Two nights at the Prole - one more sober than the other.

My plan was to go catch the early show at the Proletariat and then run off to Bohemeos. Satin Hooks was playing the latter and Nick has been officially added as their new drummer which is kick ass! Of course heading to the Proletariat meant booze and Jon Black (Whorehound) introduced me to the brilliant combination of Shiner Hefeweizen with a lemon. Genius but the lemon makes you forget you are drinking alcohol so with Jon and Dunnock's help I got snookered to the point where I walked out of the Prole and realized I was NOT driving anywhere anytime soon. So, instead of catching the Hooks, I spent the next hour or two at the Menil reading Granta (yeah get drunk - read lit zines! Woohoo!). Luckily, Melissa was good enough to play babysitter until I could drive back home. (Thanks sista your gold star is in the mail. ) So apologies Kerry and Lucas, you guys are heading for some heavy duty ass kicking shows with Nick in the engine room. I'll make sure to be a bit conscious of how many I'm dunking next time.

But the show I did catch was pretty sweet. The Dimes, who I haven't seen in a while, were fucking on. Iram was doing his drum beating thing and the rest of them were doing their smiling, happy, I'm so enthused to kick your ass bit. I especially liked a new song where Jose had this Tina Weymouth like bassline that was pretty cool. I taped it on my shitty Camera but unfortunately the sound was so blown out as to be worthless (note to self - a crappy camera is no good sock some money aside for a good one). When it comes to pop, the Dimes are just unbearably clever bastards on every level - composition, musicianship, and performance. It was nice to take a break from them for a while because, like any band, if you see them too often you begin to take them for granted; a break clears the palate and reminds you why you peed your pants that first time you saw them.

The act that followed was less a music show than it was a performance piece. The Show is the Rainbow was Lincoln, Nebraska's answer to some Chris Elliot rejected film project channeled through your crazy relative you'd rather not talk about. Darren Keen was the one man show that simply karaoked over his preprogrammed songs while projecting some utterly hilarious movies he's cooked up. He would writhe on the floor, run, dance, and crack stupid jokes to the point where on the blown out audio of the video I took the only thing you could hear clearly was my annoying laugh. It was engaging, clever, and brilliant but I'm not sure it's something that would translate to a CD. So while you won't catch me running out to buy the CD you may see me at the next show of his that swings by Houston.

The evening closed with Bring Back the Guns who played another great set. This band definitely falls under the category of bands we all take for granted. They just make it all seem so easy - like they just came together and just wrote a bunch of great songs out of the blue. Unlike, The Show is the Rainbow, this is one band I've been dying to hear in a studio release. I hate having high expectations but I think when their new album comes out, I can expect to be blown out of the water. Bonus is singer Matt Brownlie is heading up a new label, Feow Records, with Jana Hunter and Arthur Bates (Wicked Poseur). The label boasts a nice line up of confirmed releases with Deer Tick's new one dropping in September and BBTG's dropping in October. We are to running laps around Nap headquarters in celebration!

The next night was back to the Proletariat for a more sober night of music. Ume was playing and I hadn't seen them play in a long time. I think last year I caught them almost every show - they are just that good. So having not seen them since Noise and Smoke, I couldn't stay home - it was time to feed my Ume fix.

We showed up a bit late since we couldn't get a good word on who the other bands were but when we were walking up to the Prole we were blown away. I believe Rosa's comments were something to the effect of "Holy shit! That is an awful lot of ROCK coming from the Proletariat!" She was right. It was so much ROCK as to be startling. Inside were Austin's Those Peabodys. My first reaction when i walked into the room was that I'd walked into some fucked-up James Gang time warp. Here was this motley group of nutters. Notably a kick-ass beat-the-shit-out-of-your-kit drummer and a guitarist running his Marshall though two 4-10 cabinets and playing every 70's guitar trope with style and abandon. I love when someone plays clinches so well that you remember why they became clinches in the first place. The trick is to do them fearlessly and make them your own. Those Peabodys do just that and bless 'em for it!

Ume closed the night and blew me away (again). If you ever see me at a an UME show you'll find me studiously watching Lauren's left hand on the fret board. There are great guitarists and then there are great guitarists whose voice is singular and immediately recognizable - Lauren falls into the latter. Her spindly guitar lines are just great. She flails, spins, and puts on such a performance that, I feel , her musicianship and creativity are often overlooked. I was doing my usual guitarist-to-guitarist gushing to Lauren afterwards and she told me how once she actually had some woman ask he if she was really playing the guitar or was it pre-recorded. On the one hand it's pretty funny but on the other the fact that someone could think that is kind of infuriating to me simply because if she had some balls between her legs that same woman would never had asked that question. Anyhow, back to the show they played thee new songs and all were great. I cleverly recorded all three but again the sound was so shitty as to be worthless but if the new songs are any indication the last album will be surpassed in every way. They even had one song that was surprisingly poppy that I was just crazy over. I actually heard a false rumor that they were selling some new EP at this show but it was all BS. Eric told me assured me afterwards how the new album is in the works and they were working with the engineer or producer (I can't recall which) who had worked with Spoon and it's going to sound amazing. I'm not surely complaining if they can top themselves - just hurry it up guys.



Links:

The Dimes
The Show is the Rainbow
Bring Back the Guns
Feow! Records
Those Peabodys
UME