at 9:30 club, 8/15/2006
We saw X a few months ago, same club, same "greatest hits revue" style show. The good news: they still sound great. The other news: well, we'd seen it before - and recently.
Rollins band raised some issues for me. Let's start with the easy stuff:
- They totally rocked.
- The band is excellent, Marvin Gibbs (bass) and Chris Haskett (guitar) are terrific - and make for a super heavy combination. I always loved Haskett's approach to guitar lines - he rarely plays chords (fairly unusual for a hardcore / metal type sound, but Gibbs has it covered for him) and his lines are interesting. Sim Cain is a heckuva drummer, although it seemed a little over the top with metal cliches (two china cymbals, two floor toms, double bass pedal - all used exactly as you might expect) but let's not overlook the fact that they are a super-tight well oiled machine and they rocked as they are known to do, which is better than most.
- Rollins performed with incredible intensity.
Now the harder issues to sort through: I guess part of the problem is nostalgia. Much of my motivation for going to this concert was to rectify the fact that I hadn't seen Rollins live before - back when his work was of greater importance to me than it is now. Not that the work is any less relevant; adrenaline fueled songs about hate, anger, deception, and various shades of misanthropy are as timeless as ever. My own appetite for punk / hardcore / metal has diminished over the years, and I'm wondering what that means now?
The opening act, The Riverboat Gamblers, play straight ahead (retro?) punk, but they're young guys. It's as if they are trading only in signifiers: we are punks, we wear skinny jeans and all black, we play kinda sloppy but fast and loud and the singer romps all over the club, climbing up anything he can get his hands or feet on. The music? not much there... So what does this mean? Does "punk rock" not mean anything anymore? Has it been so fully assimilated into mainstream culture that there is no viable way for the music to retain any sort of meaning as cultural criticism? Maybe they were just a bad example?
It was with this preface that Rollins took the stage, playing a rapid fire litany of old songs. Good old songs that I have a special fondness for. And they were played as well as ever, and with the same intensity. But the context is different now, isn't it? Maybe that's the issue... 20 years ago, the 9:30 club was a very different place (literally), and it represented a certain "scene." There was a certain type of music that thrived there, and there was a certain subculture around that. Now it's a much much larger venue with no particular stylistic focus. Any act that can fill the place will play there, whether it's rock, punk, pop, alt-country, hip-hop, reggae, etc. Isn't this also an analogy for a concurrent cultural shift? Is there really any particular subculture around "underground" rock music, or is it just a fashion statement?
I don't have any answers.. haven't really figured out what the questions are either, but the evening left me kind of confused.
Mark Jenkins covered the show for the Washington Post. Click Here for his review.
2 comments:
I shared your appreciation for the musicians in Rollins Band live, especially Chris Haskett. I saw the show in Cincy last Saturday and wrote about my impressions on my blog. You may find it interesting 'cause nostalgia plays a central role in my post.
I know what you're getting at regarding the old 9:30 Club, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. They always had a wide variety of acts. Trouble-Funk and EU used to play there. So did blues folks like Danny Gatton. They've always been all over the map. It's just a little more obvious now.
I was at this show too. Had a good time and the bands were great, but it made me feel kind of old. I'll bet half the crowd was in grade school when I was seeing these guys at the old club - lol.
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