show review: noisey shit at vertigo nights (texas)
stack...@my-deja.com
"noisey shit - an experiment in scene hybridization show" with briokids
acts virus b-23 (alan hencey) and ickoo at vertigo nights (Club 9406)
in Pasadena/LaPorte/Houston.
Brent called at 2:00 pm, just as he was waking up, while i was reading
my new Wire mag and watching New Orleans getting spanked by the
Vikings. He picked me up around 6 and we headed recklessly south/east
on Brent's speedtank, with a recent Audio Active cd booming from the
speakers.
We exited the freeway in no time and made it onto Spencer Highway.
Spencer Highway is one of those Texas (or American?) specialties, the
endless straight and flat road with the same combination of empty
fields, strip shopping centers, mexican restaurants, giant gas stations
and a non-stop procession of burger kings, mcdonalds and taco bells.
The LaPorte portion of Spencer Highway consists of a vast empty field
on one side and delapidated shacks, trailers and small stores on the
other. The sky glows with the distant lights of the huge oil refineries
that give this area's air it's distinctive pungent stench.
The 9406 Club is an all-ages venue where anyone can play for free- they
can even make money if they draw a crowd. Bands get a dollar a head if
the total crowd numbers under 50, two dollars a head if they number
over 50, 3 dollars if they're over 100. No alcohol is sold, and once
you're in you can't leave if you want to come back inside. From the
outside the club looks like a windowless bunker, with an attached two
story roofed wooden deck. A disco ball hangs from the deck's rafters.
We went in to see if we could weasel our way in for free. We met a wall
with a list of rules including among many others "no outside food or
drink", "no alcohol" and "no weapons of any sort" and an extremely
authoritative little nymphette working the door.
We caught our first glimpse of EW ("ee-dubya"), the club's owner. EW is
about 50, with a great matt black pompadour, bright yellow sports coat
and tie, white pants and white patent leather shoes. The sort of Jerry
Lee Lewis/Car Salesman look affected by slick small-town Texas
preachers. Neither Alan or Ickoo were there yet so we left to get some
burgers and brew. In LaPorte even the Burger King employees are white-
we knew we had ventured deep into southeast Texas.
We went back in and finally tracked ickoo down, but it was no-go on the
free entry. 7 bucks each down the drain. Brent still had a foil wrapped
burger in his hand as we prepared to pay- EW asked Brent "you don't
have any marijuana stashed in there do you?" to which brent replied
"uh, no... just some crack". EW seemed only mildly amused but he got
the joke and let us in any way. The door nymphette, wearing a baby-t
and daisy dukes, was sitting cross-legged on a high stool as she took
our money and put our wristbands on. She dropped the wristbands and
bent down, the baby fat on her stomach half-burying the silver ring on
her belly buton. Should i stop now? The wristbands barely fit onto my
man-sized wrist and the sticky ends kept pulling my arm hairs all
night- these things are made for pre-pubescent kids, y'know?
I guess the word Brent used most to describe the 9406 Club was
"shithole", and though a harsh judgement, I would tend to agree with
the man's appraisal. Low ceilings, old sofas, booths lined with ragged
old carpet, uneven wood floors, garish dayglo squiggles on the walls.
The place is made up of four main areas: the dance floor, dj stage and
"bar" (hot chocolate: 75c) as soon as you walk in, then a room holding
a pool table beyond that, and past the pool room a rock/band stage. Up
on the second floor is an open air space where the dj played some dj
screw-styled slow motion hip-hop. The place was crawling with jailbait
trailer park ravers and hip-hoppers of all genders, plus some parents
for christ's sake, who'd brought their tykes to see the rock bands. The
band stage and audience floor area could fit in someone's living room,
but this room's "ceiling" opens up to the third floor balcony area,
accessible by some rickety old wooden stairs. The only band I saw
playing was of the Korn-Bizkit variety, and their parents must have
spent a bundle for christmas on their huge P.A., which provided
amplification all out of proportion to the room.
After almost an hour of walking around soaking up teen and pre-teen
hormonal and angst/giggly atmosphere Alan "Virus b-23" went on and
whipped out some flailing ragga-tinged breakcore, more punishing and
streamlined than the last time I caught one of his sets. Noisier too,
though he kept the head-bobbing groove flowing quite nicely throughout.
He seemed pissed off about something (EW whispered something into his
ear at one point), and ended his set by just turning off the turntable
and letting the music slow down to silence. Alan's set got a decent
audience reaction- at one point there were 12 or so people
dancing/twitching/testifyin' right in front of him.
There was an hour's wait between Alan's and ickoo's set, and we started
getting some serious cabin fever, especially when the club's dj started
singing along/rapping to Britney Spears and the parade of giggly
jailbait lost it's novelty. We tried to leave and were met by a
different door nymphette, considerably less spectacular than the first,
though dressed in spiffy halter top and go-go boot ensemble. She was
also twice as authoritative as her predecessor, and wouldn't budge and
inch on letting us go. Eventually Brent, who seemed more aggravated by
the atmosphere than me, approached EW with this angle- "do you let
parents go out?"- EW:"oh yes" Brent: "well, we're old enough to be
these kids' parents- we just came to see our friends play, and we just
need to get some air for an hour". Well, it worked, and EW walked us
out, telling the second door nymphette as she glared at us "if these
two look like they're screwed up on somethin', don't let'em back in".
We sat in the speedtank for an hour, drinking beer, bullshitting, and
admiring the production on the Audio Active tracks like we were 16
again or something. Pretty fucking pathetic. They let us back in
without a problem. ickoo's set was a splattered mix of breakcore and
comedy/novelty records plus some noise provided by an old casio sk-1
sampler and a couple of fx pedals. This kid is awesome, what can i say?
He flips back and forth between distorted breakbeats and cut-up bursts
of rhythmic noise. And he's got stage charisma to spare, singing along
to a cookie monster record or dancing to some sped up middle eastern
(?) tune. Unfortunately ickoo's audience dwindled down to nothing but
the briokids crew and us in no time. Eventually, it just became time
for us to leave- so we said our goodbyes and headed back to Houston.
Carlos
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