"the whole upstairs is a disco club?"
"yup. all of it."
"there's no other section? it's ALL disco? it's really that bad?"
"yup. the whole thing."
"no. like, i mean - not even a room..."
"all of it. it really is that bad."
whether due to popular outcry or increasing financial losses or some other reason, the downstairs folk section seems to be in the process of converting itself back into a punk bar. want my honest guess? punk rock fans are losers, sure. but we're not the massive dorks that an indie/folk bar will bring in. you don't sell a lot of beer to these people. they drink herbal tea, and complain that the smoker on the other side of the room walked by them on the way in, which will possibly affect their grandchildren by offsetting their genetic energy.
bars will always serve punks because we're the market. there's no deficit of coffee houses for the indie dorks to congregate in.
detroit is currently a mess, as woodward is still being torn up. to be frank, i completely forgot that was happening, and walked directly into the construction without any knowledge of detours; thankfully, very little was required. but, it was a cold and very dark walk through broken concrete. i had the first jjjjjjjjjjjjj record in the phones, which was rather effective over it's second, atmospheric half. and, i can report that it sounded correctly through the mp3 player, as well.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
sisters of your sunshine vapor are a local act that i've near-missed repeatedly, but finally caught last night. you can guess by their name that they want to exist in a specific period, but the result is somewhat stale; i was waiting for the stonehenge to fall rather than looking around for the ghost of syd. but, calling something stale does not suggest that it's terrible. the rhythm section is actually pretty solid. what they really need, i would argue, is a second guitarist to fill the sound out a little and take it over the top.
bands like this tend to float for long periods without accomplishing anything, but there's a long shot possibility that they might develop.
it'd been three or four years since i'd heard any grooms, and they've definitely expanded their sound quite a bit. they've also become a three piece, it seems. this is the only video i could find of them as a three piece...
they still sound a lot like sonic youth, but they seem to be trying to break away from it. you can tell because they're moving in multiple directions. i've seen this a thousand times and it works out one of two ways: if they settle on a specific sound, it will no doubt be because they get some kind of financial pull on it. then, the focus becomes on compressing the sound as much as possible, and it quickly becomes boring. but, if they keep flailing around and the experiments increase rather than decrease then they have the potential to take it to the next level.
it's hard to say what direction they're going in. for the moment, the set was hit and miss: when they wanted to rock, they could and did but a lot of it was passive and mediocre jangle-pop.
so, i'm learning that a part of the experience of living in detroit is developing a healthy level of cautious fear regarding the architecture, and then conquering it.
i didn't see a lot of shows upstairs before it transitioned, but the ones i saw were loud: cloud nothings, boris. the place shook. like, uncomfortably. as the opening sets were playing, it actually crossed my mind a few times that this was better because we're closer to the ground, so it shouldn't be so scary.
but, it only took a few seconds before the wobble asserted itself. i've been to enough shows to know that this was more than the bass from the speakers; the floor was shaking left-to-right. that is, perpendicular to the motion of the sound waves. very bad.
i took a look outside and saw the concrete torn up, right to the front door. what's under the building? three hundred years of caverns, sewers? hidden treasures? masonic lodges? hoffa? who knows; but i know i'm not on solid ground. and, what are the chances that detroit found it in it's budget to do a proper engineering assessment to put in the rail system? you think that's on illitch' mind? you think he cares at all? no; i'm thinking that chances are high that there was no assessment done at all...
i had to move back a little, which blunted the physical effect of the sound. i'm aware that this is a large part of the experience; i've been to plenty of shows where the sound is pummelling. but, i think my intuition of my surroundings was justified.
i did slowly move up, but the show was done by the time i was getting the courage to get to the front.
there was a benefit, though: i got to see a relatively interesting light show from a bit of distance. you can't see it in this video, presumably because the camera is too close. but it's a wall of white light surrounding the stage, making the band members appear as apparitions. simple but effective.
as for the band? they're a known entity in what they do; joy division goes grunge. swans performing nirvana covers. brutal and dark, but always melodic and never stupid. creative use of guitar effects. but, you're not getting half of it by watching this video. this is a band that you'll get the most out of by seeing live, and letting the sound physically affect you.
and, as for myself, i need to get over this fear of detroit's architecture, as healthy as it may be.
i hadn't bothered to check the time; it was moving a little slower than normal, due to a chance encounter in the smoking section before aptbs. but, i get out and check my clock and it's three minutes until the last bus. no chance. shit.
i make the decision to walk to the tunnel and wait for a cab, aware that i'm still feeling a little funny from the chance encounter and thinking i'm probably better off getting a coffee, anyways. after waiting at the bus station for a while, i finally approach the border guards to ask them to call me a cab.
"call you a cab?"
"yeah."
"where are you from?"
"i live in windsor."
"they call cabs in downtown windsor?"
"well, i'm from ottawa. i don't know. i never use taxis, i walk everywhere, it's just that you've got all these barricades here preventing me from getting home unless i'm inside an automobile of some sort."
"it's a security concern."
"can you call me a cab, please?"
"no. what you do is go to that road over there and wait for one to drive by."
i've really never done that before. like i say: i walk everywhere. but, sure enough, there's a sign on the road that i don't think i've ever seen before: taxi stand.
it's about ten minutes, which is not bad.
"how much to get just across the border?"
"across what border?"
"to canada."
"to canada? you have documents?"
"yup."
"$60."
i got him down to $50, but that was it.
see, here's the thing: even if i could afford that, and was willing to pay it, i'd still be stuck. my bank card only works in canada. i had $17 in cash on me, which i thought would be enough - it's literally two minutes to the other side. but, the cabbie is concerned about getting searched by customs ("i'm a muslim. they always search me.") and it's just a no go.
a few minutes later, cabbie #2 pulls up...
$60. still. he tells me it's a flat rate set by the company due to losses stemming from hold ups in customs.
so, basically, i have to pay $60 for a two minute drive across the border that i'm not allowed to walk because border security does routine racial profiling on cabbies doing their job. great system. very efficient.
in the end, i was at the bus stop for more than 6.5 hours: from 1:45 to 8:30. i took a few walks. i spent well over an hour on the couch in the fancy hotel lobby across the street when i was getting a little cold; strangely, nobody asked me to leave. i was dressed to be able to walk for a few hours, but not to sit outside for six hours so it was really necessary to get in and warm up. another novelty was getting back pennies on a coffee purchase, which no longer exist in canada.
i asked two different cops if they could just shuttle me over, and they both refused. as mentioned, it's a two-minute drive under the bridge, if that. i had documents. 10 degrees isn't enough to kill you after even a few hours, but after 6 hours? as mentioned: i went in repeatedly, because the shivering felt as though it was onsetting hypothermia, and i do believe that this is the right range of temperatures.
i'm considering looking into the responses the cops provided me and pushing the point. i do believe that they should have been required to shuttle me across.
but, i know now that catching a cab in the middle of the night isn't an option and that if i'm stuck downtown then i need to find an all-night coffee shop close to the venue.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/10/03.html
