Once Bitten…
As I announced to some random coworkers from the classified department upon my arrival to the Pitch headquarters today, it’s official: I have come to work drunk. Shortly after I made the declaration and showed off my rad lip wound from last night (more on that later), my hangover kicked in and I began to feel dreadful.
Here’s the reason for all this: the Record Bar rocks. Last night, they brought in two Canadian bands, Ensemble and Junior Boys, and it was unbelievably excellent. It was so good that by the time the lights came on, I was discussing the meaning of life with a horticulturalist who was either enthralled, bored to tears, or too drunk to know how she felt.
Ensemble (pronounced the French way) charmed us with a Low-meets-Air kind of sound (low air, whoa) that involved many pre-recorded sounds because the band’s touring as a trio rather than a, uh, whatever they usually are, or whatever they were when they recorded their new album, Ensemble, which you should definitely get. I’d point you to their site, but, man, that’s a hard name and album combo to Google. I talked with lead singer and guitarist Olivier before and after the show. He’s a helluva nice guy. I apologized before they played because, as always, I felt solely responsible for the lack of people there (luckily, enough filed in later to make for a respectable gathering), and he immediately said, in a French accent that killed me, “I don’t care. We’ve played some interesting venues, and we’ve played some seedy dives.”
During their set, I got into a conversation with some kids, including the aforementioned horticulturalist, about the line from Ameliethat was translated to “Without you, today’s emotions would be the scurf of yesterday’s.” We wanted to know what “scurf” meant. I had a hunch it meant dead skin, but the horticulturalist, being philosophical by nature, thought it meant…I can’t remember what…mauvaise foi, perhaps? Anyway, I availed myself of Olivier’s French and asked him if he knew the original French word that was spoken in the film. He didn’t, but he had a laptop, so we looked it up. The original word is pelicules, which can mean either dandruff or film, as in camera film, which puts a new meaning to the quote. But I’m looking for it now online and all I can find is “peau morte,” which is “dead skin.” Eh bon.
Junior Boys rocked. It was chill, seductive dance music, played by a white-suited singer who mostly plays a Rickenbacker bass that looks like it got worked over by the KGB, a keyboardist-everythinger dude with a bunch of shit and a drummer. I wish the boys from Namelessnumberheadman had been there, taking notes about gear (not that they need any, but they’d have liked it). The beats were solid disco, set to level conducive to stay-in-one-spot grooving — unless you were the only middle-aged people there, a couple who jitterbugged all night. A lot of merch was sold. I tried to buy something for $10 but the Boys weren’t having it. The cheapest thing was $12. Assholes! Ah well, they played a great show.
Afterwards, I went to possibly the greatest party ever. It was just a few blocks away, in the second floor of a house. The Awesome Zacharino Phillips had the in and he let me tag along with him and the Great John Hulston of the Anodyne Record Company. In the back of the apartment, I discovered, after some hours in the main areas, a bedroom thoroughly bespeckled with a glow-in-the-dark substance, as if earlier in the evening, someone had someone had devastated a swarm of lightning bugs with a tennis racket in there. I don’t remember much of what happened in the magical room beyond tossing some glowy necklaces into the ceiling fan. A guy was lying comatose on the bed, probably exhausted from the insect assault. I checked later and he was still there. (Good work, hero. Get some rest.)
The rest of the house: strobe lights, Michael Jackson songs, men and women dancing like werewolves. I actually overheated up in that bitch, but I could not stop. My pressure gauge was at critical — I was about to blow like the containment unit in Ghostbusters. Instead, I grabbed a beer from the fridge and got freaky. Repeatedly. I sincerely apologize to all the women of Kansas City for my getting freaky last night, especially the ones who were there and might have been, um, unintentionally helping me — all except the one who bit my lip. Repeatedly. She already got me back.
I dedicate this band’s new album, Heaven is for Easy Girls, to her in hopes that she will take its title to heart and not bite me again (so hard).
