100th Post! In Which Yours Truly Saw some Bands

The names of the bands have been withheld to protect the guilty but also because I just can't remember them. Their names, that is.

Now, this was a triple bill. This sort of thing makes it kind of hard to be objective, because if the first two bands are awful and the third is only mediocre, you're going to remember the third one as being a lot better than the first two, aren't you?

Yeah, pretty much. That's actually pretty much how it went.

The first band had five people up on stage; two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist and a drummer. There was no singer; one of the guitarists and the bassist shouted into the microphones a bit but because the mix was so godawful no one could make out what they were saying. It was punk with bits of musical talent showing through; three bars of power chords, one bar of synchronized single-note licks. I was less than impressed.

The second band featured a guy with a stupid haircut playing some sort of unholy cross between a Gibson Melody Maker and a Fender Stratocaster while growling into a microphone. Backing him up were the nerdiest-looking drummer I have ever seen and a bassist who was probably too talented for that noise. Their slowest song was their best one, but the guitarist's insistence on employing the "stumble around the stage and stare like a madman" approach was less than endearing.

Before I get into the third band, I'd like briefly to comment on a phenomenon I've noticed among guitarists. I'll call it the "insecurity-pretention index theory" and it basically goes like this: the further above their waist the guitar is, the more insecure the guitarist is. The further below their waist the guitar is, the more pretentious the guitarist is. Jimmy Page is the only person who pulled off being able to play guitar at his knees, and that's because he's an actual guitar hero (license him already, people). (Okay, blah blah Slash. Not really in the same league, but he deserves mentioning just cuz.) Angus Young is the only person who pulled off being able to play guitar across his chest, and it works because he's really, really short (blah blah Beatles, shut up). Angus' and Jimmy's guitars probably both hang at the same height relative to the ground (no, just kidding. Angus would have to be three feet tall for that to actually be the case).

Anyway this last band had three girls in it, which was three more girls than the other two bands had put together. Two of them played the drums, one of the drummers also played keyboards, and the third one played what at first glance appeared to be a knockoff of a Gibson Les Paul with single-coil pickups. It looked absolutely ginormous on the girl, who wore it rather high, and my first thought was, "okay, Angus Young effect. The guitar looks huge because the player is a dwarf."

Thing was actually a six-string bass. Might have been a baritone guitar but if you read this post you know what I think of baritone guitars. And since I did not find this band to be totally awful, I'd rather imagine that it was a six-string bass than acknowledge that it was probably a baritone guitar.

Two drummers, one of whom doubles as a keyboardist, and a bassist/singer. Halfway through the second song the bassist/singer stops and yells at the sound guy to turn up the microphone and the monitors. "Wow, the girl singer has more balls than either of the two guys," I thought, because the mix was simply godawful up until this point, but neither of the previous bands had particularly decent singers- no, scratch that, both the previous singers were terrible. Still, the singer with the highest-slung guitar yelled at the sound guy. My "insecurity-pretention index theory" went out the window.

So imagine lots of drums, the occasional keyboards, basslines that all sounded like Megadeth's "Peace Sells" of all things, and wailing (but I mean it in a good way) that sounds like some mournful ghost of an Egyptian Queen. Why that particular imagery, I have no idea. Suffice it to say that this was the best band of the night by a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong shot.

And then I went back to my room and tried to get to sleep, only to have to listen to some idiot drunk girl stumble around talking to her boyfriend on her cell phone and trying to find his room.