shows, shows and more shows

an Eno tribute, a new avant hardcore band, and free-jazz

Is it me, or are you going to more shows lately too? I have to admit I got a bit lazy after the pandemic thanks in large part to the ease of getting a live music fix at my local tavern. CJ is booking more shows than ever now at Winters Tavern, so if any of you are ever near Pacifica California, drop me a line and meet me at the tavern.

Thanks to the pandemic, I’ll never take live music for granted again. Do you remember the last show you saw before they shut them down in March of 2020? I do. It was just a couple of days before the shutdown. I battled traffic to get to a large theater in Berkeley to see the band Refused. I’m not sure if it was sold out, but I ran into a few friends there and all the talk was about “how safe is it for us to be here?” We just didn’t know. Nobody really knew.

The show was great. I’m glad I went. If you don’t know Refused I HIGHLY recommend you check out their 1998 album The Shape of Punk to Come. YES, this Swedish hardcore band borrowed the title of an Ornette Coleman album. And YES, they incorporated elements of free-jazz into their hardcore sound. This ended up alienating their fans and soon after caused the band to breakup. About 10 years later a funny thing happened … the album was selling well. New fans started loving this new sound. Well known musicians started referring to the album in interviews. Thanks in large part to a fantastic music video for the song "New Noise" made at the time of the album’s release that continued to get airplay on MTV, Refused had garnered a huge new fan base. But there was no Refused … until Coachella 2012. Refused reformed and they continue to release albums today. Recently part of the band have teamed up with free-jazz sax heavyweight Mats Gustafsson to form a new improv band called BACKENGRILLEN which may be releasing something soon.

This year I finally made my return to that theater in Berkeley, and I’ve been back twice already. The first time was a metal show featuring Voivod and Prong. These are not avant-metal bands per say, but they both blazed a trail for new sounds in the genre, and Voivod is frequently cited as an early influence on many avant-metal musicians to this day. Prong is a band I have a huge soft spot for because I first saw them just by luck right before they released their first CD. That was in 1989 at CBGB’s in NYC. As I recall, I was visiting NYC to attend some avant-music festival, and I went to CBGB’s primarily to see the VERY avant-noise-metal band Blind Idiot God (still performing). Everyone else was there to see the very first North American gig for the English grind-core band Napalm Death. Prong opened the show. I’d never heard of them. It was love at first listen.

And speaking of love, on my second time back to that theater in Berkeley this year, I was joined by my lovely wife. She rarely joins me for shows, so this was going to be a special night. The show was the big homecoming for the reunion tour of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, maybe the best known of the avant-metal-progressive bands from the Bay Area. My wife and I had seen them in 1999 on what was probably their first live performance in front of an audience of humans (the band lore is that they played for a banana slug the night before). We showed up early so we could get seats. I then headed backstage to meet up with opening band Surplus 1980. I arranged to shoot some video for an upcoming short documentary I’m working on about them. I don’t want to say too much about this work-in-progress right now, except that I’ve been really enjoying working with video the past couple of years, so here we go.

And now I’m finally going to show you and tell you about the shows, shows, and more shows I promised in the title. But first, back to my wife.

We had such a good time at the Sleepytime show that my wife consented to join me yet again just one week later! The occasion this time was a rare show by the Eno tribute band ENORCHESTRA at a small venue in SF. How many Eno cover bands do you think there are in the world? This is the first one I’ve ever heard of and this would be my first time seeing them in what I considered an amazing opportunity to hear these old Eno tunes live. I think Eno himself only ever did about 5 live gigs of this stuff back in the day. If you were one of the few who got to see one of those gigs, please do tell.

The ENORCHESTRA has a great backstory on how the band came to be. The story includes meeting Eno and getting his blessing so to speak. Here’s a recent article about them from the local news…

Celebrated tribute band plays Brian Eno tunes at the Make-Out Room

By Dave Pehling

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/enorchestra-doug-hilsinger-san-francisco-brian-eno-make-out-room/

The author of this story, Dave Pehling, is a writer I’ve been following for about a year now. I think he’s hands down the best live music writer in the Bay Area right now. It seems that Dave and I have been literally passing by each other at shows for decades and yet we never met. Until now. I had a wonderful chat with him in person at the end of this Eno show. I hope it’s the first of many.

This show was so much fun. I hope I captured that spirit in this video of the Enorchestra:

One more thing about Dave. He’s a show going beast — multiple shows a week, and often a night. I have trouble just keeping up with him on Facebook. I can only imagine what it’s like trying to tag along with him to shows.

But I CAN imagine it, because that used to be me. A much younger me. And I guess the Eno show made me feel young again, because after it concluded I was headed to another show. Alright, alright, I’m exaggerating a bit. I was headed home, and that meant driving by Winters Tavern. Whenever I’m driving home late, I roll my window down as I go by the tavern so I can hear if anything is going on. It was going on. I stopped by.

It was a late Saturday night and the place was buzzing. I saw a friend from one of my favorite local bands. His name is Travis Williams and he plays bass in Disastroid. Was he playing tonight? He was, and in a new band. This would be the third band I’ve seen him play in and they all have that math-metal odd time signature stuff going on. Disastroid is a doomy-sludge metal band, along with the math thing. Tonight’s band would be a hardcore version called HUMANHEAD. They went on last. It was very late … I think past 1am. They did a short set. Here’s the last song:

The final show for this story is part of a monthly improv series that has been ongoing for quite some time. Exactly how long I don’t know, but I finally started attending regularly at the end of last year. I’m not sure what took me so long. These are my people. Each show I’ve been to has friends of mine, either playing or watching. These friendships go back decades to a time when I myself was booking a series much like this one. There’s a new generation behind this series, which is so great to see. To reflect on the continuity of this small improv music scene over the many years does my heart good. The local improv scene lives on, and I got to see this generational continuity in action, including Mike Gamble, a wonderful guitarist from Portland. I’m hoping to see him again tomorrow night at a different venue. More video? Until then, here’s what I saw on Tuesday, April 16:

As CJ would say … “Go see some shows!”