Live Review - No Age, Titus Andronicus @ 40Watt Sat. Nov. 14th

Titus Andronicus went on first, in the sense that they went on before NoAge.
Titus Andronicus went on second, in the sense that they went on after the first band.
In the sense that I didn't see the first band, Titus Andronicus was the first band I saw.

I came close to seeing Titus Andronicus play at the Squirrel earlier this summer. On the way to the 40Watt, I was trying to figure out why I didn't end up going. Once they started playing, I remembered that I had gone on their myspace page and found out that I couldn't stand them.

A fable.

Sometime in the early/mid 90's, when Gilman St. all-ages punk was still all the rage, a group of pirates abducted the young, prebubescent punk-obsesses future members of Titus Andronicus. Raised on a steady diet of up-down beats, and too much beer, the now-bearded & foul-mouthed youths were dumped somewhere in New Jersey with a house full of instruments. Left to fend for themselves and sing for their supper, they seized on the one thing everyone in Jersey can agree on--Springsteen, and spat out their influences in a giant five-personed splat.

That's what it sounds like anyway. Stage banter ran all the way from "fuck me" to "fuck you," usually settling on the latter. The songs all sounded like a testosterone-laden, sea-chanty, harmonica-blowing, Ruby Soho-sounding mess. And so it came as no surprise when the singer took issue (during a between song monologue) with something one of the NoAge guys had said the night before.

"Fuck Springsteen," said the guy from NoAge.

Mr. Andronicus let it be known that if anyone said anything like that tonight, then we would be settling it "outside in the alley with fists and knives" (which come to think of it sounds like a line from Born to Run). I'm sure the only thing that kept him from punching/stabbing NoAge the night before was his four other band members holding him down and reminding him that NoAge was the headliner of this tour, and a whole hell of a lot more well-liked than Titus Andronicus.

By the way, Titus is from Glen Rock, New Jersey--a town 20 miles northwest of New York City. Aside from the fact that it's lame as fuck to love Bruce Springsteen simply because he's from the same state as you (I'm imagining Pylon playing this week in California, and Vanessa pitching a fit because someone doesn't like The Black Crowes), it's even lamer when you live closer to Julian Casablancas than to Asbury Park. Fuck Titus Andronicus, and fuck Bruce Springsteen, the Fonzie of Rock'n'Roll.

Turns out NoAge only said 'Fuck Springsteen' as a joke because they were getting ready to cover a Misfits song, and were propping up their favorite Jersey artist by tearing everyone else's favorite Jersey artist down. Of course the NoAge guy sounds more like Jad Fair than anyone else from Jersey, and there's more that happened in this whole turf war but I'm getting tired of telling the story because it's a whole hell of a lot less interesting than what NoAge did, or at least tried to do on the stage of the 40Watt club for the sixty or so people who came out.

If you had trouble sleeping this summer because your allergies were acting up and you weren't able to breathe so you stumbled downstairs and drank a glass of emergen-c and while you waited for your breathing to return to normal you may have been lying on the couch flipping through the channels when you saw this video on Mtv--yes, the actual Mtv.



By going more ferocious, more experimental, more psychedelic, NoAge has been able to add one more chromosome to the inbred DNA of the high-pitched white indie-rock singer gene. I'm talking the Superchunk - Built to Spill - Modest Mouse- Shins voice, the thin strangled squeak-shout straining to impart knowledge & emotion. By upping the MBV and lovering the GBV, they've been able to make something fresh for the indie world.

For a band with two members and an album that sounds nearly as dense & layered as Loveless, NoAge live sounded surprisingly like NoAge on record. Modern technology is an amazing thing. The band did everything they could to fill the space, climbing on monitors & speakers, jumping down into the audience (20% of the audience was moshing, 95% of the moshers were moshing non-violently--health & safety ed.), ranting against Proposition 8--a California band's version of name-dropping Springsteen. The show was beautiful, cathartic, and loud. They went well past 1am and nobody left until they played their last note.

I wasn't bored for one second, and I can't remember the last time that happened.

Here's some footage from a show they played two weeks earlier, same song they opened with at the 40Watt.



More fun facts about Glen Rock, NJ, and by extension, Titus Andronicus.

avg. income per household - $104,192.
Pct. population below poverty line - 2.4%

Same numbers for Athens.

$28,118
28.6%

No wonder they think Bruce Springsteen is actually a real person.