broken social scene

I saw some bands over the weekend at the University of Chicago. The student government had hired a bunch of big name acts for their annual end-of-the-spring celebration, held in a cordoned-off courtyard surrounded by Gothic buildings and filled with 18-22 year-olds. The perimeter of the alcohol-serving area (Miller Genuine Draft BLEECHHH) was lined with orange construction fencing; I'd forgotten the collegiate obsession with the regulation of alcoholic beverages and it felt quaint and patronizing to be penned off in a donkey farm. There were three tables on which approximately 3,000 Lunchables were stacked. These were free and were meant to substitute for dinner, since the concert ran from 6pm until 11pm. Some flavored colored water beverages were free too. I got a ticket because my friend, a grad student there, was able to snag a few extra cheap tickets with his ID card.

I saw Voxtrot, Santigold, and Broken Social Scene.
The first is a peppy pop rock outfit from Austin fronted by this cute young Pete Wentz lookalike in thin suspenders. I don't know why he is touching his face in all of these photos. You know, I was most grateful that he had no tattoos showing because that's not my aesthetic. They were good musicians and I liked the way this guy moved around, but I otherwise can remember nothing else about the band.

Santigold was much more interesting. Before she came out, her two backup dancers/singer took positions at extreme ends of the stage. They were wearing big sunglasses, and huge gold lame bubble bottom blouses tucked in the front into tight black pants. The outfits were ridiculous and not at all flattering (the two women looked like ring-ding-a-ling bells, and the tucked-in part of their blouses made it look like they had scrota). The only source of music was a saggy-breasted white male DJ nodding along with one ear cocked against his headphones and shoulder.

Santigold came out in a fitted gold lame croptop blazer and a tight paisley-patterned bodysuit. I had never heard of her before and my friend described her as "sounding like M.I.A." But actually, she sounded nothing like M.I.A.! Her music is dub! Mid-tempo drum and bass rhythms played by the DJ with simple melodies, sometimes more chanted than sung, by the singer. Some reverb. The backups mostly danced in a jerky robotic fashion and did very little singing. They punched the air as their faces remained completely expressionless. Santigold's voice was flexible and strong, and she was extremely courteous and appreciative in her banter with the crowd. It was overall a lively and entertaining effect.

There was then some milling about while the next band got set up. I am too old to be standing around for five hours listening to music. I especially can't do five hours of dodging around on tiptoes for a good view as 6'5" men stand directly in front of me. My feet were killing me and all I wanted to do was for all the young enthusiastic kids, singing along with an Andy Samberg boat-related song, to quiet down and sit down and let the nice old lady rest her bones. Don't you have some Friedrich Hayek to be reading, hrmm??

Anyway, after their busy tech ran around setting up six microphones and tuning and testing eight guitars, Broken Social Scene eventually came out. Some people really like them but I had never heard of them either. Their gimmick is that there are about twenty musicians in their collective, which allows them to create lush soundscapes live, or at least that is what the promotional materials said. Only about ten of them showed up this weekend but it was still enough for drums, three guitars, a bass, a saxophone, a trumpet player, and an organist, plus four part harmony, at any given time.

I suppose this was all to be admired, but I still could not generate too much enthusiasm for them. First, I have low tolerance for guitar vanity. I once walked out of a show at the Double Door because I was disgusted by the guitarist's matching black and white Gibson Les Pauls. They were not necessary. Second, Broken Social Scene appeared exactly as above: a crowd of nerdy indie rock dudes staring down at their guitars. When music writers write about them, they use words like "coaxing" to describe how they play their instruments, "soaring" to describe how they sing, and "lush soundscape" to describe their sound; all of these descriptors should give you an indication of how dull the experience of watching them actually is. There is only so much of droning perfect cadences with driving eighth notes by one guitarist, florid flourishes by another guitarist, and ringing bell tones by the third guitarist, rumbling organ fill, plus reverb-heavy vocal harmonies in sixths, that one can take. You know sometimes when you have a terrible headache you think it's better just to die than put up with your headache? During BSS's set, my feet-balloons hurt so much I fantasized about having a hacksaw and just sawing through my legs at my shins. One person tried to crowd surf - DANGEROUS, CHILDREN!! - and all I could think of was how relieving it would be to be carried off my feet for a moment. I would risk being dropped on my head from seven feet high for that!

I guess the moral of this story is that I am a crabby old crone. At one point during Canadian Foot Torture's set, I looked around at the faces of the people around me. I like doing this during movies, too. Just try turning around for a second, and what you see is often more dramatic than what is on the screen. What you see is pretty colored lights glowing off the faces of people collectively enthralled by a performance. They laugh simultaneously and their hearts all swell together when the lead singer's voice sweetly jumps one octave above his normal range. Nobody notices the crabby old crone puzzling over their behavior because they are all focused on something else. It reminds you of how close you are to human connection - it is literally all around you - but how you are not able to let yourself get there because you want to turn around and look at it rather than experience it. I hate clapping along to performances, you know. I never feel more alienated.

Speaking of alienation, I started a new blog to document my conversations with strangers: God si love. Enjoy!