Oh I'm Bad

Okay so admittedly this is a week late. Fuck you, I have things to get done. This is a double bill too, so prepare yourself for greatness. Tonight, we dine in Hell...

Wavves, Great Scott, Sunday September 27th

As a note, I'm doing this in a different order. You'll see why.

1. The Place:
The Great Scott, like all tiny bizarro venues in Boston, is relatively odd in shape. From a bird's eye view it's a lowercase D, with the tallest point being the stage and the rounded bottom, the bar. Subsequently, fans get pretty well funneled into a straight line from the exit to the stage, myself at the latter (a decision I would come to regret). It was clean, people were nice, and when I bitched on Twitter that I didn't get to keep my ticket stub, not one but three different people from GS either Direct Messaged me or replied with apologies. So that was pretty nice.

2. The Players
I don't know what the fuck that first thing was. There was a projector with kaleidoscopic images of what appeared to be a dead body dressed as a scarecrow interspersed with a small child picking fruit. Sort of a Jesus-meets-Tom-Joad thing. There was a guy with a keyboard and what looked like the CPU off something from the 80s. He made sounds for forty five minutes. Laughter was barely stifled on my part. Ridiculous. Ganglians, a shaggy but relatively neat and twingly sort of trio from California were next. Scuzzy California surf rock, but still with a little bit of polish. Stood like mannequins of the dead but could have been worse. Wavves had some technical difficulties, but for all his reputation as a psychopath, Nathan Williams was pretty swell about the whole thing. Arm still partially slung from a skateboarding mishap, he bashed the holy fuck out of his set, which barely clocked in at an hour, difficulties included. He apparently was recovering from a cold (or so he said) but at that volume you couldn't tell. If there was anything new in there, it was drowned in feedback, but was still easily the most enjoyable thrashing I've had in a while.

3. The People
There are things I can and cannot rock at a concert. Non-committal indie arm swinging I cannot. Head banging and pogoing, I can. Taking a phone call during a concert, particularly during a song, I cannot. Shouting odes of admiration or witty commentary I may be able to, depending on the statement (IE: YOU'RE SO HOT at Keith Murray is not okay, but SONDRE LERCHE COULD DESTROY THE WORLD at Sondre Lerche I totally could). Damn concertgoers challenged me a bit here. I remember at a fairly awkward Ted Leo concert, TL himself totally dissolving any momentum they had had by stopping and asking people to stop moshing. He did it eloquently, which just endeared his 45-year-old-ass to myself further, his words being something like "There's a certain dumb-jock element in all of us, I know, but come on. They say Boston is the land of 1,000 dances, and you're going to tell me that's the best one you can come up with."

Muse was all headbangers and devilhorns at the Avalon, back when there was an Avalon. Nary a foot was lifted.

Wavves...well, to be honest, Wavves was fifty minutes of kicks to the neck and elbows to the teeth I'm actually pretty chuffed with. Some of the more fluffy bunny elements in the crowd seemed genuinely hurt and upset over the amount of would-be stage diving going on, but come on. Wavves is the closest thing to punk rock this side of 1980, indie rags be damned. The next morning I couldn't really turn my head to the right, but that faded with time. I lost my shit a little bit, I will admit. Somehow I ended up moving from the center of the crowd to up against the wall on the right, which ended up being fortuitous in that I missed out on the melee that ensued in the middle, plus I was dead in front of NW. Guy's simultaneously the cutest and the funniest looking motherfucker I've ever met.

Overall, despite the bruises, despite a hipster peeling himself out of a flannel jacket to reveal a flannel shirt in the exact same pattern, despite the technical difficulties, the show was pretty fucking great. I probably wouldn't even say despite. Perhaps, like all things Wavves, it is because of, rather than in spite of, those imperfections that make them so good.


Up next is Ra Ra Riot, two days ago, at the Paradise.

Until then, stay lovingly soaked in vinegar.
--WF
Ketchup's just gross

Wavves - So Bored