this is another show that i instantly realized i had to get to, whether the weather was going to cooperate or not, and then almost missed, this time due to the need to sleep a little bit before the show.
i can't claim it was much of an exciting night outside of the show, though; there were no adventures to report, no conversations of particular interest. my attention was largely focused on trying to get to the venue before the rain started (which i failed at.), and then in getting myself home in the rain after the show. it was an early night, and i arrived late, missing both opening acts.
they did play some newer material, and i noted in a previous post that it's leaning towards a riffier, dirtier, almost grungier kind of sound that is maybe a little less campy and more evocative of the rougher edges of the american southwest. they also brought out a dot matrix printer and performed a reinterpreted piece from eeviac to give the guitarist time to change a string; it reminded me a little of autechre's gantz graf, but i doubt that meant much to the crowd. they were, overall, though, exactly what would be expected, and i think that's what most people wanted.
there was some talk about the venue in the smoking section, and i'm going to repost my initial analysis to that question. it's not that i'm unsympathetic to the concern, it's that i'm not sure how substantive it actually is.
i haven't turned the laptop back on yet. i've been dreading it. it should come up out of hibernation, but if it doesn't then i'll have to reimage.
let's hope that i can get the clean-up finished before i crash for a few hours this morning.
i am planning on hitting the grunge show tonight. the damage last night wasn't that bad, because i was able to use the balance on the debit card, and i just avoided buying beer. so, i didn't spend nearly what i said - it was $23 usd for the ticket, $10 usd at the 7/11 and $10 cdn for the bus. yes, it costs me $5 to cross the border and $5 to get back. and, yes, it adds up. it's still cheaper to live here, though.
essentially, my choice to avoid buying expensive beer at el club last night means i'm good to go for cheap beer at ufo tonight. yeah, i didn't set the fucking prices, don't look at me. if it was reasonable, i would have bought at least one..
i'm waiting until i can order last sunday before i do these february reviews all at once. but, there is still a lot of lingering concern regarding the fiasco at el club, with people worrying about crossing boycott lines. personally? i'm a free thinker, i'm not interested in being told what to do by the central committee on ethical consumption in late capitalism, and they can rule on the issue all they want, i don't give a fuck. but, i have to be honest - i didn't find the arguments i heard to be convincing.
and, you can browbeat me on it if you want, i don't really care. what i want is a convincing argument, not a demand that i follow your moral code, which i may or may not agree with.
but, i'll be equally clear that i wouldn't go to a place that i thought was actually horribly sexist or horribly racist. for a bastion of white supremacism, the bar seems to have a lot of black employees (they always did. it's detroit.) and seems to cater disproportionately to the black community. if there was a problem, they made a legitimate attempt to adjust to it.
that said, i don't go there on random nights, either, for the reason that they've largely exited my sphere of interest; this has largely not been much of an issue for me for the reason that the bar no longer caters to my tastes, anyways. so, i haven't been finding myself in this conflicted space, where i'm trying to figure out if i should go or not because i haven't had any interest in what they're booking, anyways.
the bar has a great sound system. it's not likely that random touring acts have any idea what happened, so i'm not going to tar them by association for something they don't know about, whatever the merits of it. so, if a band i like does play the space, i don't see any logical reason why i wouldn't go.
man or astroman formed in the early 90s and have been one of my favourite acts for a very long time. getting to see them was a kind of a bucket list thing. while the sound system at el club really is great, and the band does legitimately have substantive latin influences, i'll also acknowledge that it would have been a lot easier had they played the magic stick, or perhaps delux fluxx. but, for whatever reason, they didn't and i had to make a choice between missing out on a band i've been listening to for most of my life or an empty statement of solidarity with something that i'm not really convinced of the value of.
that's not a hard choice, for me.
i'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but i think you're wrong.
this is a more accurate representation of the set than the previous video i posted:
i walked right back to the tunnel after the show, took the bus back to canada and tried to stop to talk to somebody at villain's on the way home, but they were closed - as they always are on monday nights.
there were nachos, there was a shower & there was some sleep.
