Dave Fischoff, Columbia College (viral:CULTURE)

I didn’t do a very good job getting the word out this time around, but Dave had a show today at Columbia College, a little after the official workday ended. He was appearing as part of the college’s viral:CULTURE symposium, and took the stage with two other musicians: Aaron Dilloway and Mark Solotroff.

When Liz and I arrived, Dilloway had already taken the stage. We opened the doors and basically walked in to a wall of feedback and sound. On entering, we slowly made our way to the tables/chairs, almost pushing our way through the noise.

I’m not sure I fully understood the context of Dilloway’s work. To me, it just felt like constant feedback and sharp piercing screeches. I assumed he had a particular design or intent in mind, but I wasn’t able to find it.

At one point, the feedback got so bad that Liz ended up covering her ears (a fair amount of people I could see were doing the same). Eventually, it go so bad that I had to do the same. At its worst, the feedback shrieked up impossibly high, and stayed there, holding to its intensity and volume. When I describe this, I’m not talking about the feedback as an accent, or as a note, or as any discernable move… it was just loud and strong, and it stayed there long beyond what was comfortable. It was there so long, I started to get kind of pissed off, and felt like Dilloway was doing it on purpose, just to hurt people. It was THAT loud.

To be fair, the sound setup was pretty terrible – and the kid on the boards really didn’t know what he was doing. But even so, I’m not so sure I understand what was going on. I tried to keep an open mind, and to roll with the sounds… but all it felt like to me was willful cacophony for its own sake.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen Dave perform. I’ve missed a few of his most recent shows, and this has to be the first one I’ve seen in years. To top things off, he was performing with another musician (Matt), which was also a new, recent change.

The drummer, I believe, was out of town for the show. But my understanding is that Dave is slated to play Schubas again, which excites me to no end. I had a great time the last time I saw him there which, believe it or not, was pre-blog.

Before Dave took the stage, we spotted Kristen and Brook at a nearby table. We camped out with them for Dave’s set, and also met up with his girlfriend, Amanda (who I met via MySpace a few weeks back, but only met in person today).

I had heard a lot of good things from Justin, and was delighted to finally meet here, ableit briefly.

I snuck up close to the stage for the last few songs, and sat underneath a table to try to get a better angle. A lot of the closeup shots are from that spot, actually. The video, unfortunately, didn’t turn out very well. The bass was, in my mind, a bit strong – due to the less-than-ideal sound setup they had in the place. Most of the audio I have is pretty distorted, and it’s hard to even make out the guitar or vocals.

Sucks too since the final few songs had, according to Dave, “a lot more energy” to them. Ah well. Guess you’ll just have to see what I’m talking about at Schubas.

After Dave and Matt left the stage, Mark Solotroff came on. I took a bit of video and tried to stick around for his set, but ultimately had the same reaction as I did when listening to Dilloway.

At the start of Solotroff’s set, there was some back and forth between him and the sound guy. At some random point, I guess things got worked out, because he stopped looking at the guy and focused his attention back to his keyboard. From my perspective, the same loud, white noise was going on throughout this entire process. If something changed or got fixed, I didn’t really hear it.

Listening to Dilloway and Solotroff, I was reminded of when I saw Animal Collective, many years ago. I didn’t quite get their live show
and ended up having a similar resistence. It’s a rare thing that I get angry; rarer still that music evoke that kind of reaction.

// Edit: Sidenote – according to Kristen, Brook, Amanda and Dave… Animal Collective’s albums, as opposed to their live shows, are very good.

As we left the show, Liz mentioned that her office/workplace was very close by. Not having been to her new place since she moved… we popped in for a quick peek. And, of course, I had my camera out.