Thursday night at NX35. Opening night. Denton is not a 9-to-5 kind of town, but even the indiest community feels the workday pinch when putting on a ruckus, even one as all-consuming as NX35.
Crowds, initially, were sparse. My commute from the so-close-yet-so-far Dallas suburb of Plano (a very 9-to-5 town) got me in 10 minutes before wristbands were to become unavailable. My short line was populated with a mix of earnest music seekers, disheveled hipsters competitively spouting one-liners at each other, two pretend lesbians I would later see making out for attention at the Snarky Puppy show, and Michael Constantine McConnell of The Jakeys et al. This was, I think, the only day of the conferette that Mike didn’t perform.
A quick walk across town, and I began to wonder how it had gotten so cold so quickly. I also arrived at Hailey’s to the happy news that The Bizarro Kids would be playing, as their scheduled venue had been suddenly shut down earlier in the day. Bad news for the venue, but good news for me. Now all the bands I wanted to see would be right next to each other.
The Bizarro Kids play a kind of 8-bit infused post-hardcore that, while not terribly original, has a desperate energy that makes one feel a bit giddy. The video that accompanies their show indicates that they’d agree with that assessment. By far my favorite new-to-me band of the night, the fact that they were squatting in another line-up’s schedule caused their set to be too short by half.
Saboteur followed shortly thereafter, playing a kind of noisy rock that, while possibly good, was not what I was seeking that night. Good luck for me – my decision to leave after one and a half songs set me up for perfect timing the rest of the evening.
Across the street at The Boiler Room, Kaboom took the stage a few minutes after I entered. “Aw, hell,” I thought, “this generic pseudo-punk is no better than what I just left.” Then vocalist Brad Santulli (I think) began to, well, vocalize. He is a small man with a high-pitched voice, like Geddy Lee being stretched on the rack. His disdain for the audience set a delightful combative tone, and the whole set made the hate centers of my brain happy.
Brrr. It’s even colder than it was an hour ago.
Then back to Hailey’s for The Crash That Took Me. Cute girls playing instruments well will always be enough to make my chauvinistic side like a band, especially when one of them plays a six-stringed bass guitar that’s as big as she is. They played a pleasantly infectious brand of art pop with violin, but they were plagued by sound problems and by the presence of their frontman, who as far as I can tell adds no value. I hope that he writes the songs and doesn’t just dance poorly while looking like a Danny McBride character.
Man, this smoke is making me light-headed.
Then back to The Boiler Room for Zorch, a keys and drums duo that brought in the noise and the stripped-down funk. With a couple experimental tracks thrown in, this Austin-based band was the kind of thing I was hoping to get out of the night. Of course, the free CDs helped.
Maybe I should’ve brought some ear plugs. I’m getting a bit of a headache.
Then back to Hailey’s for This Will Destroy You. Apparently the sound problems had only gotten worse, causing this usually very good band in this usually very good venue to act like, for lack of a better word, dicks. Their hostility toward the venue and the audience lacked the charm of Kaboom’s, and after the fourth vaguely homophobic exclamation about anal sex, I was unable to get into their soaring, throbbing, distortion-driven, otherworldly sonic blast. So I left.
OK, I know it’s Texas, but the temperature doesn’t just drop this quickly.
Then back to The Boiler Room for Snarky Puppy, a peppy jazz-fusion outfit that got the people dancing and the faux lesbians all horny. Full crowd … loud music. Despite an oddly mellow horn section and a bass player that can’t quite pull off his ambitious solos, the album tracks they played were tight and energetic and fully buoyed my lagging spirits.
So … Thursday night was spent between just two venues and yet covered such a variety of qualities, styles and tones that it felt like a full weekend’s worth of shows. It was the greatness of NX35 in microcosm, with only the most committed fans in attendance.
Then back home, where I discovered that the weather, air quality and volume had all been perfectly normal, and I had a 101.1 fever. So perhaps it was all just a wonderful dream …
Tomorrow: Rob King’s view of Friday night.
