Polvism

Went to see the surprisingly reunited Polvo play at Bimbo's in the citay on Tuesday. Trans Am opened. When I arrived, the crowd was surprisingly thin at the front, so I got good viewing position. Trans Am played their crazy indie-synth-prog with a smile. The drummer played powerfully on those strange bodyless '80s style toms. The look of the band vaguely reminded me of the Police for some reason. Dude on left played bass and keys (possibly a Nord?), dude on right played guitar and keys (a Roland Juno 60, I'm guessing). His guitar, a sunburst Gibson Les Paul Special, looked just like one of mine, except he had a Bigsby on it. He also pulled out a Fender Stratocaster 12-string electric at one point, which was cool. Trans Am often have such a full-on saturated sound on record, it's hard to match the sonics in a live situation, but they made an admirable attempt and were a lot of fun.

I spent most of Polvo watching Ash Bowie's amazing guitar work. He mostly played on a couple Strat clones. Given their penchant for alternate tunings, I was surprised they were able to pull it off with so few guitars. Seems like one or a couple strings were fairly detuned, allowing those strange bends. One weird thing about standing so close to the stage, particularly when you're also really tired, is you tend to forget where you are, or that you're in public and not watching the show in your mind or on TV. It can be dangerous, but I didn't try to change the channel. Also, you can't take in the entire scene without moving your head around, so it's obvious to the band members who you're looking at. I try to look at each of them a bit, so no one feels left out, but the majority of the time I'm looking at the guitarists' fretwork.

I dig Polvo but haven't listened to their records to the point of having the song titles memorized, so can't give you a report on that. Suffice it to say they played some of the classics, some I didn't recognize, and some that they said were new ones, which sounded pretty good. They did play their killer cover of "Mexican Radio". Midway through the encore I thought I was going to pass out from heat and exhaustion, so went to the very back for some water. This also made for an easy exit from the venue when the show was over. Walking outside the venue, I noticed an alley that appeared to have a stairway at its end, heading in the direction of my car. After hesitating a moment, I took this route, then did a double-take when I saw someone standing against the wall to the left. Is that Ash Bowie? I told him "you guys were great" or "really great show" or something as I passed by, and he said "thanks for coming!", perhaps relieved that I wasn't an alley stalking psycho killer.

I'm having trouble finding appropriate YouTube clips that sound decent, but these will have to do for the time being:

Trans Am


Polvo