So I Saw Mogwai Last Night...

Mogwai, the famed Scottish instrumental post-rock band, played the Commodore Ballroom last night. I attended with a couple of friends, one of whom I had never expected to share an experience like that. He had only heard a few Mogwai songs before, but seemed to enjoy the concert pretty enough to take a closer listen.

Random cautionary note: the Urban Fare location on Alberni doesn't take paper gift certificates, even if they seem legit and should apply to any location. The story of how I know this is pretty boring. Just take my word for it.

Sorry, back to the concert. It was hardly a packed house. Where for bands with a bigger local following, such as Mother Mother, the lineup outside would be wrap around the corner to Smithe Street a half hour before the doors open, my friends and I showed up 8pm on the dot to find a line that barely got to Megabite. I guess the post-rock zeitgeist did't really take here on the west coast, so the only people who showed were the few, scattered Mogwai fans from the area.

The opening band never really introduced themselves, which was unfortunate because I kinda liked them. I guess you could call it very poppy, song-driven noise-rock. I suspect they're local. They had that "Vancouver hipster" vibe to them. The singing was pretty good, they had some sweet male harmonies. As an act, though, the sheer amount of sound turned the whole thing into mud at a lot of points. Mogwai obviously does that, too, but they seem to put more purpose behind it - it's part of the experience. This band didn't exercise that same prudence, so it sort of seemed like filler. They honestly didn't play that many songs. In particular, the guitars were really, really bassy and drenched in delay-based effects, so it was impossible to hear what they were doing most of the time. Still, I wish I'd found out who they were because I'd love to hear what they sound like on a record.

I've become very conscious of personalities these days, so as I watched Mogwai come up I tried to read their vibes a bit. This is clearly a very introverted band. Guitarist Stuart Braithwaite likes to move to the beat a lot, and is the only one who ever speaks to the audience, mostly just to thank them for their applause and appreciation. He struck me as rather shy but sweet, like he really enjoyed playing music, and really appreciated the people who showed up. I've seen some stoic bassists, but man, Dominic Aitchison takes the cake. Multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns reeks of calm coolness. He just really knows what he's doing, whether on keyboards and Vocoder, guitar, or bass. Guitarist John Cummings was obscured to me by the fans in front of me, so I didn't read much there. Drummer Martin Bulloch wasn't particularly visible, but he seemed to be having  fun.

This is not music for the impatient, but if you stay open and listen right, the songs don't drag. As a listener, I almost don't even think of them as "songs." If I may get a little mushy for a moment, I think of them as musical moments that last six minutes. It's as if the music itself isn't even the main point, but a way to experience something... other. It's actually very spiritual.

The biggest moment of the night for me was the song, "Rano Pano," off last year's, "Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will." Musically speaking, it's pretty brilliant. It has easily one of their most memorable melodies, and it builds to such huge point. There's a lot of tension and release throughout the song, which is kind of Mogwai's thing. It's my new favorite track from them.

My only disappointment was that they didn't play, "Hunted By A Freak." This is the band I wanted most to see live in my lifetime, and I want to see them again, and again, and again.

My Identity in Punk

This post was on my old blog, under the title, "A (Very) Short History of Punk, and The Beginnings of a Statement of Vision." I'm re-posting it (with some slight editing) for several reasons: 1) it serves as an appropriate preface to another post I'm working on; 2) I already wrote it; 3) I really don't want you to read my old blog. It sucked.

There’s a real risk of my losing focus, motivation, and any hope of a dedicated audience if I just fly by the seat of my pants here. Before I say too many things I know I’ll regret, I want to define my vision for this blog, in order that the things I say here will serve some kind of purpose. So I’ll talk about identity a bit. Probably a lot more of this will come out as I keep writing, but this is a good place to start, as it’s kind of core to the way I think.

I am a person who is very interested in the idea of subculture. One of the best and most obvious examples of subculture in Western society is punk rock. Unfortunately, the term "punk rock" has not aged well, and its meaning has fallen into ambiguity, though arguably it was pretty convoluted to begin with.

To me, the most essential aspect of punk is finding strength and identity in alienation. In a lot of cases that can be a very destructive kind of strength, and a volatile kind of identity. It's actually kind of amazing that punk is still exists in any form at all, considering how much it's suffered throughout the past several decades. The original boom lasted only a few short years. Regional scenes and splinter movements have developed and fallen apart. Many artists have quit, died, or sold out. Mainstream capitalist culture has taken every opportunity to cash in on its popularity, each time taking more than the movement could give. The words, “Punk rock is dead,” and, “Punk rock is still alive,” have been uttered too many times to count.

I am of the opinion that, despite it all, punk lives on to this day. Probably not in the way that the Ramones or the Sex Pistols might have guessed… but then they were insane. I doubt if they really understood what they were doing or what it would mean decades later.

How did it manage to survive, mangled and disfigured (or perhaps transfigured) as it is? It goes back to the “spirit” of punk rock. This was something that people in the post-punk and early hardcore era seem to have understood well. They were still who they were: angry middle-class intellectuals and anti-intellectuals, postmodernists through-and-through, snot-nosed kids with something to say. The scene that had embraced and inspired them had gone out in flames, but they kept going because punk was not just their scene. It was their identity.

And it's part of mine, as well. It resonates with me on a number of levels: the community of outcasts; the angry kids with guitars screaming about whatever; the spiky-haired prophets out to change the world.
I don't literally consider myself a punk, or a geek, or a metalhead, or really anything. Any time I get really close to any one particular subculture, I discover something really ugly about it that sends me running. But they all still have their place in my heart. Punk rock in particular is something of a symbol for me, and for a dream I have.

Basically, I want to change the world.