Live DC: Black Lips / Quintron & Ms PussyCat @ The Cat

March 18, 2008 by Peter  Send to a Friend

all photos: Chris Chen

I recently met a man who declared that the best life was one of pure rationality.

He claimed that all the misery in the world was caused by humans behaving illogically, and that if we could just act in accordance with our higher minds and scientific principles, we would not only lead the rest of the species to a better existence, but we would find ourselves individually in a much happier state of affairs. The fact that this conversation was taking place in a deserted H Street bar at 1 am on a Tuesday shouldn’t distract from the careful consideration of his point, nor should we judge him too harshly for this lifestyle leading him to refuse to vote in any election and generally act like a dick a lot of the time. For you see, he is also a gigantic fan of Quintron and Miss Pussycat, (http://www.quintronandmisspussycat.com/) but he absolutely hates the Black Lips (http://www.myspace.com/theblacklips)

What possible connection could there be between his Platonic obsessions and the disparate swampy garage of the two bands that played on Saturday at the Black Cat?

Frankly I have no idea…but I’m pretty much diametrically opposed to everything he stands for.

I got there after the opening band Hollywood played because I was concupiscently scarfing down some Fig Newtons for dinner. Apparently they sounded great and their drummer used to be in Zulu Pearls, who are also great, and they play loud punk rock, which is generally pretty great, so I don’t feel too great about missing them, but that’s the price one pays for making decisions based on one’s gut feeling rather than planning everything out. And my guts wanted Fig Newtons, no matter how much my hyper-rational nemesis might scowl and tap his digital watch. The stage was set up with Quintron’s big hoodrat organ the Drum Buddy, covered in headlights and Dream Machines, stuck in the front-left to make room for the giant Mr. Rogers Puppetshow set in the middle. Smoke started to pour out onto the stage and Quintron appeared out of the mist like the ageless leader of a diabolical cult in a terrible 60s movie. He sat and started wailing and releasing mechanical howls from his combination of vintage keyboards and hit the brights and it seemed like something truly dirty and dissonant was about to happen.

Then Miss Pussycat came out.

So, you know how your girlfriend is adorable? You know how she’s hilarious, and she may not be the best singer, but she’s super spunky and you just know if you started a band with her everyone else would think she was awesome too and you could take her on tour like Linda McCartney or that back-up singer Bruce Springsteen married? You know?

Well, that’s the condescending version of the Miss Pussycat story.

She’s not a natural performer, and she doesn’t sing so much as coo, but godblessherheart if she isn’t giving it her all. The issue for most observers is going to be that Quintron’s music is so sickly insinuating that you just want to boogie to it, but then over the drum-machine bumps and grinding sex riffs there’s this cutesy little girl voice going “WEEEEEELALALA…” When Quintron does his psychobilly gasping-ghoul singing and she limits herself to the backup vocals, the jarring combo works—especially on Swamp Buggy Badass wherein he leapt into the crowd over just a drum machine and her call-and-response chant, letting folks know they were a badass. “I am a badass (you are a badass!) She is a badass (she is a badass!) You really are a badass (you are a badass!) I mean look at that headband, and those heels…wow you are a total badass.” The girl he was addressing looked as embarrassed as you can while shaking the bad muscle in question. People were dancing and having a good time, but somehow the elevated status of Miss P (who was soon joined by an even cuter maracas assistant apparently called Shopping Bear) since the last time I saw them (opening for Peaches last year) didn’t really move me the way it probably should have. Yet even the suddenly cynical snarkiness of my friend the empiricist (”This seems like something rich women would do for charity,” he said, cogently) didn’t prepare me for the Puppet Show.

I really have nothing to say about the puppet show. I was totally confused by it, and I consider myself a pretty open-minded and easy-going dude. It had a lot of loud, digitally-altered cute voices and haunted things. And puppets. So in the interests of fairness I went around and interviewed as many people in the crowd as I could. “It’s trying too hard,” said one disaffected Asian woman, sipping a tiny glass of wine. Her khaki-panted boyfriend concurred: “It’s like a kid’s show on HBO.” “I couldn’t really hear it, so I went downstairs,” said a smoking punk rock chick, while smoking. “I mean, it was OK. I think?” I located the girl whose headband elicited Quintron’s devotion earlier in the show and asked her what she thought: “I can’t even talk about it, it’s so brilliant.” What’s so great about it? “They are just doing their own thing, like it’s really only funny to them.” Isn’t that a bit self-indulgent, like isn’t that the definition of self-indulgen? Blank stare. Wait, is that Ian Svenonius? What did you think Ian? “I love it. I’ve seen it so many times and it’s still great,” he said with a smirk. Only God knows what level of irony Ian is on, it often seems like he’s operating on an entirely different plane from most people. The women interviewed either loved it or despised it and most of the men were merely puzzled. I’d rather be puzzled than bored, I suppose, but even though all the elements were in place for something amazing, the whole just didn’t add up to the sum of its parts—like a circle in a world where pi is exactly 3.

The Black Lips, on the other hand, were transcendently irrational.
They don’t look or dress like a garage rock band. They don’t give a shit about aping the correct fuzzy guitar sound, or making the right Seeds reference. They sing about whatever the fuck makes sense to them, like comparing hurricane Katrina to a mean heartbreaking bitch, or cock-sucking or whatever. The one guitar guy wears a big fuzzy hat, the other one has a grill. They sauntered out and played the opening song from their new album and the crowd in front of the stage flipped out.

First songs are really important ya’ll, so let’s break down how they pulled this off:
1. Play a song everyone know if you have one.
2. If you don’t, play one that is short and kicks people directly in the balls.
3. Don’t play your best song though because then everyone will leave

I Saw A Ghost is the perfect invitation to a rock and roll show: “C’mon, trip! C’mon dip!” If played at exactly the right speed and volume this song will cause grown men to spray beer at the stage like the boys in the band are a wet T-shirt contest. Extradoublebonus points if you can catch your spit in your own mouth. By the time they played “Hippie, Hippie, Hoorah” the entire crowd was waving their arms and whistling the Velvets-Go-To-Palestine guitar line and freaking out during the “Je suis, je suis” breakdown, just screaming and hollering and spraying more expensive cash-only beer up in the air. I was trying to retain my dignity (and my glasses), but when they started to play Bad Kids and everyone was singing along into the mikes and stage-diving like Agnostic Front was out there I was all “fuck it!” and pushed my way up to the pit and did some airpunching and windmilling and I kicked someone in the groin, it may have been Shopping Bear, sorry about that. My logical compatriot had already retreated to the Red Room and he claims he heard the following staff conversation: “There’s a pit, you had better go upstairs…” “Oh damn that sucks!” Au contraire, unbadass doorperson!

Moshing, the ultimate expression of idiotic glee. You know it is possible that if we all danced carefully and within our own space even in a tightly packed crowd, we could safely and hygienically move around and sing along and point our fingers at the singer without touching each other at all. But no, we have to be illogical and selfish and bump into our neighbors and stick our asses out and push off the stage to send crazies flying backwards, and pogo or do the twist without regard to who we knock over but then pick them up when they fall and catch the kids and deluded old fat guys that jump off the stage and carry them around for as long as we can stand it. I bet a lot of the revelers got kicked out of the club for doing that stuff, the dance rituals that built the DC music scene in the first place, but when you’re in the midst of the swirling mass of sweaty colliding partying rioters it feels so fucking mindlessly good. W
hat are we supposed to do when the Black Lips are banging out a Chuck Berry cover but do what crowds have been doing in every era, from 50s Memphis to 60s London to 70s Boston to 80s Portland to 90s Green Bay to wherever now, but get completely out of control?

Should we waltz and do calculus?

Fuck that, c’mon Dr. Spock, let’s trip!

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