Thursday night at the Crystal Ballroom was a study in contrasts. Three bands, playing three different styles of music, at three very different points in their careers. With such a format so strongly suggested, what is a poor music writer to do but follow the course that has been laid out? With that in mind, I present my reflections on the evening, a concert review in three parts.
Part 1: The Promise
Is there a better way of discovering great new music than showing up for the opener? There is always a tendency to stay away until the meat and potatoes of the lineup are due, but to have done so on Thursday night would have been a grave mistake indeed. The Henry Clay People opened the evening with exactly the kind of energy that a fresh, under-recognized band from Los Angeles County can be expected to bring. It may be expedient, in describing this outstanding act, to first get a couple of likely misconceptions out of the way. First: there is nobody in the band by the name of Henry Clay. However, if one sufficiently digs the band, it may be acceptable to define oneself as a “Henry Clay Person.” Second: this is not a folk band. I don’t know why, but it’s the kind of band name that seems like it might lead people to that mistaken conclusion. Not a folk band. What The Henry Clay People are is an excellent, ragtag bunch of Southern Californians with long hair, flannel shirts, a fair bit of swagger and a beverage in every free hand. They play a kind of music that used to be referred to as “hard rock.” About time somebody brought it back.
The band, in a constant state of semi-drunkenness – they claimed a friend’s birthday as an excuse, even leading the crowd in a rendition of “Happy Birthday” – played with a combination of enthusiasm and recklessness that has been a hallmark of rock ’n’ roll for almost five decades, and it was all the more entertaining for the fact that not a bit of it carried a whiff of pretense. Guitarist Andy Siara staggered his way around the stage, kicking the cymbals with his cowboy boot (a maneuver that was executed to perfection), standing atop the keyboard bench and being helped to a pint of beer as he played (execution somewhat lackluster) and somehow staying upright as his older brother, vocalist Joey Siara, suddenly hopped on his back in a moment of poor judgment. For a lesser band, the antics would have stolen the show, but there was so much substance to the set that the performance itself always stayed at the forefront.
The Henry Clay People found themselves in what is often an awkward situation, opening for a pair of bands to which they sound nothing alike. That didn’t hold them back at all. The band’s prowess was exemplified when, leading into the final track of their set, Joey Siara asked the crowd to count them into the song: “the louder you count to four, the harder you love rock ‘n’ roll music!” The crowd met his challenge with gusto, and there can be no doubt that the band notched up a number of new fans at that moment. With a combination of enthusiasm, sincerity, and charisma, they easily won over an audience that was not their own, and it was only to the band’s credit that they were so obviously grateful for the warm reception they received.
Part 2: The Letdown
Erstwhile cult icons Against Me! followed. Some full disclosure will be necessary here, because undoubtedly some of the Against Me! fans in attendance on Thursday will assert that their set was very good indeed. I have been an Against Me! fan for the better part of a decade. Does that make me better, or make my enthusiasm for the band more genuine, than fans that have only been into them for the last couple albums? No. What it does mean, however, is that I remember when going to an Against Me! show meant being surrounded by hundreds of people in black t-shirts who knew by heart every last song and carried it with them like gospel as they made their way through the world. And that, I’m afraid, is not what Against Me! is about anymore. An excerpt from a blog entry I wrote after seeing Against Me! in 2005 will suffice to illustrate what this band once meant to its fans:
Last Friday night, I stood on a pile of broken beer bottles next to an overturned garbage can and watched one of my favorite bands put on maybe the best show I've ever seen. It seemed like everybody around me knew every word to every song, and the band would have done fine to simply do away with vocals altogether and let the crowd take it. Sometimes they did. They let fans onstage, they let fans take the mic, they created this amazing atmosphere with simple folk songs, punk rock energy and sincere lyrics that most bands could never have written, let alone stand behind. To stand there and witness that performance, and know that most everyone there was seeing their favorite band, was an amazing experience. To feel that there was really something shared between band and audience that wasn't fake, shallow or contrived was even better. If you don't have a band, or a movie, or anything - anything - that means this much to you, you aren't living the human experience.
That show took place two months after the band’s final studio album for Fat Wreck Chords was released. In retrospect, it represents the end of an era. Subsequent releases on Sire Records have been less personal and more pop-oriented. They have been fairly decent pop-punk records. They don’t excite me, but they’re alright. Their performance, however, was not alright. It was soft. It sounded over-produced, which is a terrible thing for a punk show to sound like. The band looked like they were having a good time, but lacked the passion that was so evident in earlier shows. They’ve been accused of selling out, and while I don’t care to level that accusation myself, I’ll note the following: when the old classic “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong” was played early in the set, nobody around me sang along. Fans that seemed so enthusiastic for the newer material did not, apparently, have sufficient interest to acquaint themselves with the back catalog. And the band, fully aware of that dynamic, catered to it. They played a mere two songs from Reinventing Axl Rose, conspicuously leaving out the sing-along anthems that had previously been the centerpieces of their live performances. Finally, on “Sink.Florida.Sink,” Tom Gabel did step away from the mic and invite the crowd to sing along. The longtime fans identified themselves, singing aloud with fists in the air, while the majority of the audience passively watched. Where were all the joyous, black-clad, angst ridden devotees that I sang along with that night five years ago? Not here.
“Selling out,” I think, is frequently an absurd accusation, as often as not a fiction produced by offended parties who’ve had the good fortune not to have to publicly make difficult decisions. But Against Me! has made a choice, and that choice has seen them turn away from one audience in favor to another. It’s up to the band themselves, I suppose, to decide whether that choice was a good one, but I don’t like it one bit. And as for their new fans, well, I’ll not look down on them. I’ll not tell them that the band isn’t as good now as it used to be, but I will tell them this: the band they saw on Thursday night was fully capable of putting on the best show any of them had ever seen. It was by choice, and choice alone, that they didn’t do it.
Part 3: The Anticlimax
Would it be an exaggeration to claim that I was emotionally exhausted at this point? Would it make sense if I said that the pastel hues of Silversun Pickups was hardly what was called for after the preceding acts? Would it be unfair to call this an emasculated imitation of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream? It was clear, in spite of the large crowd that showed up early, that the vast majority of the audience was there not for the openers, but for Silversun Pickups. And let’s give credit where credit is due, these fans were loyal. When the houselights dropped and the curtain behind the stage lit up in pastel blues and greens (see? I’m not making this up!), the sheer number of digital cameras that could be seen raised above the crowd from my position at the back of the room was astounding. But the music – it was just so soft at the beginning, so lacking in anything resembling edginess that, in conjunction with the pleasantness of the light show playing out behind the band, it practically beat me into a sense of peacefulness that was strangely objectionable after the emotional highs and lows, respectively, of The Henry Clay People and Against Me!.
Things did pick up. By the second or third track, the band was in full swing, sounding for all the world like Smashing Pumpkins in their heyday, although the vocals, it must be said, left more to be desired than Billy Corgan’s ever did. That minor drawback aside, though, the band did seem to be in their element. It was unmistakable that they were happy to be there, and their audience was thrilled. Vocalist Brian Aubert even managed to show some chops, by way of clever banter, offering the standard “WTF” commentary regarding the conspicuous moat that defends vulnerable children from alcohol at Portland’s all ages venues. He even managed to question the manliness of such adult males who chose to take up a position on the underage side of the room, which stands out to me as a highlight second only to the removal of one particularly belligerent individual who had been having rather too much fun on the grownup’s side.
Shenanigans aside, though, Silversun Pickups was simply not bringing anything to the table that had any business being there. Hardcore fans will beg to differ, and there were a lot of them, but however groundbreaking Smashing Pumpkins may have been in 1993, it’s hard to grasp the urgency of a second rate version of that band 17 years down the road. Their music was fine, and their performance was tight, and if I were deeply in need of a Pumpkins fix, I suppose I might be persuaded that this would hold me over until the next tour. But as something notable in itself, well, this just didn’t hit that particular spot. It was an anticlimactic ending to what turned out to be a rather surprising and thought-provoking evening. To that end, anyway, it fit right in, and for all that, I’m glad I was there to see it.
