Next To Last Festival (So Far)

edit: When I refer to "birthdays & relatives," I'm talking about an actual birthday party and actual visiting relatives, I realize now that "birthdays & relatives" sounds like a Party Party Partners band that, for all I know, might actually be playing the festival.

I'm too tired to put these thoughts into any coherent kind of narrative. If you want real journalism, you can go read the Flagpole, right? So in no apparent order.

The New Sound of Numbers is back, and as good as they've ever been. New bassist Jeff Tobias adds a melodicism to the ping-pong two-chord song structure that has sent their music into an almost dub/reggae direction. I've got one mild criticism, but we'll save it for the end because it's bigger than this band.

There's something that comes across in Supercluster's live show that I still can't find on their album. More raw passion, or something like that. Or maybe they were just in that kind of mood Thursday night. I've certainly never seen Jason NeSmith abuse his guitar like that before. More on them later too.

Tunabunny played the same song for a half-hour. And it wasn't the "outer space" song they put out last year. Apparently, it was an Andy Kaufman cover. The bass player guy told me afterwards that the guy from their label made them do it. Let me get this straight, a label person told them to do this for 30 minutes?



The world is truly a strange place.

Moving on, either Eureka, California wrote a bunch of new songs, or changing drummers had a bigger impact than any of us could have expected. What used to sound like a vaguely 90's alt-rock-pop riff-driven smorgasboard now sounds infinitely leaner and poppier. Anyway, I enjoyed it.

Big Eyed Beans From Venus plays Captain Beefheart songs that sound as good as the originals. There can be no higher compliment.

As for the rest of the festival, whoever decided to schedule this thing for the busiest weekend of my year is a dumbass. I was able to make it out to ESG last night (they sounded like ESG, it was good), but missed most of the afternoon shows I wanted to see (birthdays & relatives), and will miss most of tonight's show due to work. I can only hope that future festivals will have the foresight & consideration to call me before choosing their dates.

So to my last point. I think it's great that some people in Athens like to have at least 6 people in their band. But I don't understand why every single person in the band has to constantly be playing their instrument all of the time. Aside from the fact that the music occasionally ends up blending into a giant mush, it fails to take advantage of the full capabilities of a large-piece band. To me, it just sounds lazy. Everyone come up with a part and then we'll just wing it. It'd be so great if say, heading into the second verse, the singer was backed by just the violin and the non-drummer percussionists, and then halfway through the rest of the band came crashing in. It would be so much more dramatic. Or just horns and guitar during the bridge. It could be beautiful. I'm not asking for Burt Bacharach;



I just think a little bit of craft might go a long way. Fuck, even Miles Davis knew enough to stop playing once in a while.

I don't know who started this shit. Dark Meat, probably. But Supercluster and The New Sound of Numbers are guilty of this as well, and they're all smart enough as musicians and people to do better than just settling for a wall of sound.

Parting thought. If you leave a comment on this article saying anything along the lines of, "So you're saying all music has to be arranged and controlled?" or "Who says music has to be dramatic to be effective?" or "How do you define craft?" I am not going to be holding back in my future comments, and I will probably make you cry.