boris, torche, clouds @ rubber gloves, 6.27.2008
i hadn't been to rubber gloves in a good long while, since seeing dead sexy (r.i.p.) wa-a-ay back in august 2002, so i was surprised to see a dead sexy sticker in the window out front when we rolled up around 7:30. parked the car and walked over to recycled books, then got some chow at the diner on the square. shoulda gone to j&j's pizza instead. oh well.
hadn't had to wait on line for a show in awhile, either, and this would be a night with lotsa line-waiting: door, merch table, bar, etc. when we got inside, practically the first thing i saw was michio kurihara carrying his gtr upstairs -- a good sign; i hadn't realized he'd be with them on this tour. i used some of the b-day money my sweetie gave me to snag a japanese vinyl copy of smile, a "statement"/"floor shaker" 7-inch, and a t-shirt. maybe i shoulda stuck to the u.s. smile and copped their near-impossible-to-find heavy rocks cd as well, but i was seduced by the groovy packaging (i'm still debating whether to break the seal on it; it's so pristine -- ahh, the romance of the artifact).
lotsa ppl we knew on the set: ray, hembree and teague; tommy from the great tyrant and his wife; henry and roger from blood of the sun; the gonzalez brothers from yells at eels, etc. before the music started, i had fun watching people's silhouettes on the frosted window in front. started out drinking shiner but soon switched to pbr to economize (they have $1 genuine drafts there if you can stomach 'em).
i'd forgotten how small the room is at rubber gloves -- only a little deeper than the stage, it seems (kinda like the "big room" at the wreck room r.i.p.). clouds, a four-piece from boston, opened with hellacopterish energy and three singers (the bassplayer and two gtrists, one of whom looked like an evil damien stewart). after a coupla songs, i had to walk around, leaving my sweetie in the mass. the a.c. was off and it was sweletering.
another four-piece, torche from florida were next with their heavier take on high-energy and varying hair-lengths. teague said their old band floor, combining heavy and pop elements, was even better. my sweetie worked her way to the front and was shooting what'd wind up being a couple of hundred pics. by this time the a.c. was on, a good thing, since the room was packed, and it stayed that way until boris hit.
the four musos in boris set up their own gear. their pedalboards are massive; kurihara uses _two_, and has a coupla loose effects hanging off the end of one of 'em. before and during the set, takeshi had a few probs with his gear -- a dead outlet on the house's power strip, a strap that slipped off his double-necked steinberger gtr-bass in the middle of a song, a bum cord. he worked through 'em like a pro while his bandmates played on. they "rockstarred" it a little bit (leaving the stage for the tension-building delay before they hit; drummer atsuo changed his shirt) but came back and delivered a coupla hours' worth of toonage, old and new. my sweetie remarked, "it's hard to believe something can be so loud and violent and yet so beautiful" and i'm inclined to agree.
they were LOUDER THAN FUCK; i was standing in front of kurihara's stacked fender twins and he was _killing_ me, but it was greatness. the cliche is to compare kurihara to the late quicksilver messenger service gtrist john cipollina, but his style is a mixture of that (including the wobbly tremelo-arm vibrato), dick dale, robert fripp (his echoey volume pedal/e-bow rides), scorching wah-driven blasts, things that sound like an organ or radio static, sonny sharrock chaos-slide -- a kind of everything of psychedelic noise-rock gtr. he's my new gtr hero. (and plays an sg.)
on the other side of the stage, wata played her trademark black les paul with a repose that was the total opposite of her massive sound. takeshi plays more gtr than i woulda thought, but his sound had a _huge_ bottom end (i'm sure tommy was diggin' it). atsuo (who's really the leader, i think) proved to be an outrageous ham showman and leaped out into the audience to surf the crowd late in their set. boris' powerful, majestic music covers a lot of bases -- heavy drone, full-on punk thrash, quiet meditative pieces -- from song to song, or even in the course of one song. after pummeling us with sound for over an hour, they backed off the intensity and played a coupla slower numbers before closing with a trademark droney blast (atsuo's crowd-surfing oppo) before returning (after timely pause -- more rockstardom) to encore with "farewell" from pink (the song i'd been waiting to hear all night). 'twas wish fulfillment at its best. my ears are still ringing.
ADDENDUM: two things i forgot to mention. 1) the way all three bands reinforced in my mind the efficacy of having blasts of feedback in between songs. 2) the way kurihara's right hand moved so fast it was a blur at times.
hadn't had to wait on line for a show in awhile, either, and this would be a night with lotsa line-waiting: door, merch table, bar, etc. when we got inside, practically the first thing i saw was michio kurihara carrying his gtr upstairs -- a good sign; i hadn't realized he'd be with them on this tour. i used some of the b-day money my sweetie gave me to snag a japanese vinyl copy of smile, a "statement"/"floor shaker" 7-inch, and a t-shirt. maybe i shoulda stuck to the u.s. smile and copped their near-impossible-to-find heavy rocks cd as well, but i was seduced by the groovy packaging (i'm still debating whether to break the seal on it; it's so pristine -- ahh, the romance of the artifact).
lotsa ppl we knew on the set: ray, hembree and teague; tommy from the great tyrant and his wife; henry and roger from blood of the sun; the gonzalez brothers from yells at eels, etc. before the music started, i had fun watching people's silhouettes on the frosted window in front. started out drinking shiner but soon switched to pbr to economize (they have $1 genuine drafts there if you can stomach 'em).
i'd forgotten how small the room is at rubber gloves -- only a little deeper than the stage, it seems (kinda like the "big room" at the wreck room r.i.p.). clouds, a four-piece from boston, opened with hellacopterish energy and three singers (the bassplayer and two gtrists, one of whom looked like an evil damien stewart). after a coupla songs, i had to walk around, leaving my sweetie in the mass. the a.c. was off and it was sweletering.
another four-piece, torche from florida were next with their heavier take on high-energy and varying hair-lengths. teague said their old band floor, combining heavy and pop elements, was even better. my sweetie worked her way to the front and was shooting what'd wind up being a couple of hundred pics. by this time the a.c. was on, a good thing, since the room was packed, and it stayed that way until boris hit.
the four musos in boris set up their own gear. their pedalboards are massive; kurihara uses _two_, and has a coupla loose effects hanging off the end of one of 'em. before and during the set, takeshi had a few probs with his gear -- a dead outlet on the house's power strip, a strap that slipped off his double-necked steinberger gtr-bass in the middle of a song, a bum cord. he worked through 'em like a pro while his bandmates played on. they "rockstarred" it a little bit (leaving the stage for the tension-building delay before they hit; drummer atsuo changed his shirt) but came back and delivered a coupla hours' worth of toonage, old and new. my sweetie remarked, "it's hard to believe something can be so loud and violent and yet so beautiful" and i'm inclined to agree.
they were LOUDER THAN FUCK; i was standing in front of kurihara's stacked fender twins and he was _killing_ me, but it was greatness. the cliche is to compare kurihara to the late quicksilver messenger service gtrist john cipollina, but his style is a mixture of that (including the wobbly tremelo-arm vibrato), dick dale, robert fripp (his echoey volume pedal/e-bow rides), scorching wah-driven blasts, things that sound like an organ or radio static, sonny sharrock chaos-slide -- a kind of everything of psychedelic noise-rock gtr. he's my new gtr hero. (and plays an sg.)
on the other side of the stage, wata played her trademark black les paul with a repose that was the total opposite of her massive sound. takeshi plays more gtr than i woulda thought, but his sound had a _huge_ bottom end (i'm sure tommy was diggin' it). atsuo (who's really the leader, i think) proved to be an outrageous ham showman and leaped out into the audience to surf the crowd late in their set. boris' powerful, majestic music covers a lot of bases -- heavy drone, full-on punk thrash, quiet meditative pieces -- from song to song, or even in the course of one song. after pummeling us with sound for over an hour, they backed off the intensity and played a coupla slower numbers before closing with a trademark droney blast (atsuo's crowd-surfing oppo) before returning (after timely pause -- more rockstardom) to encore with "farewell" from pink (the song i'd been waiting to hear all night). 'twas wish fulfillment at its best. my ears are still ringing.
ADDENDUM: two things i forgot to mention. 1) the way all three bands reinforced in my mind the efficacy of having blasts of feedback in between songs. 2) the way kurihara's right hand moved so fast it was a blur at times.
posted by stashdauber at 7:51 AM
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