The Living Rockumentary

A Pollinaire Rave was held last night at the Eagles' Club, which featured Maggie Nowinsky, the Supreme Dicks, SFTD and Kevin Barns (and others?) from Of Montreal. Earlier in the evening we rehearsed and learned Henning's new song, which I've already forgotten the title to. I'm amazed at how quickly a song can be arranged and develop its own identify in this band. It's kind of like throwing a bunch of flour, sugar, baking powder and water into the center of the room and seeing a complete 4-course dinner appear out of nowhere. The debut performance later in the evening went well, even though we played it at breakneck speed. Chalk that up to our reduced time slot. Chalk that up to a very long, drawn-out performance from the Supreme Dicks. Or maybe it wasn't so long and drawn-out, but it seemed to go on forever. I like weird experimental droney rock but I didn't care for the Dicks.

That being said, I'm sure SFTD sounded like the Archies in comparison, and some folks probably felt the same way about us. As we were jostling for stage space with the soundman and members of SD, Henning said to us "our set time is 35 minutes starting right now." We still had half our equipment off-stage. In what seemed like minutes we were set up and hitting the first (lovely) chord to "Photobooth Curtain". Such a great song and arrangement. We could play that 13 times in one set and I'd be happy. Brian seemed really short playing on the house drums and sitting on a regular folding chair, instead of a drum stool. I didn't make much eye contact with Henning or Tony during the set. Overall, I thought we played fine but didn't really gain any new fans during our brief set. I did enjoy "Omnivore". Brian's snare fell off the stand mid-song and he managed to pick it up without missing a beat.

Maggie's opening set was interesting; I think she is a talented guitarist and has a unique vocal thing going on, kind of like Kristen Hersh. I wished her songs were shorter though. Lots of things going on that might work better with a full band (or at least a bassist, in addition to the occasional drumming), but seemed to be too much with just guitars/vox. The headlining act, consisting of songs, theater, performance art and organized chaos was a hoot, despite the bad sound. I'll let someone else describe it in their gig diary...