Thursday, August 09, 2007

My Brightest Diamond/Rasputina at the Grog Shop - August 7th, 2007

In the past, I haven't done concert reports and now I look back and wish I had.

I had totally forgotten that My Brightest Diamond was coming up, so Dan and I made a last minute decision to head down to the Grog Shop on Tuesday night to see the show.

While waiting outside, being serenaded with flaccid Christian rock from across the street, an SUV pulls up and this character wearing very light white pants and a white shirt gets out. He started frantically unpacking and bringing musical instruments thrift-store oddities (old TVs, odd cardboard creations, etc) and as he walks past us (there's no back loading door to the Grog Shop) we see that he's painted some sort of dark tears on the sides of his face. It turns out this was the opener, and seeing as it was less than an hour 'till the show was scheduled to start, he seemed to be late. Assisted by a young man who's shirt merely said "Shirt" and a girl we would learn was the drummer he sort of launched into a drama bomb, yelling at the girl that "you know, this isn't a race or anything, there's no need to run".

The Grog Shop is more of a club atmosphere than a larger venue such as the Agora or even the Beachland Ballroom. The stage for this event was a triangular setup in one corner and while visibility isn't very good behind the front rows, there probably isn't a bad sounding spot in the place.

Tight pants guy, whose name was Nicholas something or other played an opening set that was to say the least, fascinatingly entertaining for all of the wrong reasons. It was not bad...No, he is clearly a talented chap...It was just so immensely pretentious and overwrought that it could only be funny. His music was a sort of melding of goth, emo, some cabaret, and the vocal style of Coheed and Cambria. The saving grace was that his main instrument was the keyboard with some organ on the side, assisted by his cute drummer. Had he been the type to emo out with loud guitar shreding, it would have been horrid, but the way it came out, it was merely overwrought. At various points, he tore at his shirt and illuminated his face with a flashlight as if he was puring water over his head. Dude, I hope you're really not that twisted. Whatever else he lacked, he certainly played with emotion, banging at the keys as if he were in the party scene in Amadeus. At the end of the set, for some reason, he passed a cardboard cutout of the sun and an American flag around the crowd for some reason, which completed the pomposity. Nicholas/pants guy showed up with an immense amount of video equipment accompanied by over-serious looking video guys, all of which promptly disappeared after his set. I'm sure this will all show up on Myspace or something.

After that was over, Dan and I were treated to the excellent sounds of My Brightest Diamond, the reason we came. Shara Worden came out alone, explaining that sometimes she tours with a backing band and sometimes she works alone. I didn't have a problem with this because with fewer sounds going on, it was easier to hear her voice, which is an instrument of the utmost beauty. She had no guitar tech...She didn't even have someone running her merch table (more on that later), it was just her and some guitars.

Her set was a good mixture of material from her album last year, Bring Me The Workhorse, and other material from Edith Piaf, a song based on an opera by Maurice Ravel (this one, I think), and some other stuff in French that was enchanting. Songs from the album included Golden Star, Disappear (during which she had an entertaining episode with a hiccup) and the one I really wanted to hear, Something of an End. I had been waiting all day to hear those telephone trills.

Her on-stage presence was very interesting...Sort of a cute, exotic, very peculiar thing that was a nice balance to some of the melancholy present in some of her work. My only complaints about her set were that it could have been longer (of course, sets can always be longer :)) and it seemed like only about half the crowd was paying attention to her playing...There was a lot of noise in the back, which was annoying given the softness and detail in her singing.

Last was the main act, Rasputina...I have to admit, I did no research and basically had no clue who they were. I was fascinated to find out that they're a cello rock trio that seems to bridge freak folk and alternative rock. There are two women on cellos (that night wearing amazon warrior garb) which they can turn electric and one man on drums. They asked everyone to sit, which improved viability, but meant that I spent much of their set sitting in a puddle of some unidentified alcoholic substance.

Rasputina's music was immensely creative and highly humorous. I've long known that adding classical instruments to rock is a sure fire way to make you're music 200% cooler. I tend to appreciate bands that can rock out without guitars, and the moment I realized those shredding sounds are coming from an electric cello it blew me away. Later at home, when I listened to some of the music I had downloaded, I realized that on their records you can't tell how seriously they're taking this and it feels a little pretentious, but live, there's a certain level of silliness built into the whole spectacle that is immensely fun to watch. Frontwoman Melora Creager filled the spaces between songs with witty, dry humor (as a single mother and a self-employed musician, I obviously have a lot of free time on my hands) that completed the element of parody. The high point of their set for me, not being familiar with their work, was a cover of Pink Floyd's touching, yet seemingly omnipresent song, Wish You Were Here.

In the end, I was glad I knew nothing about Rasputina before seeing them live because I felt like I had discovered something. Sometime during their set, it hit me that this is how it was before the Internet...You would go to clubs, see bands you've never heard of and discover what's new.

After Rasputina was finished, Dan and I headed toward the merch table (always one of the highpoints of our indie-concert experiences) and discovered that Shara was acting as her own merch-person. The first thing we noticed is that she's actually rather short. As Dan bought a shirt, she noticed his Decemberists shirt and reminded us that she had toured with them. He told her that we had seen her on Austin City Limits with Sufjan Stevens (which was really the start of our MBD fandom) and then lacking something light enough for her to sign in black felt pen, had her sign his Frank Sinatra-style fedora. I also bought a shirt and asked if she would sign a copy of Bring Me The Workhorse if I bought it. She said yes, and proceeded to do some fancy moves to get the plastic wrapping off the CD...Coolness. She signed the picture inside where she's wearing the dragonfly wings (view the original in ultra hi-res goodness), which is one of my favorites. I told her I love the cover photo (because it's the sort of thing you could put on your wall and it would be good art as well as display your music hipness) and she said that unfortunately she sold out of the LP at the previous stop on the tour.

Later in the car, I would kick myself thinking about all the other things I could have quickly mention in iur short time talking to her...Her recent broken leg, the fact that we had come to see her (most the the people there seemed to be Rasputina fans), how much I had enjoyed the vidoes she did with La Blogotheque, etc.

All-in-all, we had a great, relatively cheap night. I love the fact that you can have these neat little experiences in the indie world with so little of the pomposity of most of modern rock. It all seems more humble, more down-to-earth, more real. This is what music should be about.

Also, I've got to say that the Coventry area of Cleveland Heights (my parents old stomping grounds) is amazing. It has all of the vibrance that downtown Cuyahoga Falls lacks and a scale that dwarfs Highland Square in Akron. If Robart and friends were really smart, they'd try to copy Coventry in downtown CF (hint: we need a real venue down there, not an open air stage, but something like the Grog Shop or the Beachland Ballroom).

Yeah This Is Awesome

I'm not usually a fan of forum in-jokes, but this is awesome.