Ideat Village part 1

Monday, June 27, 2005

Ideat Village part 1 This season has been a good one for the Ideat Village. After last year's funeral march, we all thought it was over, but apparently Bill Saunders just won't let it rest. Starting a couple of weeks ago on the 10th was the kick-off party at Cafe 9. I went to see Bill's Captain Beefheart cover band, Doctor Dark. They were great. Their drummer was insane. Frankly, any musician who can pull off Beefheart has to be insane. Each instrument plays according to its own logic and rhythm. For a small group, they did really well and Bill's voice is dead-on. Good stuff.
I also really liked Kimono Draggin. I sensed Modest Mouse/Pixies undertones, but not so much as to make them unbearably derivative. They were fun, imaginative, fairly tight and interesting (which is my highest complement.)
It was the second time I saw the Whipping Boys, New Haven's greatest old-man punk band. They have more balls than anybody, and god damn, but this town needs it. We have a serious dearth of groups willing to put it all on the line, but they do. Plus, I have a soft spot for any band that does Iggy and the Stooges covers.
Hott Love, I could see what they were going for, and I appreciate that, but I don't think they got there. Sort of a psycho-soul thing. I don't know, maybe I just automatically reject anything that stinks of misogyny, but when the singer asks for panties to be thrown onstage, it's not really my thing.
The Sawtelles were far and away the least interesting band to play that night. Their songs went on twice as long as they could sustain themselves and even at half the length, they would have been soul-crushingly boring.
Who else? Grosk, the Lamb Bombs, Horsefeathers, The Cryptones. Two weeks later, I can't remember who was who.

Ideat Village part 2 Last Saturday, the 18th, the Vultures played Ideat Village at Temple Plaza. They were the first to go on and it was probably the most interesting performance I saw during the festival. Gone were the electric guitars and drums, in fact, the only instruments they played were cheap-ass casio-or-the-like keyboards through effects processors and amps. It was Kraftwerk as a garage band. Sort of industrial sounds, but instead of mechanical precision, inspired sloppiness. It was hard to tell what was improvised and what rehearsed, but there were a couple of clear songs. Few vocals, though, and they were manipulated to lower them an octave or two. All this clad in coveralls and plastic women's faces.
I didn't stick around and regret missing the Chuck Hestons, I still haven't had the pleasure.

Saturday night was Pitkin Plaza on Orange st. That place was great. Behind the patio next to Moka there is a wall and some bushes. To get to the music, you had to climb up a pile of cinderblocks and through a space in the bushes beyond which was a field between residential buildings and a parking lot. It was a perfect little oasis in the middle of the city. Everybody sat on the grass and drank cheap beer.
Strike the Colors was, I guess, the headliner. They didn't really do it for me. Too much Fugazi. Too much masterbatory intrumentalism. Too much emo when not intrumental.
Hygiene Wilder, though, I liked. The singer was in one of the bands from the kick-off party (Horsefeathers, maybe) but I liked this band much better. It was punk, but in a good way. The singer was a natural performer, completely unafraid and unselfconscious. Occassional lyrical awkwardness, but that's what you get with honest songwriting. A little activist, but more in the between-song banter than in the actual songs, and enteratining, so it was okay.
There were other bands: The Threespeeds, Puckish, Crooked Hook. They were all pretty unremarkable rock'n'roll-type stuff.

Ideat Village part 3 This Saturday was the big finale. All day in Temple Plaza. It was a good day for it, as the old folks said; not too hot, sun was shining, but we had shade from the spiral garage ramp. Plush Asian Factor opened playing in the center of that spiral that was called the Thunder Dome. They were good, noisy industrial intrumental. Two bass players and a drummer. One bass didn't sound like a bass, it was so manipulated. Great, loud chaos, it was the best way to get the day started.
Next up was Bret Logan and the Jellyshirts. They were slightly-above-average pop-rock. The songs were well crafted and performed. They had two guitarists but I'm not sure why, they had no solos or anything like that. I suppose I just prefer minimalism. Anyway, nothing really outstanding, but adequate.
MOD was a group of women with painfully obvious lyrics culled from what had to have been a 14-year-old girl's poetry diary. I couldn't really stick around for that, so went to Sahara's for falafel.
Pangea was a death metal group fronted by a teenage boy and what appeared to be his mother playing bass and Skeletor on drums. In the middle, the mother character did a song for perpetual political underdog Ralph Ferrucci during which she ranted against the Paris Hilton-types in the world, much to the audience's delight until she started repeating herself. One good line, though, "You only starve on purpose."
What to say about Fuzebox? I'm sure they'll get a lot of party gigs. The guitar player shows that he practices a lot, but the songs have no substance. I had to take a walk during their set.
Then, the Lone Drummer. I didn't catch his name, but he was announced as having been in marching bands for 30 years. I was expecting some kind of hippie-tribal bongo nonsense, but this was actually interesting. He played a single snare drum with such intense precision. It's a fine line between honesty and precision and I believe he meant it.
Next in the Thunder Dome was Ludent Tremmel. Intrumental guitar-driven rock, but in a good way. Very passionate and talented.
In between some of the bands, a bunch of goth kids cleared the grass to tumble around and perform acrobatics. They were'nt great, but with some practice they could be decent. Circus Delecti, I think they called themselves. Get some jugglers and swallow a couple of swords is my prescription.
Prestor John, also, was very precise. They were introduced as a progressive rock band, but I wouldn't think of them that way. They were heavy on precise intrumentation, but some of the songs were more punk. Kind of similar aesthetic to Mission of Burma, but a completely different sound. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Then they gave the stage to the hippie. Bill Bingham. This self-righteous walking stereotype actually circled the audience with a beat-up metal gong to sanctify the place. Then he did some kind of hippie prayer with a sheet over his head and read some poetry. The worst part was that he had musicians onstage to play with him, but they only played for one piece. The best thing he did was invite Tony Rosso onstage to deliver a poem. The contrast was striking. Where Bingham was preachy, Rosso was entertaining. Where Bingham was obvious, Rosso was subtle. Rosso made us laugh. They were both delivering essentially the same message: stop war, this administration is wrong. But their methods couldn't have been more different. In the end, Rosso was effective and Bingham was not.
Again in the parking spiral, this time Styrocultural Antidote. After Ludent Tremmel, they weren't all that engaging. Guitar-driven rock intrumentals, same old.
Then there were The Danglers. Hard-core country-punk. They covered the Doors' Soul Kitchen the same way X did it. The singer was drinking Jack Daniels onstage and he jumped into the waterfall. Good stuff. Good musicianship, dual guitars with good solos.
Then came the Iron Painter competition. I believe it was one of the Furors onstage playing his toy piano as we set up and the model was announced. We had 45 minutes to paint the Ideat and his queen. I think there were 8 of us and we we showed the breadth of painting ability and talent. The winner was a Yale student who did a very good job of painting a picture of the queen that looked like the queen. Most of us didn't go that route. In the end, my abstract genius went unappreciated.
After, Lys Guillorn played with her band. I liked her a lot. The song construction was fairly straightforward, but what I could hear of the lyrics were interesting and her singing was good. I'd like to see her again.
I didn't stick around for the American Ideat finals. I'm not really into karaoke. I also missed the pie fight that was scheduled for the end of the evening.

All told, this Ideat Village thing did more to teach me about the state of music in New Haven than anything else could have. It's a pretty diverse group of bands we've got here, despite what Toad's place might lead one to believe.