitting, that I just was missing the bass sound. I couldn't believe that the band, the bass player himself or soundman wouldn't pick up on this. At one point, a full minute of "Trip To Acton" went by with not a bass peep. Four songs into Cyclub (the second band)'s set, their bassist recognized the problem and it was fixed. Apparently, the amp was cutting out at times (Pelicans borrowed their bass amp). Was it just me? Didn't anyone else notice this? Also, The Pelicans were forced to start early, they finished their set at 10:20- Cyclub doesn't start their set until 10 minutes before 11pm. Pelicans borrowed Cyclub's drums and some of their amps- why such a long transition between bands? The set itself was long enough and I didn't really need to hear more necessarily but why not start later when more people arrive and have less downtime in between bands? The soundman himself spent a good 10 minutes onstage just chatting with members of The Pelicans. So if an audience member showed up at 10 pm as advertised, you saw 18 minutes of The Pelicans and then waited over a half-hour until the next band started playing a song. OK, there, enough whining, off my chest.

Pelicans were quite good nevertheless. Can't really go wrong with this set:

Heroic Audio Display
Strangel
Greyhound
Stuck
Accident Airlines
Long Distance Relationship
*One Year From Here
*Like A Flood
*Penny's On The Dole
*Dead
*Trip To Acton
*Ready For The Crawl
Burnout

(* London Crawling EP CD performed in entirety)

Absent from the set were Vais ballads like Kiss Goodbye, Feverish, Freezer, etc. and a request shouted by Frank at set's end for "Time Sweats" was passed over in favor of Burnout. Appropriate choice really, since the punky Cyclub was due next. Either way, the main focus of the show was the new EP material. Each song is a winner in its own right and it was cool to hear them bash out that charging descending riff in Like A Flood while also deftly maneuvering through the many distinct little songlets that make up Trip To Acton. And also cool to experience in a live context the Dinosaur Jr.-esque skronk 'n' squalor that ends "Ready For The Crawl." Ari's new lower-register voice comes out good live as well. Drummer Art is solid and bassist Joe and second guitarist Blain hold their own, even though each player is playing an instrument new to them (Blain was originally a bassist and Joe a guitarist in former bands). Nevertheless, the focus is, as it should be, on Ari. He sang well and better yet, his guitar skills have improved. He still uncorks some crazy solos and riffs but as someone who played with him for years, I can tell that he's taken the time to get the basics of each solo down beforehand so that there are no errant notes or meandering fingers mucking things up. Whatever extra stuff he throws in is icing now rather than the bedrock. Most impressive is that he often will toss off a lead riff whilst singing at the same time. And let's face it, Ari with a band is better than Ari without. He has a rhythmic and noisy backdrop to bounce off of and his quirky stage movements seem more natural in this context. Yes, I know they're natural in his solo sets too but they come off as sometimes scary when it's just him up there.

Regardless, I have to say as an old pal of both, the sweetest part of the evening was seeing Ari and Paul Pelis reconciling and conversing for a while together. I was tempted to join the conversation but figured since the two hadn't spoken since Paul was ousted from Humbert in early '98, it'd be better to just let the two of them catch up on their own.

Cyclub- they earn neither my scorn nor raves. A perfectly tight punk band with energy and pizzazz but not a single memorable tune. S'pose that's not what they're about anyway but it is what I'm about so what can you do? Kahoots was good but I was starting to zone out on too much live rock after a while. Here's a weird thing. For the first 10 songs or so in their set, I'd decided that Rob's tunes were much better and I just patiently sat out Elisha's songs, which seemed less catchy. (Thankfully, most Kahoots songs are pretty short in length). Then towards the end of the set, the situation reversed. All of a sudden, Rob's songs weren't as consistent and the other guy's tunes stood out. The solution is just to see them again sometime, I guess, to make sense of it.

I just reread all that and decided I'm a horrible writer today- my tenses and perspectives were inconsistent, questionable sentence structure. Ahh, who cares? Sometimes you're just fumbling through expression and that's that. I am cold.