Why I don't go out

This past weekend I had the brilliant idea that instead of staying in, I was going to go out. Thankfully for me, there were two local music shows of interest taking place on Friday night from which to choose. The first show promised to be a standard-fare indie rock show, headlined by the band So Many Dynamos that was featured on the cover of the local alt weekly not too long ago, and generally seem to be regarded in the community as the local saviors of indie rock because they have big bangs and have done some recording work with one of the dudes in the band Death Cab for Cutie (warning signs #1 & 2). This was a free show with free parking in a neighborhood I'm familiar with and, judging from their MySpace page, it was their last show in the city for some time.

My alternate show option was the CD release party for a hip-hop group called Earthworms, and they were apparently once voted the "#1 Hip-Hop Group in St. Louis" by the local alt weekly. This show promised to have live bands, DJs, tee-shirt printmaking, and other things to appeal to my thirst for pop culture paraphernilia. Although the venue's location was about equidistant from my house as the first place, it was in a neighborhood I have yet to explore, and their MySpace made it look like I had plenty of other chances to catch them live in the near future.

So I ended up going with show option #1. Besides, having just returned from a dinner at Applebee's, I was dressed and ready to go to an indie rock show. Here's a breakdown of how my night went:

8:35 - I park and begin wandering around the SLU campus. Not really sure where the venue is, I spot a small group of young folks with angular bangs and brightly colored scarves and retro sneakers. I follow them into the Billiken Club (located in the basement of the SLU student center).

8:40 - Inside the club, I step up to the bar. "I'll have a Bud, barkeep," I said (or something to that effect). He doesn't bother ID'ing me despite the prominent "We ID!!" sign because it's fairly obvious that, after the bartender, I'm the oldest guy in the place.

8:41 - "Hi!" says a perky young man suddenly sitting next me. "Do you see my friend over there?" He points to a young lady in a brown T-shirt. I nod uh-huh. "Well, she thinks you're super cute," he remarks. And then adds, after looking me up and down, "And I can certainly see why she thinks that." Oh brother. "Gosh, well, tell her 'thank you' for me." Seeing how he didn't have a crumpled up note requesting me to circle either "Yes" or "No" to the question of whether or not I found his friend cute in return, I turned my attention to the first sip of my local brew.


8:50 - A woman is talking to me. She's telling me her plan to build up good credit by buying one pair of socks every month on her credit card, and how if she could move anywhere besides St. Louis it would be Texas because the whole state's racist and that's really funny somehow. She's Asian. I'm Texan. I think I missed the punchline. She asks me if I know many people in the city since I just moved here. I answer "my wife." She decides to go to the stage to see if the first band is about ready to play.

9:00 - The first band starts to play.

9:35 - The first band is finishing up their set. Not bad, they definitely got better later on in their set - big choruses, a gawky trumpet player, and two female backing vocalists who looked as uncomfortable being on stage as I was standing in the crowd. They were called Say Panther (I know, indie, right?) and judging from local concert calendars they open for just about everyone just about every week.

9:50 - Band #2 starts. They're called Maps & Atlases (again, tres indie). The lead singer has a(n ironic?) mustache. They play jumpy, frenetic rhythms with wound-up vocals.

9:55 - I begin to notice that there are some really young people here. Like, really young. Are those people standing next to me in high school? Junior high? That one boy can't be any older than 11, 12 max.

10:00 - Overheard: "Have you ever heard the van Kellar?," asks one tall, skinny boy in tight black jeans with greased down bangs, a stud earring, and a black jacket with a fur hood. "The what?," replies a similar-looking tween metrosexual wearing mascara. "The band Hella (?)." "No." "Yeah, they sound just like this band [Maps & Atlases] except they don't have any vocals and the drummer is like three times better." "Oh, cool."



10:35 - The set feels like it goes on forever. I think it ends sometime around here.

10:45 - The headliners So Many Dynamos are setting up the stage for their performance. The 12 year old boy I saw earlier is now howling with anticipation. Actually, it's more like barking. In any case, it's frighteningly mannish for a boy of his age.

10:50 - The group of high school girls is now in a circle, doing some clapping and chanting thing that you probably saw kids do back on the playground in elementary school. I am definitely too old to be here.

11:00 - So Many Dynamos start playing. I mentally commend the venue and the sound guy for running such a tight ship.

11:01 - If I didn't know any better, I'd say this was emo. (I've heard them described as being akin to the Dismemberment Plan, and checking on allmusic... yup, sure enough, emo.) People seem to be into it, though.



11:10 - I coined a new term: emo headbanging. Whereas traditional heavy metal-inspired headbanging consists of moving one's head back-and-forth in a rapid "banging" motion; emo headbanging consists of moving one's head quickly from one side to the next, emulating the directional movement of one's bangs.

11:15 - Uhhh.....

11:20 - OK, so maybe it wasn't the most well thought out plan, coming out tonight. The show was still playing, but I was throwing in the towel. At least there was KDHX's Deep Krate Radio with hosts Fly D-Ex and DJ Iceman playing on the drive home to remind me that in the future perhaps I should opt for supporting local hip-hop over generic, albeit local, indie rock.