Midwest Music Summit 2006: My Take on Day Two.

I’m typing this one on Saturday morning in a Starbucks on the corner of Broad Ripple and Guilford. I just spent almost 6 bucks on a muffin and a somewhat large vanilla latte, and most of the clientele is dressed in some sort of exercise apparel. There is a stone fireplace that sits unused. Rock and roll, motherfuckers. It became blatantly obvious while I was walking around yesterday that the majority of Indianapolis, or even small little hip Broad Ripple, doesn’t care or perhaps even know about the Midwest Music Summit, which is too bad. Not necessarily surprising, but too bad. Attendance yesterday was solid and enthusiastic, but it would be nice to have to elbow my way to the front just once. But as we are is as we are, and the three-story mega-dance club called Seven (owned by Jermaine O’Neal of the Pacers) stands quiet and vigilant now, but it had a line coming out of it last night, and families were eating at the Indian restaurant and dudes were going to the fratty bars, oblivious to all of the great music being played all around them. To someone not participating in the three-day thing, it looks like business as usual, I guess. So perhaps this is the MMS, with slight occasional bursts of snotty pole-taping like on Thursday.



But seriously, folks. There is some great music being played here. Although I only saw a sliver of it yesterday, little to none of it had I heard before (or at least in a long time), and all of it I walked no farther than a block or two to see. After I finished typing what I wrote yesterday, I walked over to Luna Music a block away to see Petticoat, Petticoat from Lexington, Kentucky, which I’d read about here (obviously). They’re a five-piece indie pop group with country-folk flourishes, and if they’re not the most memorable band, it’s probably partially by design, or at least it seems that way. They’re polite and shy-seeming, like the indie-pop representative at the 4-H Fair. And they’re fronted by a preternaturally cute singer (above--serious double-take time) who also happened to be frustratingly off-key most of the time. Her voice was low in the mix, but for the first few songs it seemed like she was still finding her range, or what there might be of it somewhere. There was a nice male-female tradeoff country-folk song about halfway through where she locked into place with everyone else, and by the time of their brave cover of “Walking After Midnight,” she was doing just fine. And then they were done. I hung out in a corner on this retro couch made of wire and teal vinyl (surprisingly comfortable) until I was approached by a very affable blond dude who shook my hand. He was in the band Captain of Industry (below), and I’m pretty sure he was at the blog panel thing and that’s how he knew who I was. Either way, he gave me a CD and then went to set up for his set, which was next. He’s the lead and plays a mean vintage Rhodes, and he’s accompanied by a skinny, nerdy guitarist who’s seriously an American Graham Coxon. And in the way that these things sometimes work themselves out, the band actually sounded like an updated, wonkier Blur a lot of the time, and the guitarist stood head down and tweaked the weirdest melodies out of his instrument. Oh yeah, they opened with a cover of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” so I sort of have to like them after that.





I met up with a non-concert-attending friend at a local bar and we dawdled for a while before making our way over to this bar called The Stone Mug to see Extra Blue Kind (above, bottom), generally considered to be one the more reliably melodic indie rock bands from Indy. It was a party sponsored by BMI, and there were people just licensing shit everywhere. Seriously, guys with pens and contracts and iPod headphones were stalking anyone who looked like they could carry a tune. Okay, perhaps not. But I ran into Miller again and told him to check out Petticoat, Petticoat when they played again Saturday. He was eating french fries with his girlfriend. We split and I nearly ran over a singer/songwriter performing to the parking lot when I opened the front door. I then ran into Tony and Kris from Those Young Lions on the sidewalk, and they told me that the next place I needed to go was Indy CD and Vinyl to see Ari Ari. So that’s where I went. I was really early, but that was a good thing, because I got to catch the majority of Eric Alexander’s set (below, top). He’s a calm eccentric from Bloomington who’s been around for a while in different guises, but who I’d sort of forgotten about, or maybe never knew about. Here, though, he had a five-piece band behind him including trumpet and occasional violin, and they played music that struck a fascinating balance between the folky prog of Soft Machine, the hyper-dramatic vocalizing of Tim Buckley and the elegiac drone of Neutral Milk Hotel, all with restrained, interest-keeping jamming. The guitarist was playing at the tip-top of all possible registers like Tom Verlaine or Bob Weir or somebody, bedecking the composite sea of sound with little crystalline white caps. And the sea metaphor I just used there probably came from the fact that Alexnder closed his set with a 7+ minute extended aquatic fable dealing with mermaids in some form. I gave him one of my wadded up crappy cards from my pocket and told him to get a hold of me. I'm so good at networking. Listen to "Let's Go, California" (mp3), which they played.





The schedule was running a little behind, so Ari Ari didn’t start playing until about 25 minutes after they were supposed to. But by the time their first song was finished, they had a broken hi-hat stand and had to borrow one from one of the other drummers in attendance. In between those points, for what seemed like 20 minutes but which actually was more like 4, they created an intensely theatrical, borderline comical and definitely riveting racket remiscent of Lightning Bolt or early Sonic Youth. Before they started playing their first song, the guitarist urged the crowd to loosen up a bit and move around once the music started, which he understood was hard to do when people didn’t want to knock over the rack of CDs they were leaning against. But the band’s heavily-inked, wide-eyed, highly combustible singer (above, bottom) made sure to take care of most of the movement for us. The first song started unrolling with feedback and drums like occasional M-80s, then everything got quiet for a second until she suddenly and with the force of a thousand giant hawks launched into the loudest, shrillest scream I think I’ve ever heard (like ten times greater than the one from the end of Run Lola Run), and it was fucking great. Then the rhythm locked in and she started running around the crowd, directing her lyrics at audience members who were standing still and smiling, hoping the extent that her antics would involve them would end at direct address. It was pure Brechtian punk rock theatre---this tiny girl going from stranger to stranger, screaming in their faces and pulling her band behind her like a tugboat towing a barge—but it wasn’t anywhere near violent or unnerving, more the opposite. It was funny and bracing and filled with youth and energy and I can't wait to see them play in a normal venue when I can watch everything happen again.



I hightailed it two blocks over to see Chris Kennedy (above) play at the Upper Room, a snobby, low-lit martini bar with the stale, tasteless décor of a drunken Pier One binge. There, I said it. On the positive tip (and I love the positive tip), it was hosting a coffee-shop style series of singer-songwriters that night. Right before I talk about Chris, I have to fully disclose that he’s my buddy and I’ve known him for a few years, but haven’t ever seen him play out. So I had that nervous anticipatory feeling, the kind you get not when you’re worried about how your friend will play, but how the crowd will react. I was fully armed with “shhhhh”es and sneers if the time came for them, but they weren’t really needed. Chris, I discovered, represents the style of literate arty folkie that would be in vogue today if James Taylor’s first two records were replaced forever by Blonde on Blonde. It’s all collaged Surrealist imagery, geeky country twang and quiet strumming, sounding a lot like Loudon Wainwright III’s first two records. Anyone who can reference both TS Eliot and Barbara Boxer in the course of two songs without sounding like the folk Wikipedia has got to be aces in my book. But maybe I’m biased. Dig on "Flagsucker Blues" (mp3) and tell me what you think.



I left the Upper Room for Locals Only, and I had to drive there (it's about a mile away, across the street from a huge car dealership). I had wanted to see a few earlier shows there, (The Musical Family Tree Showcase was going on) didn’t want to lose my choice parking spot. I planned on staying for the last four sets because I really wanted to see the Bloomington-based indie pop demigods Mysteries of Life (rel. to Antenna and Blake Babies), but I ended up splitting after the first one, the ad-hoc "supergroup" Panic Attacks, because I was pretty dead on my feet. Lots of standing and bad knees=not a very thorough concert reviewer. Panic Attacks was pretty fun, though—it consisted of two members of Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos (incl. Richard Edwards) along with Freda Love from Mysteries (who plays a two-piece drum kit standing up) and Kenny Childers (also of Mysteries of Life and also of Gentleman Caller). They were the epitome of the great MFT website, which dutifully chronicles the interconnections of seemingly every band to ever record a 7-inch in Indiana. And coincidentally enough, they started by playing a Loudon Wainwright song (!)—his biggest hit, the goofy “Dead Skunk.” They were all smiles for the rest of their abbreviated set, which they admitted was their first and probably last, before they ambled off the stage and I ambled toward my car. My car took me to Dodge’s couch (big ups on the lodging), and then this morning to Starbucks, where right now I’m listening to the Talking Heads’ “Once In a Lifetime” on their PA system, which was preceded by “Ashes to Ashes” and the Pretenders’ “Kid,” all to be found on the CD for sale by the cash register for $17.99. Smack in the middle, geographically and temporally, of the coolest new music festival this city sees each year, I just saw this dude buy one.

Tomorrow will see the penultimate totally last ever for this year entry on the Midwest Music Summit. Day one thoughts are here.