Lightning Bolt, A Bug Sized Mind, Teeth & Hair - The Vera Project

Friday night started off pleasantly enough. It was so warm out that I decided to walk to the Vera Project, getting there just in time to catch Teeth & Hair. The band are promising, a kind of Q and Not U by way of Thunderbirds Are Now, marked by pinched falsettos and audience-space invasion. Watching them, I thought about how monumentally difficult it must be to open for Lightning Bolt. That band is pretty much perfect at what they do, they’ve invented their own deeply appealing aesthetic mythology, and they have a pretty considerable fan base for an independent noise rock band. Anyway, it must be hard to face those fans an hour or so before they know Lightning Bolt will be playing. They’re stoked for supper, and you’re a bowl of bread rolls.

A Bug Sized Mind shared Lightning Bolt’s neon-mystic aesthetic—the lone figure on stage wore synthetic robes and a black-lit crescent moon mask—but their primordial whale-song drones and insectoid rhythms didn’t quite seem to satisfy the crowd.

Lightning Bolt, of course, completely destroyed the place. The band’s towering amps and drums were set up in a corner to one side of the stage, natch, and the eager crowd all crammed a little too close, knocking into Brian Chippendale’s drums, and prompting him to command the crowd back several times. The band have installed a convex mirror on top of their amps, angled over the drum kit, so that even from the back it was possible to look down at Chippendale’s convulsive drumming. Even though they were great, I must admit I left halfway through their set. It was going to be a busy night, and I realized that as good as their Vera show could be, it couldn’t possibly beat the anarchistic block party they played in front of No Space last time around—for me, at least.

Pho Bang - El Corazon

Pho Bang got started a little after 11pm, with Ursula Android’s signature cover of “War Pigs”, then a little Jackie Hell number, and then the fabulous, PCP-trip rendition of Disney’s “Be Our Guest”, complete with human-sized candelabra, flatware, and Prince’s discarded quasi-ankh symbol. After a brief intermission, Ursula and the Ononos took the stage. They played with great energy, but suffered some sound problems—vocals were mixed too low, for a minute the keyboards weren’t audible. Apparently, bad sound was an issue the whole night, which is too bad. I hear that sound check ran over, so the sound guy took it out on the performers later—real classy, El Corazon. Again, I had to take off early, missing the Coconut Coolouts and Portland’s Fleshtone, who I hear were fucking awesome.

Andrew WK, Flosstradamus - Chop Suey

Flosstradamus had a packed Chop Suey sweating all over the walls when I got there. The duo were invisible behind a mass of dancers onstage, but they were occasionally audible on the mic in between deft mixes and cuts. It was the standard mix of hip hop, electro, and rock, but Flosstradamus included plenty of their own remixes, and their selection and mixing was tight.

Then there was Andrew WK. What a fucking disaster. After clearing the stage, his DJ played some flanged and delayed introductory message about “Andrew WK’s Party Tour” or something over a bizarrely euro-trance backing track. After a false start, Andrew WK emerged, dressed all in white, beer in hand, and banged out some chords on a keyboard. He got on the mic and greeted the crowd, said some obligatory nonsense about partying, and then stuffed the mic in his pants to play some more keyboards. This sounds fine now, but there was something off about it at the time. I had been expecting overwhelmingly sincere enthusiasm from the man, but instead got half-hearted, almost smirking condescension. WK barely performed an actual song, and his every gesture, expression, and word felt like a joke—”We Want Fun“‘s lyrics seemed to take on an entirely sarcastic tone. And maybe it is just phase two of some great Andrew WK joke that I don’t know the punchline to—there’s plenty to suggest a certain level of self-aware pranksterism behind the man: the “Steev Mike” hoax/marketing scheme, the contrived positivism, the affiliation with misanthropic noise bands. Maybe I’m wrong, because some of the crowd didn’t seem too displeased (although it seemed like a lot of people left), or maybe it would’ve seemed totally different with a live band backing him up, but the handful of people that I knew were there just for Andrew WK left feeling pretty disappointed.

Also, completely unrelated, Andrew WK lost so much weight that he looks like a different person. It’s weird.