Months ago, I heard about this Hopscotch music festival happening in Raleigh, North Carolina. Checking the list of bands, there were all sorts of “interesting” acts, but nothing really compelling, and really I’m getting too old for this kind of thing, right? But then I saw that Versus was going to be playing. Oh. Versus was this band out of NYC back in the early 90’s that signed to Merge Records back in the day and made quite a few records. I have their earliest couple singles and they are some of the best things ever committed to vinyl. Just pure pop rock gems. So once I saw Versus was on the bill, I went ahead and bought my $100 ticket to the festival “just in case” it turned out I could go. I figured I could sell it to someone else if I couldn’t go.
Then I just let that ticket sit. September got closer and nothing was interfering, so I was going to go to the festival after all!
Thursday night:
I had to (well, wanted to) be in Atlanta Thursday afternoon for a lecture by some guy, and so left Atlanta at 4:30pm. Drove 6 hours straight from Atlanta to Raleigh, arriving at 10:50pm. Parked semi-legally, sprinted into the hotel to pick up my pre-paid all-access pass, 10 minutes to spare before they closed down the pickup desk! Dropped my bags in the room and head back out into the night.
First stop: see Alvarius B (aka Alan Bishop, formerly of Sun City Girls) at The Hive, a “venue” with the worst sightlines I’ve ever experienced, and I’m six foot two! Might as well be a hallway. Met up with old friend Scott W. there, who had also driven up from Atlanta earlier in the day. Anyway, from what I could hear and not see, Mr. Bishop was vicious fun.
On Scott’s advice, we then trucked several blocks away to catch Ben Chasny (of Six Organs Of Admittance) at Berkeley Cafe. Meh. Freak folk is OK, I’m not wild about it, especially when it’s just acoustic guitar, but it passes the time.
Next, haul ass across downtown the big hardcore show — Trash Talk. A late addition to festival, the Hopscotch people had some sort of lately epiphany (or booking debacle) and paid Trash Talk to fly out from CA just for this show. The bands was literally on the east coast for like 10 hours.
Friday daytime shows:
Bill Orcutt / Chris Corsano / Al Bishop trio — good freaky jazz noise
Chuck Johnson — local acoustic guitar folk god; intense and very very good
Guardian Alien — I saw them by mistake, essentially, when I showed up to see another band but the venue was WAY behind on their schedule. They were very strange (and exciting) and I didn’t really understand what was going on. Hailing from NY (Brooklyn?), there were three guys (guitar, bass, drums) playing fairly weirded out polyrhythmic rock jazz noise, and eventually I noticed a woman off to the left who was rather animated. I hadn’t noticed her at first because she was crammed into a side spot of the “stage”, not a stage at all rather a cleared out spot in this basement bunker of a bar. At first I thought she was just a groupie enjoying the show from the side of the stage, but then I made out that she had some electronics that she was noodling with. Eventually, suddenly, she burst out of her little corner to join the three guys in what I can only describe as a full on freak out. Screaming et cetera. If this band makes it to Atlanta I will go see them again!
David Daniell + Oren Ambarchi — I ran into DD at the hotel check-in on Thursday night. I know him from my Georgia Tech and WREK days, and he tipped me off to this show. I’m glad I went, very cool guitar drone which is what they are both known for.
Gross Ghost — I thought I might like this band, based on reviews. I did not.
Friday night:
Built To Spill at City Plaza (open air) — I liked Treepeople enough, but I just have never cared one whit about this band. “You Were Right” is a fun singalong though.
Jesus And Mary Chain at City Plaza (open air) — and what will probably be the most blasphemous thing written here, I don’t care for JMC much either. Well, I like their records, just don’t give a damn about them or this tour.
Black Skies at Pour House — stoned beard metal, really blissed out stoned, I mean more than you might already expect, and grinning like idiots as a result. Enjoyed.
Pallbearer at Pour House — more metal, a bit wanky as I recall; the singer had a seriously good voice and the bassist was playing as if the Holy Trinity was about to burst out of his chest. This band will probably go places, but I don’t need to see them again.
Jackie Chain at The Hive — speaking of supposedly fun things that I will never do again … After this “show” I decided I was not going back to this venue. The audience basically stands a hallway, with no stage riser, so if the performer happens to be sitting (as Alvarious B was last night) or the performer is short (as in Mr. Chain here) then forget actually seeing anything. I’m six foot two, come on. Oh and, I’m serious, the venue did not have the sound system turned on for this hip hop act! And I guess the guys on stage had no idea, with their monitors up, that the room wasn’t hearing anything, just watching these morons goof around the stage like they had talent. What a debacle. I do wish everyone involved a bright future, it just won’t be intersecting with mine anymore.
The Atlas Moth at Kings Barcade — Very good metal-ish heavy rock. Would see again A++
John Darnielle at Fletcher Opera Theater — Listen, I like John Darnielle as much as anyone. I have been following The Mountain Goats since the cassette culture days and their frequent appearances on the pages of the Ajax mailorder catalog (which I still have somewhere). But dear God please kill me if I ever am forced to ever attend another show by them. You want to know who has the most insufferably sycophantic fans in the world? Apparently John does. I just hope he can keep his head screwed on right, it must be tough with all that constant fawning. On piano and vocals, he played a selection of metal covers. Ha ha.
Killer Mike at Lincoln Theatre — meh.
Saturday day:
Started out wandering around downtown heading towards the sound of bands playing. It turned out that they had two separate blocks cordoned off for free street shows. Cool, I had no idea! The Martin Street stage in particular had a good lineup, so this was going to allow me to catch some bands that I wouldn’t be able to in the evening, due to scheduling conflicts.
In theory. In reality, while they had listed what bands were playing, they inexplicably did not list what order they were playing in. Soooo, five bands were playing in five hours, but I didn’t know who was when and no way was I going to squander my whole afternoon there. I stayed through the first few bands though: Weather Station, nice enough folk rock (sounds horrible doesn’t it!), followed by Oneida with the mighty Kid Millions on drums and sparkling teeth, and then Mount Moriah. That last band was the most surprising — I expected dreary lesbian rock, and was happy to find a very good rock band. I dare say that Mount Moriah kept reminding me of Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
Time for a side trip over to Rebus Works, where they had their usual weekly farmers/craft market set up outside this gallery of local art. Nice diversion. I intended to take a pedicab over (Raleigh has pedicabs!) but none were running that early in the afternoon, so I ended up hoofing it all the way across downtown to get there. But on the way, nearly there, I ran into some pedicabs (resting!) and got a business card. So later on I was able to call them and get a ride back to the center of downtown.
Where The dBs were just finishing their set on the free Martin Street stage. I could hear them playing as we approached on the pedicab, and ended up catching one complete song. I wanted to see more of them, oh well. They had played a proper evening show on Friday but it was on the wrong side of town and I couldn’t make it.
That Martin Street show in general added some diversity (for me) to a festival that was getting too heavy on the Heaviness.
Saturday night:
This night would start by hitting a few more distant venues via car, and then leaving the car at one of Raleigh’s many free electric car charging stations where I parked it for the rest of the evening. Nice!
Quiet Evenings at Longview Center, a converted church — a young duo from Georgia, making quiet electronic ambient noise, nice.
Tow3rs at CAM Raleigh — reviews had led me to believe I would like this band. They’re good but trying too hard for my tastes, what with the themed costumes and baloons and all. Should be quite successful though, everybody was enjoying themselves I suppose.
Dead In The Dirt (unbilled) at Berkeley Cafe … I kind of just wandered into this joint off the street, looking to kill 15 minutes and knowing that it was going to be another one of those beard metal bills (which I can’t resist, apparently). I caught their last two songs (cough) and after their set I asked the merch table guy who that was. He told me DITD and “they’re from Atlanta, and we are too”, the guy being in another band playing that night. I laughed and pointed out the WREK t-shirt I was wearing. LOTS of people from Atlanta were at Hopscotch. I saw plenty of Hopscotch refugees heading home on I-85 southbound today — plaid shirts and Streetela stickers, come on, what else could it be?
Mac McCaughan at Lincoln Theatre — I’m a sucker for Superchunk (a super for Suckerchunk?), and have been for 20+ years now. Their recent (!) show in Atlanta was one of the best I’d ever seen and I certainly had fun at it. This time, it was just Mac solo on a guitar, which was a littel strange but you got to hear the songs presented in a way that allowed you to hear just two ingredients (his vocals and his guitar) separate from the rest of the Superchunk fury.
About 6-7 songs in he says “I always wanted to be in Versus, and this is how I managed to engineer it” and out walks Versus to join him in playing a bunch of covers. Fantastic! According to this guy’s blog entry they were Neutral Milk Hotel covers, which I did not recognize but I was having plenty of fun nonetheless.
Then … Kurt Wagner came out and this all-star line-up blasted through Lambchop’s “Nine” (that’s the doo-doo-dooo doo-doo-doodoo song that was their most obvious hit) with Kurt snarling away, lunging at the microphone stand like he’s Iggy Pop. At the end, he drops the mic and makes his deparature. Click the blog link above for a video (and try to suffer through the awful sound).
Finally, VERSUS. The band that caused me to come to this thing in the first place. They were great. They didn’t play the one song I wanted to hear (“Tin Foil Star”, from a 1993 7″ single, one of the greatest pop gems ever, embedded here, play it while reading!) but it didn’t really matter. For pretty much any of their songs, when they kick into that chorus, they are an unstoppable force of nature. And the crowd was adoring, so much so that Fontaine Toups (bassist) remarked “wow, maybe we should come back to Raleigh”, and then thought to ask “who is here from out of town” and the whole crowd roared. “Where are you from?” “Atlanta!” the crowds roars. Ha!
I stayed through every last bit of the Versus set, stuck around in case of encore, then struck out for the last two acts of the night. Playing in the beautiful and stately Fletcher Opera Theater (think Woodruff opera hall in Atlanta), Lambchop (proper) played a nice, long, relaxed set. Sunn O))) at Memorial Auditorium — Ending with Sunn O))) worked for me. Those sounds made my heart hurt and my teeth ache, literally not metaphorically. It was the same with or without earplugs — those low frequencies just go through everything. I actually started to wonder about how many dead bodies they’d find slumped in the chairs after they closed down the hall.
Regrets:
missed White Hills, twice
missed William Tyler, twice