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It was really like Whartscape 2007 at the Floristree but without the amenities.  Or lock step rigidity in organizing the juggling of bands.   Though after enough DIY shows you become used to nothing starting promptly and set times really just being sort of abstract of who is playing next rather than any sort of schedule you can reliably follow.

This venue was the aptly named Above The Car Parts Store and it was a top floor garage with reinforced concrete floors, and everything painted white.  There were a cluster of windows left along one wall providing fresh air and a large industrial fan on the floor to try to circulate the air.  Though as it was the only place with any sort of air movement, a dozen bodies quickly blocked it so it wasn’t able to do much for the place as a whole, allowing the hot and humid August weather to quickly take a toll on the attendees.   Cold, cheap beer soon ran out, and after making a few trips to a close by bodega, we just bought a gallon jug of water and started to refill our bottles from that, as it was cheaper than two individual bottles on sale inside.

Not that the water helped.  Within an hour, our shirts were soaked through, and by the end of the evening, even our shorts were wet.  The people who were drinking just beer to cool off were not doing well, and you could find one or two passed out on the floor.  Bathroom facilities were sparse with one “real” bathroom reserved for women, while men were forced to bump up in a row of porta johns lined up by the entrance wall, whose sanitation didn’t fare well but it was better than some shows I’ve attended.

The stage was a makeshift yet sturdy enough affair and looked as though it had been made the night before.  Sound was capable.  Clean without ever being overbearing, but sound is one of the last things I’d worry about at a Todd P / Bikes in Kitchens show as they’re typically well staffed and supplied in that regard. It really is about the music first and foremost and the music was largely amazing thanks to a great line up.

The first band we made it there to see was Wild Yaks, who do a kind of simple rock music infused with singer/ songwriter sensibility and craft which lends them more to a Violent Femmes style of catchy songwriting, where if you’ve never heard the song before, you can find yourself sing along before the song ends.  There’s a kind of jam feeling to them with full band members singing choruses.  I’ve only seen them once before, last year at another Bikes in Kitchens show, but this time they was something about them which really reached out in the performance and took hold of me.  This was a great performance on their part.

I was supposed to see Chinese Stars a week ago or so at Death By Audio, but something came up and we had to jet after the first band.  I was kind of miffed but knew I’d finally get a chance to check them out at this show.  Chinese Stars does straight garage rock in the Detroit tradition.  Simple repetitive chords with minor progression, but lots of keyboard and drum along with Eric Paul’s almost Iggy Pop like antics.  From the first song he seems to enter into a trance and does less dancing to the music than twitching, though for instrumental segments he leaves the audience’s line of sight to allow them to focus on the band behind him.  This is an excellent show to see live and amazingly enough their releases capture the kind of sloppy energy that was on display on Saturday.

Snakes Say Hisss! Seemed to have imported a mosh pit from their hometown of Philly.  There was a crew of about 6 or 7 kids who showed up wearing brand new “hip” fluorescent t-shirts who stormed to the front of the stage to rip shit up for the set who then vanished as soon as Snakes was done.  I didn’t really understand the intensity the crowd brought, as it seemed to outmatch the music.  The last time I had seem them was months ago at another Bikes party, but there it was just the singer Jamie and a guitarist.  Now, they’ve become a four piece, with drummer complimenting the sampled drums and loops with a guitarist and bassist rounding out the sound.  The music was the same kind of up-tempo electronic pop that is a lot of fun to see and dance along to with the same kind of intensity of Die! Die! Die!.  They have a new album coming out in the Fall and I’m looking forward to hearing how they’re able expand the sonic field.

Cerebral Ballzy is always a fun time.  It’s essentially straight up 80s thrash skate punk that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Bones Brigade VHS tape.  Good, if juvenile, banter that matches the look and sound perfectly of a skate all day, drink all night party band.  I’m curious to see what they’ll be doing in a year or two, but my fear is that like D.R.I., they’ll continue to make the same stuff over and over again and fall into a lock groove.   As it stands now though, the drumming is fast, the riffs are furious and the songs are discordant and broke as young living.

Best Fwends didn’t play Blood. (However, we got to see Dustin’s Daisy Mae look)

Juiceboxxx I’d never seen before, but knew he had a reputation for putting on some intense live shows, coupled with an almost naïve production style.  I don’t know really if I was prepared for this.  He came out on stage and said that before he got started he just wanted to talk to us a little bit and he put Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” and then talked about Not wanting to go into the darkness and how he’d been looked in his room in a dark place for the past several months, coming out only for this show.  It was staged to appear improvised and spur of the movement, but the topics discussed lined up at points with what Bruce was singing, most notably “This is a song for losers.”  From there he launched into a mid tempo song whose chorus was “I don’t want to go into the Darkness” which he screamed at us with a louder intensity each time, before veering WILDLY to his new single, a House music track “100 MPH” (100 miles per hour, a million miles away) which added to the sense of loneliness and tearing through the Thunder Jams screaming “THIS IS A DANCE PARTY” which really added to the sense that you were watching someone break down rather than perform.  He crawled on speakers and threw himself to the floor, covered in dirt and he ran into the audience to yell at people, and tried to climb on the ceiling.  He had a guitarist along with him whose clean sounds with mild reverb added to the kind of plaintive swan song.  Though it was still intense and wildly unpredictable as you watched him fling every ounce of himself into the performance where physical concerns were not an issue and personal boundaries between audience and singer were to be violated as he grabbed people’s hair or rammed himself into them.  It was raw but it was staged though so convincing that people thought they were witnessing a Lady Sovereign type melt down and people commented that they thought he was going to kill himself onstage.

This was probably the most masculine performance of Ninjasonik that I’d ever seen.  Normally, you’ll find women dancing on stage or in the audience close to the speakers, but in that hot ass auto parts store, it was nothing but sweaty men.   It was so phallocentric up front that at one point Tellie said “I need a fine woman to dance with, some fine woman, come up here” but one couldn’t be found who was willing to brave the crowd.   This kind of carried into a crowded aggression where dancing and crowd surfing and jumping made the floor shake.  It was the first time I’d seen that at a Ninjasonik show, and the crowd was huge, so my guess is that the recent Darth Bano Mishka mix was quite successful.

This was the first time I’ve seen them since the release of that mix, so I was curious to see how much of the set would be Ninjasonik anthems which we’ve heard for the past few years and how much would be from the newer material.  What we got was a good mix of both.  The “hits” were there, the remixes of The Death Set and Matt and Kim, the covers of Devo were joined with a Morrissey song that I hadn’t heard them perform before, while Tellie’s “Hold The Line” got the hugest response.  The stage was filled with people who had guest spots on the mix who added in their verses, and with the insta-entourage which seems to spring up at all of these shows.  Unfortunately the stage couldn’t bear the weight and broke.

It was a good show, but by this time, we couldn’t hold up in the heat having been in the venue for 7 hours and even with the copious amount of hydration, we left, missing out on The Death Set and Team Robespierre.  Overall, aside from the heat, it was an excellent show.  Bring on the Fall parties.

Category : Show Review