The Null Device

Last night I went to the band night at Pony. It was organised by the Eaze people, but was a change from the usual poets, video makers, interpretive fire-twirlers and miscellaneous beatnik types one associates with Eaze, instead being more of an indiekid crowd. You know the sort; black-framed glasses and striped sweaters and canvas sneakers and checkered shirts and dark blue work shirts and ironic T-shirts and kiddie paraphernalia and fur-lined parkas and anti-haircuts and girls with short hair and boys with oversized sideburns and such; mostly clustered three-deep around the bar talking with people they know from either bands or sharehouses they were in.

Anyway, the music: By Ferry Or Steamer played some nice instrumentals, as did Chinless Kings (in a rather minimalistic sort of way). Ruby's Arms were a bit too country-&-western for my liking (what is it with country music and inner city indie types; is it something ironic, like wearing vintage summer-camp T-shirts?) At Sea consisted of two blokes with an acoustic guitar and an acoustic bass guitar, the latter of whom ranted into a microphone whilst playing. Towards their last piece (a lengthy number), they began to sound like an acoustic Mogwai (not a bad thing, IMHO). Finally, Midstate Orange came on. Their sound is a combination of power-pop, wall-of-noise shoegazer endings, false endings, and 1960s retro-kitsch (in places they sounded like The Monkees or The Banana Splits or someone).

There are 4 comments on "":

Posted by: Graham
http://grudnuk.com/
Sat Apr 27 09:54:11 2002

heh. indiekids are nearly as bad as goths, except you can at least listen to some of the music without feeling stupid.

Oddly enough, old-skool country and western has managed to start sounding decent since nashville/tamworth went all anonymous rock. and remember, c&w -> reggae -> dub -> dance music.

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org
Sat Apr 27 15:20:29 2002

And indiekids aren't as bitchy and hierarchical as goths are; they don't have quite that BDSM/vampyre-novel-influenced sense of hierarchy and status. (Status among indiekids is a bit more like status among penguinheads, except that instead of writing GPLed code, you write a zine or play in bands.)

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org
Sat Apr 27 15:21:28 2002

Reggae evolved from country? I thought it evolved from southern-USAan soul/blues/R&B (in the original sense) as heard over patchy radio reception in Jamaica.

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org
Mon Apr 29 06:41:25 2002

Oh yes... and instead of Star Wars merchandise, you have original vinyl pressings of Tigermilk.

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