Sunburned Hand of the Man & Comets on Fire at the Hemlock Tavern.

Last night I went to go see a concert, which I haven't done in a while due to the fact that the price of a performance is often the price of a record. While musicians need to support themselves, I am satisfied with the ability to listen to music in a more relaxed anti-capitalist setting. A record is something you can take with you. Sitting in the back-most corner of the small intimate venue (my favorite place to sit when I go by myself to a show) I recollected that even the details of my favorite live music experience I'd attented (Godspeed You Black Emperor!, see below) have receded. I can rarely remember the progression of a musical performance, only whether or not I had enjoyed it. Well, I will thus document the little portion of last night's performance that stands out in my mind.

Sunburned Hand of the Man, a neo-psychedelic collective from Boston, manifested itself last night as a ten-piece rhythmic freakout, much like a rosebush. so many thorns, but so much color. While I own some of their more abstract older music (Piff's Clicks and Mind of a Brother), this was mostly a dynamic, looping, eloping rhythm between the percussion section that was laced up in the electric meanderings of gadgetboxes, manipulated microphones, and guitars unwilling to obey any formalisms of chords and scales; and the acoustics of hand percussions like bells, chikka-chikka spools (whatever they're called), djembes, and chanting. there was an electrically enhanced violin but i couldn't find it in the swirling mix. Unlike most collective jamouts that exceed six persons, you could pick out every instrument (except for the enunciation of the words that were utilized as instrument tones). There were multiple sets of exploration, and each had a common thread to it, but the group halted and switched instruments often, perhaps to allow diversity to the performance. Some jams, while stellar, are a waste of time because they languish so much. (see Phish, Subarachnoid Space, Sunroof!) The music climaxed with a pile-on of all the musicians that were not playing large instruments. It was wonderful to see a female participating in the group, but I wished she had found more to contribute than her sideline inaudible chanting and percussion.

A splendid factor of the performance was that a good third of the musicians did not sit on the stage but instead in the crowd. While this could likely be on account of ten people never fitting on the tiny stage, I spoke with some of the group afterwards and they told me of their loft in Boston where they often play. Apparently at these loft parties, the band will be spread out throughout the entire loft. The effect produced was that I felt guilty as a spectator. For certain, any beholder of art is in essence a participant, but I find the spectator's reduction of feedback to be inhibitory. So, the random musicians littered throughout the non-stage area made me feel less as a spectator because someone in the crowd was participating. I regretted for a moment being so far away from the stage, on my perch in the back corner (but I wouldn't renounce my perfect vantage!). It was funny that afterwards, the fellows in the band said that they had noticed me getting into the groove. Unfortunately, the crowd was full of the indie-snob variety that likes to drink beer and inwardly feel the music without ever sharing their passions. This inwardness was an affliction I used to have; back in my teenage years of rocketing through space, stoned cold during "washing machine" (SY), I would stand and gape at the stage in secret, deadpanned awe. I believe myself to have come out of the closet to music reactionism, and when not showing my emotion through my body language (why does nobody dance?), I can be found interminably ranting of my experience with the music. In short, the show would have been most inredible, had the whole group of nonmusicians metamorphosed into a throbbing throng, like the hippies used to do in those acid-lodged days of the Grateful Dead, probably not too far from the Hemlock Tavern.

A high point of the evening was when, during Comets on Fire's mediocre set, I was sitting on my "perch" and randomly found myself accompanied by John Maloney (of Sunburned) on my left, and Steven Wray Lobdell on my right (I was too shy to say hello to this revered spectator). Perhaps the only true musical moment I relish from the set by the hyped-up Comets on Fire was when stand-in Ben Chasny (of our beloved Six Organs of Admittance), during a lull in the marsh of bluesy space madness, leaned over the microphone and emitted an equisite sinewy snippet of a dirge that was on a par with Bjork. I am enamored of his vision. I have yet to see a Six Organs show, but this fancy young Californian (Dr. Chasny, as someone from Sunburned awed him with) is perhaps one of the most enigmatic indie performers I've encountered. The big let-down, however, was that the other 95% of the show involved a careless-minimalist rhythm section supporting loud incomprehensible dual electirc guitar psychedelic hendrix-sprawl matched with whammy-bar like shocks of electronic gadgetbox dopplers. This band's record, "Field Recordings from the Sun" has been hyped up more strongly than Sigur Ros, but somehow the music was ordinary. (Maloney, during the set, answered my question of what makes the band unique with "I've never heard anyone do anything like this these days!" -- now that Hendrix is dead I guess he meant). Personally, I think I've heard the sprawling thunka-thunka-skreeeeeeee! that this band played in numerous places... For one, check the purported "Southern Rock" quotient of the jamband scene (like Gov't Mule and Widespread Panic). Only thing is, these mediocre jambands actually travel from one point to another... I'd be willing to give the band another chance, so long as it's not out of my pocket, but I hereby reject the band on three accounts: (1) it was a waste of Ben Chasny's talent. (2) Rock and Roll is a patriarchal testosterone-driven expression and is only relevant in cases like Explosions in the Sky (who are angry about capitalism and the tragedy of living) and the Boredoms (who feel the importance of epicurean living in a symbolic, divine world). There was a lot of energy expressed here, which is always powerful, but I'm convinced it had a lot to do with drugs and testicles. (3) I've heard this ordinary, unemotional music before.