The Longest Day

Some things don’t go as planned.

The idea was to go out for a couple of drinks, to wind down and relax after a long day that included a trip to Portland and back for Stumptown Comics Festival. Everything started out exactly as planned. Enjoying some Newcastle, talking life and sports and politics with Timm and his friend Bill at the George & Dragon. the usual football (soccer for you Americans) crowd had thinned out after the game, but soon a different crowd started to filter in. Then flood in. The friendly neighborhood pub was soon filled to bursting with frat boys and sorority girls out on a pub crawl through Fremont. The Britpop soundtrack soon gave way to Gnarls Barkley and Modest Mouse, then AC/DC.

At some point, a trio of dudes (one who was returning to his native Denmark the next day) with curdled Irish Car Bombs joined the table, and proceeded to chug them and try to pick up some ladies. The ringleader of the group was actually pretty accomplished at this, and had soon dragged a handful of blonde college girls to the table. They didn’t stay too long, since the rest of us were busy talking about Scandinavia.

Our little cross cultural experience was fun, but we decided to pack it in and walk up the hill to our apartment around 11:00, just as the frat atmosphere was becoming too much. But we were thwarted in our plans when we ran into one of Timm’s co-workers and a posse of Portland kids who were visiting Seattle and going on their own little pub crawl. We somehow got dragged right back to the George & Dragon, and before we knew it, all but two of the Portland kids had left, and it was last call.

And what do you do with out-of-towners in Fremont at last call? Make a trip to the troll. And since you’re in the neighborhood of an ex, as was the case for one member of our little group, you might as well throw in a little doorbell ditch while you’re at it.

In most circumstances, that’s the point where you call it a night. Unless someone mentions food, of course, and then it’s basically required to take a trip to Beth’s. There’s a 30 minute wait, which means we got to hang out in the cramped, sauna-like gameroom in the back and play Gauntlet until out table was ready. Breakfast (I guess I can call it that, since it was around 3:00am at that point) was a round of eggs and hash browns for four of us, and a twelve egg omelette for adventurous number five, which was almost completely polished off in an impressive display of appetite.

We finally got back home at 4:00am, and despite having had several rounds of coffee at Beth’s, I managed to fall immediately into a deep sleep.

It only lasted about 4 hours though, so don’t ask me how I was able to summon up the energy to walk back down the hill and get my car from where I’d parked it near the George & Dragon this morning. Or how I had the energy to participate in a photo shoot this afternoon. It’s been a whirlwind of a weekend, with a bare minimum of sleep, but it’s been completely worth it. I feel physically tired, but mentally refreshed. And now I’m going to listen to Minneapolis by That Dog on repeat a few times and call it a night.

Why? & Mt. Eerie @ Vera

It’s an odd pairing, but in someon’es mind, there was some theoretical sense to it. Pairing a scruffy, mystical folkie from Anacortes, known for hushed, sacred songs backed by a nylon stringed acoustic guitar, with an equally scruffy, neurotically self-revealing pseudo-rapper/indie rock star playing with a full, fractured band. Luckily, in practice, it worked out beautifully.

We came in during Julie Doiron’s opening set, and my first thought was “Cat Power clone”. Serene’s Feist comparison turned out o be more apt as the set drew on though. She was standing alone on stage, gently strumming and fingerpicking an electric guitar and talking compulsively between songs. I think she might have spoken more words than she sang during the set. But there was something charming about her songs, delicate but occasionally fierce, sweet and sad.

I’d never seen M. Eerie before, despite several opportunities to do so. I wasn’t sure what to expect either. Phil Elverum solo, a full band, some odd configuration of exotic instruments and woodland spirits? It turned out to be Phil Elverum, joined by Julie Doiron on backing vocals, and another guitarist, playing all new material that they had written and recorded during the previous week. A giant sheet of handwritten lyrics, festooned with underlines and notations as to who was singing what part, was unfolded and served as a cheat sheet and setlist, and they plowed through a batch of songs so fresh they had to refresh each others’ memories between songs. Even with limited visibility of the stage, it was a great experience. the audience was unusually quiet and still, rooted in place as the music flowed from the stage. At one point, the projected videos on the back wall displayed some sort of metal scrapping in process, showers of sparks building and cascading in unplanned synchronicity with the rise and fall of the music. They even slipped in a cover of Björk’s “Undo,” which fit in perfectly with the haunting and sometimes desolate originals.

I’d seen Why? before, once as a band and once as a guest with Hood, reprising his role as an additional vocalist on songs from Cold House. This time, the band was back in force, with frontman Yoni’s brother Josiah on drums and vibraphone (usually at the same time, amazingly) and bass at one point, and a slew of additional keyboards, guitars, basses, and percussion being passed around the remaining musicians. The musicianship of the Why? live band is incredible, both for the range of instruments and the range of textures and tones they produced. Yoni switched off between glockenspiel, keyboards, bass, guitar, and a couple of drums and cymbals while singing. The brothers Wolf even split drum kit duties on one song, with Josiah playing the kick drum with his foot and Yoni playing cymbals and snare while he sang.While guitar and bass were prevalent, the vibraphone and glockenspiel took on a lead role in many of the songs, floating on top of a bed of warped synths and rhodes piano. Except for obscure gems like “Early Whitney” or “Darla,” they played all my favorite song, mostly from Elephant Eyelash and the new, stunning Alopecia. The full house demanded an encore, and got the only song that I was really hoping for, “By Torpedo or Crohn’s”.

Earlier in the evening, the soundman had been playing C&C Music Factory between sets, that combined with the all ages crowd and darkened room to give me a feeling like I was at a Junior High dance circa 1990. It was another of the night’s many odd pairings, but this one didn’t work as well as the other musical matchups did, for reasons that are probably obvious.

Checklist

I’m feeling pretty accomplished this week. I finished the seventh in a series of annual T-shirt designs I’ve been doing, finalized a logo for an upcoming project, made some headway on a webpage I’m working on, and gave some critiques on an essay and a live electronic set. In between all of that, I managed to fit in a BBQ in the beautiful Seattle weather on Saturday, meeting some cool new people and their cool dogs (and hanging out on a rooftop overlooking downtown), brunch, too much coffee, and a football game (of the European kind). I even managed to fit in a little reading and a little BSG.

That is what weekends were meant to be.