intellectual properties

BBML fail

last night, we (me, jay, reagan, ivan, lisa) went to go see Brightblack Morning Light @ the inDEPENDENT, per my suggestion. or, well, we tried to anyway. there were 2 opening bands listed, and pretty much every other time in my concert-going career that there are 2 opening bands listed and “doors at 7:30/show at 8″, the main band didn’t go on until at least 10:00, sometimes later. usually i’m a hound about getting to shows on time, and last time we were @ the independent, we were nearly the first ones there. in vegas we sat for 2 HOURS waiting for the NIN show to start. but i didn’t really feel like being the cat herder and we were all enjoying eachother’s company very much, discussing dark energy and how we don’t know squat about the universe and coming up with blogs about parallel universes, and so we dallied around, had a pre-party at lisa’s and didn’t walk into the door to the venue to see BBML until around 10:15-10:30. they were already playing, but we figured they must’ve just started.

now, i’m very much into trippy psychedelic music that doesn’t really move much or go anywhere, just like i’m into weird indie films without plots, as long as it moves a certain way or contains certain musical elements.  i don’t like most newer jambands, but i really like old psychedelic rock and acid jazz and such. we stood there for a while, watching them….barely do anything? on stage and tried to figure out what the lead singer was mumbling incomprehensibly into the microphone.  what they did play i liked for the most part – but it wasn’t really event-worthy.  like i would have liked it a lot more of we had been in, say, an opium den with a lot of pillows. i mean, i sort of knew that’s what it would be like (i did describe the music as vision-inducing), but didn’t think they would be quite as static as performers.  there was very little acknowledgment that there was even anyone listening, and i guess i like at least a modicum of audience interaction when i go to see live shows.

so we stood there listening and discussing the merits of the swirliness of it for about ….45 minutes, and then suddenly a song ended and the lead dude mumbled something no one could understand and left the stage. it didn’t appear that the rest of the band expected this, and they all stood there for a second before following him off.  and … that was it.  everyone stood around for a while, thinking maybe he said it was a set break? but then the stagehands came out and started unplugging things and it was over.  before 11:30.

maybe they really did start early at like 9:00 or something and we were later than we should have been.  maybe one of the opening bands didn’t show up. i don’t know, but it seemed like a huge FAIL of a show.   after a bit of “wait, what just happened?” we decided “whatever hippies!”*, and went down the street to The Page, where we stayed way too late for a school night.

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*i know jason unbound strauss likes to tell people “she used to be a hippie” like i’m not anymore and it’s this former self of mine that no longer exists, but i actually think i’m way more of a hippie now, in terms of the way i see the world and my beliefs and ideals and lifestyle than i was when i was hanging out with the dreadlocked/patchworked hippies.  it might not appear that way, based on aesthetics, but i think it’s true.  so i feel totally fine making fun of hippies.  because i am one.

Filed in autobiographical, music | Tagged with hippies | Comments (3)