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Edit: We dumb. I got the members of Das Racist mixed up. Corrected in the text.

Apartment hunting is some of the worst shit in the world.  I’ve had to turn down in expensive shows that I wanted to see because of stress and exhaustion of apartment hunting, or just the desire to sit around and do nothing important.

One of the shows I pledged to not miss was the Das Racist, Boy Crisis, Chair Lift, Apache Beat mega band side project Spanish Broads, which was described as a “no wave jam band type thing” but with Das Racist essentially using a Das Racist billing to experiment a bit.  I was very interested to see if they could expand beyond the joke rap “modern Cheech and Chong” reputation that has, unfairly I think, been ascribed to them.

Cerebral Ballzy was on first, and they did an energetic push through their handful of recorded songs.  I was kind of disappointed to get practically the same banter and when I saw them at Goodbye Summer, but the banter serves as song introductions “I have to take a shit” = Shitrag.  “This is about our favorite train” = L Train Blues,  “We never have enough money to ride the subway” = Insufficient Fare.

I’m curious if their fans have a nickname yet.  I’m going to start calling them the Ballz Brigade.  There were a few of them out and they managed to push each other around in the small mosh pits that invariably spring up at these events.  I managed to stand in the edge of them, but never had anyone bump into me, but as it was just a handful of people.  Aside from the banter it was a good set, with everyone playing the familiar chords, and finishing with Anthem repeated twice, which I’ve noticed is pretty standard.

I want to see what becomes of CB in the coming months.  I’m hoping they take the thrash punk direction a bit further and do more “fuck art let’s skate” music.  I think the worst thing that they could do, beyond breaking up, is become just another pointlessly angry young and poor band.  There are a million of them out there, and with the cleverness of song writing and the desire to do something different, as evidenced by the music so far, indicates that the talent is there, but just needs to work its way out to new material.

I don’t know what the audience showed up for last night, as Das Racist was billed as the headliner, but they had kind of been putting out warnings in regard to this “not being a Das Racist” set with “No Das Racist” material to be played.  What was played was an utterly self-indulgent mess with no regard for audience rather than as the existence of props to be utilized by the performers.

Self-Indulgence gets a bit of a bad rap.  Rightfully so in many cases, but there are also times when an musicians seek only to please themselves rather than writing for a core audience.  Fugazi, I would say, is self-indulgent.  Green Day’s last two releases I would call self-indulgent.  Most of Miles Davis’s output is self-indulgent.   I think a different criteria needs to be “what is the intended output and how well does it accomplish this?”  Even with this generous deference to the artist, I don’t know how well I would objectively recommend this act to others.

The set up for the band was a drummer, sampler, synths, bass guitar, independent percussion, roses, and five vocalists.  I don’t know if they had practiced so much as just sort of giggled and said “we’ll figure it out live” because when the set started it was a discordant mess and songs didn’t end so much as just stop.  Members of the audience were randomly pulled and given instruments or microphones to add to the mess.  It was never boring, per se, but it was never comprehensible.  I think attempts to contextualize what came out of the speakers would be an exercise in futility due to the ever-amorphous nature of the musicians.

Many members of the audience kind of stood in a mixture of awestruck and dumbfoundedness, but the inexpensive alcohol certainly made people more receptive to what was happening on stage.  The times I looked to the audience to catch a reaction to what was going on, people were almost always smiling and actually enjoying it.  I was as well.  The inherent showmanship of Himanshu Suri and Victor Vazquez added to our enjoyment as well.  At one point Victor put roses into his mouth and spit petal into the audience, before he managed to find something on the ceiling upon which to climb.  I think the only point of reference which unified everyone was when lyrics to “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” made their way from the mess and soon, briefly, the audience and the performers were one.  Much more so than pulling people to become band members.

Category : Show Review