Live Show Log, November 2016

11 4 16 Olivia Mainville & the Aquatic Troupe #5 Kalamazoo Valley Museum, Kalamazoo Fun show! Little kids dancing in the aisles. Best since Old Dog, even with borrowed drummer. 6 pm, which led to Double Show Friday, which led to.....

11 4 16 MEGAN DOOLEY Harmony Hall, Grand Rapids I’m already forgetting, only three weeks later, what led me to go see her play. Cross associations with other musicians? Vague recollection of seeing her play in a storefront during Artprize year before last? She’s just awesome. The definition of a working, play-it-as-it-lays gigging musician who is in it for the songs. Fiance on bass, relaxed and ready for anything, including getting a whole bar shrieking along to the Little Mermaid. A little older and wiser than most of the acts I follow, but not jaded: just seeing through the BS the world puts out and choosing to be amused by it. I got the last copy of the second printing of her CD. David Barrenger was kind enough to get it from his car. Songs About Drugs! Make It Happen! megandooleymusic.com

11 11 16 Megan Dooley #2 Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum, South Haven I went into this one completely blind off a Facebook Event. Fundraiser for a cool, strange little museum dedicated to a dude from South Haven who became head botanist at Yale or something. Painfully obvious I had just seen her the week before, but she didn’t assume stalking at all! I think. Great sound in an ancient home. Free wine! (hic) And it was early, so Double Show Friday took me to.....

11 11 16 THE JETBEATS/SAILOR KICKS Tip Top Deluxe Bar & Grill, Grand Rapids Carlton Macksam, who I met at Dooley’s Harmony Hall show, recommended this band to me, and when I showed up, I sat with him: does that count as actually attending a show with another human being for the first time in 3 1/2 years? They were flat out amazing: zeroed in on the Beatles’ sound in 63 and 64, but with a fire lit under their asses. Punk energy welded to the greatest melodies ever written, and some damn fine originals in the Beatles style. Like a villanelle, it’s hard to stick to a rigid formula and come up winning, but success is theirs. It was a CD release party, yet the band was basically breaking up and reforming at the same time. The vagaries of lower-level showbiz. Sailor Kicks were very good, much younger, retro sound (more ska on the CD, which I did not pick up on at all live). The singer very kindly gave me their CD, which promptly got stuck in my car player. Thinnest CD I have ever seen. Thanks anyway dude! www.thejetbeats.com/ 
https://thesailorkicks.bandcamp.com

11 12 16 Crane Wives #13 Rare Bird Brewpub, Traverse City I really should not have gone to this show. It was a two plus hour drive and I was sick as a dog. But. I had a really nice walk around town during my favorite time of the year, and the music was great as always. I needed a Crane Wives show after the election basically ensured the United States has no future. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we grow our crops with Brawndo.

11 18 16 Megan Dooley #3 Bookends Resale Shop, Parchment This one vies with Muskegon’s Blank Wall Concert Series for weirdest show: Dooley and her amp and her fiance tucked into the back corner of a consignment shop, between a kitchen table and a commode. (I still might buy that table.) We seem to be becoming, like, actual friends, which is, awesome? Disconcerting? Awesomely disconcerting? Went in blind off Facebook again. Had a good time anyway. Ate a lot of meatballs. Put away the knives if ya know what’s good for yas.

11 25 16 PLAIN JANE GLORY Grand Armory, Grand Haven Welp, this one falls under the heading of Can’t Win Em All...and it’s my fault, not theirs. This is a Muskegon husband-and-wife duo who play Americana that veers close to straight country without quite crossing the center line into Sucktown. He is an elfin little energy sprite who plays drums with his feet while guitaring and singing/harmonicizing. She is a Joss Stone lookalike in a print dress who plays an ancient violin. There were about half a dozen people there really into them, and a whole bar full of people roaring at the WMU game. They put out the best harmonies I have heard beyond the Crane Wives in years, truly magic when they intertwine, him often going high. They write perfectly pleasant little ditties. But. And this is a Bertha-sized but. About four songs in, I noticed two big stickers on the dude’s guitar case: CHOOSE LIFE and DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD. My pleasure center shut right down. I’m sure they are very nice people, and they are undeniably talented musicians. But it takes good people supporting bad people to put orange Cheeto despots into power, and the election is still too raw a wound for me to have any objectivity whatsoever. Like I said, my problem, not theirs. Hey Trumpites, you don’t have to stick to Ted Nugent any more, here’s some really good tunes! I wish them well, truly, but this baby killer is taking a hard pass.

11 26 16 CHANCE JONES/THE REAL LAZY GENIUS Benefit show for Jazz Johnson, local hairstylist Long Road Distillers, Grand Rapids Chance Jones is a band I found only through the old last.fm, which had a good selection of GR music; their playing-out period was between my two scenes. (I stopped going out around 2000 when I got a computer and spent my nights wooing my future ex-wife from 2000 miles away.) I never saw them live, but I played their one album quite a bit. Not as much as the people there tonight for this one-off benefit show: they screamed along like I do with the Crane Wives. The crowd was ten to fifteen years younger than me, a change from the usual fifteen to twenty. The band’s leader, Joshua Berge, is now an actor of some renown, so this was a rare occasion. Their sound: what if the Hold Steady were from the Mitten? What if Nick Cave cracked a smile once in a while? There is a louche quality, especially on the CD, but it’s leavened by Midwestern earnestness. A Sergio Leone movie plays on a loop in his head, and his talented bandmates helped him exorcise the Fun Demons in a big way. I knew nothing at all about the Real Lazy Genius, still don’t really, but I really liked them. I feel like I have no frame of reference for rawk any more, since I follow so many gentler acts around now (though look out for Emilee’s teeth). So, here’s a stab: Modest Mouse after some time in a rock tumbler. Less jagged, very tuneful, Pixies on shrooms. It sounds great in the club, but I fear would never sell in the bigger world. Rock is dead as a commercial force at this level of experimentation; simpler arrangements rule the day. Both bands prominently featured a woman on backing vocals and percussion, more proof that gangs of boys who can barely play their guitars are the dinosaurs now. I felt a lot more lonely at this one than usual. For better or worse, and to a greater or lesser degree of self-delusion, I feel I’m becoming friends with the bands I follow; at the very least they smile when they see me and don’t call the cops. (Dooley in particular seems to have adopted me like a lost puppy.) I knew no one at all in that room. I would say I miss my wife, but she never wanted to leave her cave to see a band unless she was damn sure she already loved their music. So, yeah, great music, not sure it was a great time. It will be better next week at Doomy Doomy Doom. https://chancejones1.bandcamp.com/ and https://thereallazygenius.bandcamp.com/