Brightest Young Things

Everybody knows I’m going deaf. When people ask me questions sometimes I just pretend not to have heard them and make a random statement about something unrelated like I am too imaginative to have a linear convo. This works pretty well for a while but after the third or fourth time you have to get the salt yourself because I won’t stop talking about Kobe Bryant’s similarity to Mao Tse-tung, (removal of shaq = great leap forward, 2009 season = cultural revolution, madame mao = luke walton…it’s obvious, I mean come on, plus they both have O-faces that look like rabid badgers) you start to pity me and speak loudly and carefully, like I was foreign even though it doesn’t help because I refuse to say “wat” more than once.

So I am going deaf because I refuse to wear earplugs at rock concerts. I used to maintain they were for pussies, and while I now do not think that at all, I just can’t rid myself of the feeling that one is losing something vital by blocking out the decibels, some fundamental serum that makes rock and roll the continuing all-time #1 champ of self-medication coping mechanisms for moody young old beauty junkies. I need it inside me all the way, and I don’t care if I have to stick the needle in my eye, smoking or snorting feels like moving backwards.

[Insert Raincoat/Shower Metaphor]

[Then get tested ASAP]

But there are two kinds of loud and even good concerts if they are the wrong kind are brutal. Dark Meat, who played last Wednesday at the Red and the Black, are the Best Kind of Loud.

Here is a shitty visual representation of what they sounded like:

The bad kind of loud is when everything is turned up all the way, especially vocals, and all the parts become the loudest edge of the sound. Many garage bands suffer from the disease MC5itis (which can be fatal c.f. the career of Mooney Suzuki), in which they only want to crank up the guitars and howl. It can be great fun for one song but then becomes A Bludgeoning. Dark Meat instead has a lot of shit going on. They used to have even more people on stage apparently, leading to a kind of wild circus atmosphere, but, 8 is enough, in this situation, as well as on Nick At Nick, to generate lovable chaos still amenable to reason.

Components: Trumpet, Penny Whistle (piccolo?), Guitar, Guitar, Bass Guitar, Drums, Keyboards and Trombone but not at the same time, Girlvocal, Dancing.

They started out with one big fat hopping massive single chord song that throbbed like a headache, and I was worried it might overwhelm the modest crowd. But the parts resolved themselves so tastefully that everyone couldn’t help getting down. Certain things were hints: the piccolo (penny whistle?) would just flutter into hearing on the build-up parts of each song, and the girl singing oooWAAAAhooooWAH vocals was a constant buzz, like an overtone. They keyboards tinkled peacefully and when the horns blasted out solos it was Clarence Carter raucous rather than late-Stooges messy. I couldn’t hear the gravelly main voice too well, but in balance that’s probably a good thing.

After the first song I closed my eyes and nodded along, semi-headbanging in the waves of bluesy bombastic boombooms. I was right in front of the trumpet player who was set up on the floor and when he leaned back and blew, the wind from the brass went straight in my face so that was partially for eyeball safety. At one point I opened up during a real bangy number and the front line of musicians was laughing so hard they couldn’t even sing and the penny whistle (piccolo?) girl looked embarrassed. Jim McHugh flipped his long gorgeous mullet out of his eyes after the song and sold her out: “Sorry folks, but she’s been cuttin’ disgusting farts for this whole tour and tonight is no exception.” Somehow that seemed emblematic of their attitude, though maybe it was deliberate gastrointestinal branding.

There are two kinds of ringing I get in my ears at night after a show too, thanks for asking. The bad kind is a vortex of shifting staircases, a bad dream of muffled street noise and a single leftover feedback shriek echoing against the tilting walls of my dark empty room. First it's on one side, then it's on the other side, it goes away, it come back, it gets louder when I think about it but is never a note, never a song, always maddeningly unresolved and in motion. The musical spins, trying to sleep, a finger in each ear like a foot on the floor.

The good kind is exactly like that except I have a big smile, and hum along.

Previously in Live DC:

• 2/9: LiveDC: Theophilus London @ 930 Club
• 2/9: Best Weekend Bets
• 2/8: LiveDC: Kathleen Edwards @ 930 Club
• 2/8: LiveDC: Thurston Moore/ Kurt Vile @ Black Cat
• 2/8: LiveDC: Thurston Moore/ Kurt Vile @ Black Cat
• 2/7: LiveDC: Demetri Martin @ Warner Theatre
• 2/7: LiveDC: Augustana/ Graffiti6 @ 930 Club
• 2/6: LiveDC: All Things Go Presents: Reptar/ Casual Curious/ Fort Lean @ Gibson Guitar Showroom
• 2/6: LiveDC: TYCHO/ Beacon @ RNR Hotel
• 2/6: LiveDC: The Kills / Jeff The Brotherhood @ 9:30 Club