By now you’ve all seen the shows where bands play out of the backs of cars, plugging the guitars and amps into the lighter socket or wherever. Last week we glimpsed (and a glimpse is all you get) the latest intimate acoustic trend; closet concerts. You go to someone’ s modest house, wander about in the corridor, then get to figure out where the music is coming from.
Jordan Crew, whose tunes are so gentle they already sound like he’s singing them under a pile of sweaters, has done a number of these gigs, to crowds ranging from one to four. He tells us “that hide and seek element is something I choose to bring to it. Basically, you know, these shows exist because that is the space you’ve got to work with, right?”
Bathrooms have better acoustics, as all us shower singers know, but Jordan quickly points out the disadvantages: ‘people need to use the behind, man. No better way of pissing of the housemates than not letting them piss, plus, you know, we’re talking about crowded houses here. Like, no maid service. Rooms can be rank. I mean, if we could play in a living room or a bedroom we would, but the houses are so crowded.”
Counterintuitive modern social instinct: Embrace the closet. Next big venue of choice: under the bedsheets with a flashlight.
Bigger rooms, shorter sets:
Somebody finally got it together and stuck Firestone and Bridgestone on the same bill, Friday at the old (even better) fire station on Station Avenue (they were so clever with street names back in the day). Their names pile up neatly like bricks, but the bands also sound alike in other ways. They even shared a bassist, “Pladdy” Ver Planck, for a while. Discover and Destination complete the blow-out, though expect one or two sets to get truncated since the hall’s only booked for three, count ’em three, hours. Whoever thought they could cram such auditory extravagance into a mere 180- minutes must’ve been -stoned… University Properties unveiled two new songs last Tuesday at the Bullfinch: ‘Yo world,” a parody/rip-off of Liberry’s ‘Tasty Delite”: and “Gant,” about scarf-clad college kids hanging on the corner where the convenience suite used to be….