Empty Bottle: Revisited

Chatted with Chelsea yesterday on IM, and found out she was going to go see Deerhoof at the Empty Bottle today. I ended up deciding to go as well, and got tickets. They’re a band I’ve heard a lot about (mostly from Chris and Justin and rypunked. And, given my note to myself recently… it seemed like a good idea.

En route, a found found cat poster. I seem to be drawing the cat karma recently.

Outside the Empty Bottle, I met up with Chelsea and we waited out in the cold for what seemed like a good 20 minutes. She had actually been inside the place earlier, but realized she had somehow stumbled inside when she shouldn’t have been in there.

The website advertised that the doors would open by 8PM, but we didn’t really walk inside until maybe 8:30 or so. We hung out a lot in the main room (and got a seat on the couch, no less). We kicked around getting our photos taken in the nearby photo booth, shooting some pool, or playing video games. We ended up throwing some quarters down on pinball and had a few good games.

The pinball machine is this old 1980’s “Playboy” machine, complete with beaded curtains and small flipbooks that show some nudity if you get the right ramps lit. As luck would have it, I had a pretty monumental game – multiball along with a few jackpots, and hit replay on my first game. We also matched, which allowed us to play a whole second game afterwards. I was doing pretty well the whole time, and got to show off the pinball skillz.

I didn’t get a chance to grab this shot, but there was a neighborhood cat who snuck inside the place. She was just walking around, ignoring everyone, and eventually made her way (according to Chelsea) into the Women’s bathroom to drink some water. I swear – there’s been this big cat theme around me, recently.

Near the end of the first opening act, we meandered over by the steps and got a place near the edge of the bar. I wasn’t paying much attention, but caught the tail end of Nedelle – she had a nice voice, but it was her cover of Smokey Robinson’s The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game that had me swooning. I really, really dug that cover, and it made me wish I had heard more of her opening stuff.

Around this time, we met up with Chris and Eric. Second and third acts were pretty tame. Sicbay seemed to be good at what they did – I just didn’t care for what they did. Mostly power-chord heavy riffs, they were a tight group – but nothing about any of the vocals really got my feet moving. Seemed like he was hitting D, A, and G repeatedly, in every song. On Fillmore reminded me of Animal Collective, in that I wanted to go with it… but couldn’t. I’m ok with people improvising, but I want to know there’s something going on behind the music other than outright noodling (which is what it seemed like to me). Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough to apprecaite what was happening, but I couldn’t get a sense of intent behind what I was hearing – it wasn’t two guys working off one another, it just seemed like two guys playing things willy-nilly.

Once again, a shot of the crowd. I like this sort of shot.

Right before Deerhoof took the stage, some jackhole walked over and stood right in front of us. Keep in mind this is a pretty packed place by now, and this guy seemingly came out of nowhere. Chris tried to talk to the guy, saying “hey – you just walked right in front of us,” and the dude’s response was “You got a problem?”

Seriously – what kind of jackass gets all aggro like this, at a show? Anyone who could interpret a comment from Chris as a rude threat has some serious fucking issues. This guy was a total winner.

It was a bit aggrivating at the start, but eventually my irritation faded enough where I was focusing more on the music and less on the jackass standing in front of us.

View between the crowd.

Satomi.

Overall, I hate to say it – but I didn’t like Deerhoof as much as I wanted to. They are an incredibly disciplined, tight tight group. And there were several moments where I was very floored by them (primarily parts where it was super quiet, with just vocals and percussion… and then the guitars and drums really kicked in). At several turns, it was some really cool, powerful stuff.

I have a hard time with Satomi’s voice, really. And the times where things got so chaotic and loud, I didn’t really care for it. I got into a neat conversation with Chris and Eric post-show, talking mostly about chaos and control, and how Deerhoof seemingly tries to push their music to the point where everything breaks down and explodes… but somehow pulls it all back together again.

Partly, hanging around with Chris more, I’ve found myself paying a lot more attention to drummers. I noted that the drummer from Deerhoof was grabbing at his cymbals (to silence them) with the same ferocity as when he was hitting them.

Cool show tonight, despite the fact that I didn’t dig the main act as much as everyone else. Still, I’m incredibly happy I went out again and made it a point to be out and about. I’m glad I went, and I’m glad I got to hang out with Chelsea – it’s been a while since we just hung out.