something i learned tonight is that, in windsor, start time means door time. so, showing up an hour after the time on the poster still means waiting over an hour for the show.
in ottawa, we have le cafe de kcuf. in windsor, we have the phog lounge. variations on the same theme. not dissimilar atmospheres.
waiting forever means too many spiked coffees...
at least the music for the wait was alright. meat puppets. mbv. sonic youth. and perhaps it was fitting that the first band started right as 'the sprawl' finished, given my thoughts on this new area to explore.
silent movie type were catchy, noisy and dissonant. not much that's novel, here. but i like the genre. and their record up on bandcamp is pretty good.
they closed the show with a cover of breed, which was sort of nice to hear. i scattered quickly to another show down the street....
there was a band in the 90s called 'man, or astroman?'. this machine kills robots are eerily similar to that band. in every way. 'cept they're not quite as good.
i wish i would have got to see man or astroman?, actually...
actually, i'm going to choose to not tell the stories i was going to tell. there's certain adjustments i'm going to have to make to living in a smaller city. i think this is one of them.
i couldn't quickly find audio for the second band, worry. it's a hard name to google. the audience they attracted seemed to enjoy faux moshing to it, but it was pretty generic hipster music. the hipster genre du jour is something called 'doom', which is a type of heavy grunge that incorporates screamed vocals into it. i'll give this band a tad bit of credit because the drummer was a bit more interesting in a weird sort of way; he was all agent orange while the rest of the band was all sleep. but, at best the result was 'crust', and crust is rarely worth listening to.
extra annoyance: no human could decipher those vocals.
famines, on the other hand, were excellent. it's a shame the place cleared out before they came on. i've seen this before, where local bands take over shows for touring acts and the place clears out when the locals are done. it's just bad research. extra head-scratching is the fact that there was a band down the street that would have brought in the proper audience. i took the walk, but...
famines is dance-punk done right in the after-punk era: rambunctious, hyperactive and entirely bipolar when it needs to be. bonus: moderately intelligent lyrics.
the walk home was a little surreal. i was drunk enough to slur my speech, but not tipsy or in any threat of passing out. cop cars on every corner...
well, there's been some issues in windsor of late. a pretty teenager disappeared (they found a body in the river and will id it this afternoon). there was a gang related stabbing downtown that involved something like ten people. fires. robberies.
that's not the reason the cops are actually there, though. they've been brought in by the bia due to concern about property damage. there was a press release. people are getting stabbed and abducted and arsons are raging across the city and the police department is being driven by a concern about broken windows (to my knowledge, there haven't actually been any broken windows).
regardless, it might be the first time i was happy to see some cop cars. i was a little uneasy walking home, and knew i would be. recent spate of violent crime aside, i'm in a city i don't know very well. and it was well after midnight.
getting out of the downtown core, i noticed a van was following me. it was turning into side streets, u-turning.....eventually it stopped down the street. i crossed the road. it pulled one last u-turn and zoomed off...
the night person at the quickie suggested that the driver may have mistaken me for a prostitute. apparently, a lot of people work up that strip. it's not the first time i've been mistaken, but it usually happens in the summer when i'm minimally clothed. tonight, my make-up was fairly light, and i was wearing my kurt cobain sweater (or at least the sweater that i think of as my kurt cobain sweater). i can't see how i was drawing attention to myself. but maybe it doesn't really matter if i was or wasn't drawing attention to myself.
i also started wondering about a few things walking back. i'm a new addition to the area. change always breeds uncertainty. my largest concern is actually that local criminals might think i'm a cop. i don't have anything for them, especially if i'm walking rather than biking. but the inevitable question is no doubt: what is this nut doing walking alone down the road at midnight? is she really impossibly oblivious to her own safety? if not, who is she working for? etc.
i sort of decided that i just have to keep going out at night regularly in order to create a comfort level. to normalize the locals to my existence. i'm not going to live in fear. it's not in my dna. if they get used to me, i'll begin to blend in. like a squirrel...
getting inside the door was a relief, though. more so than i've ever experienced.
....and, now for zesty cheese....
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2013/10/24.html
