World Famous In San Francisco

Apparently John Dwyer is being evicted or something. Love his music or hate it -- or, actually, love him or hate him, everybody seems to have an opinion (but not us! and he did come across quite grateful and charming this evening) -- it sucks to get evicted so we were at this show. Plus, it was Thursday Night Live at The Eagle and Pale Hoarse, Death Sentence:Panda!, Kelley Stoltz and The Oh Sees were all on the bill. Fun, yeah? Actually it was, even if it was a scene. A total scene with a big fat helping of scene politics. Speaking of (the scene), how come these mission bike kids (kids? nah, not anymore) still dress the same seven years later. I don't understand Mission bike fashion! I'm looking at your cap titled just so John Dwyer!

So, as usual, we missed the first band. Sorry Pale Hoarse! But we were in time for DS:P! which has Paul from Total Shutdown and Kim from Crack: WAR (whom I sorely miss) and T.I.T.S.. I have been a fan of DS:P! since their Puppy Kitty or Both CDR (which I guess got a vinyl release, hmm...). That ep was a short blast of weirdo (post) punk rock stomp fueled by distorted, freaked out horns, tribal drums, and yelped female vocals. And then I kinda lost track so I was excited to check them out again. I was pleasantly surprised. The same musical elements, but with less three chord punch and more dynamics and textures in the horns and drums. Pretty darn cool.

Next up was Kelley and I wasn't all that psyched. He didn't compliment my Thin Lizzy purchase earlier in the day when he rang me up at Grooves. Whatever, Thin Lizzy rules and is total cause for comment! Actually, no. Its just that the last few times he's played I've been kinda bored. Seriously! See our shamelss in san francisco review of the passionistas! But, as it turned out, Mr. Stoltz was really good. There were tons of new songs in the set, the band suddenly has personality (they weren't dull at all), and the songs sounded more like Kelley than his influences (I think I only heard Kelley slip into his impersonation of Ian McCullough impersonating Jim Morrison schtick once). So totally cool, I'll be checking out the next record.

Last was The Oh Sees, yet another Dwyer band. This guy has been in band after band after band of two man guitar and drums mutated garage skree nightmares. Pink and Brown. Zeigenbock Kopf. (ok, no guitars and definitely not in the garage. Fake gay German dance disco thrash that was funny until the joke went on way too long and I wondered how much he liked getting in his undies and rubbing on innocent boys). The Coachwhips. The Hospitals (which he isn't in any longer). Swords and Sandals (who didn't exist long enough to generate a web page and I didn't manage to see and might have been more than two people and I hear was, um, jazz). And also he did a three person band, Yikes with the guy from Fuckwolf. Somehow, all of these bands managed to be exciting and energetic and everybody was talking about them. And I'd go, and the live set would rule but the recordings never matched it (trebbly, reverby, the same three chord song over and over). At some point, you get over it. The guy is obviously a great performer, but the hype! We all know he's on the scene.

So I hadn't seen the The Oh Sees (or OCS when it was all weird and folk and acoustic and home recordings or whatever) yet. Like all of his other bands, the energy level is high and the performance is great and the songs sound undeniable and its easy to get caught up in the moment while everybody is dancing. Unlike his other bands, this one has a fuller line up (two guitars, drums, lots of tambourines, and the vocal duties are shared with this woman called Brigid) and I could hear more melody in the songs and the female vocals add this kind of country twang to the affair that made me think that he was doing something a little different with this band. So I was excited to go check out the myspace page and give the songs a listen. I guess I'm a bit of a sucker. But, the recordings sound a bit better this time even if there is still too much reverb/cave echo which reminds me of all his past bands. But the other elements manage to struggle through (Elton thinks it sounds like the Country Teasers) and maybe in the future those elements will overcome!