A November To Dismember
'Twas the final night of
Piles' 5-week-long residency at the
Midway Cafe.
'Twas a Tuesday, and it started out with Gabe Plays Drums, which consisted of a guy named Gabe playing drums . . . along to his mp3 player . . . with a playlist of songs ranging from Beyonce to Radiohead? And ending with guest singer
Marty from
Uncle Monsterface assisting in a rendition of the
Buckaroo Bonzai theme song?!
The second act I sorta slept through -- this dude who calls himself Hands Of Fate sang soft sweet tunes with guitar. In retrospect, I wish I had payed more attention to him -- if only to see if the lyrics had any references to
this 60's horror
flop-turned-cult-fave (
by MST3K of course).
Tristan Da Cunha went on next because Calumet-Hecla was waiting for some people/gear to show up. And of course leave it to this normally-maddeningly-schizoid-rock-trio to take it upon themselves to try to educate the kids on the out-of-print record by a '70s British band called
Jet -- right, not
that one -- who were notable for having ex-
Sparks band members, scoring Elton John's tailor, and recording one (and only one) album's worth of a mishmash of glam-rock and punk-pop that would've influenced bands like the Buzzcocks . . . . if anyone ever heard it. Which probably not many people at PAs had, up until TDC played Jet's Roy Thomas Baker-produced,
self titled album in its entirety (complete with fake-British-accented vocals) -- a set they also played during last month's Halloween show at O'Briens. This time, though, they came correct: not only did they pass out pamphlets on the
history of Jet, they also recorded their performance for the listening pleasure of
Jet's original bass player who TDC drummer Steve Budney tracked down and found now living in Germany. Speckfuckingtackular.
Next up:
Calumet-Hecla, which -- due to never-quite-figured-out technical difficulties -- was a mess of pedals, feedback, driving drums and muted vocals except for some
SK-1 sampling fun ("Piles sucks!").
Finally the
guests of honor got on stage to exhibit their collective
In Utero wet-dream cover set, which I have to say was only less impressive because
these guys
stole their thunder just a month ago. Piles does get extra points, however, for the distribution of kazoos into the crowd for guitar-line assistance during "Very Ape."