Zero Bldg.
The Show I Saw Last Night
It's an hour from my house to the Caledonia in Athens, driving through the stupefyingly cold evening wind. I met Crissee and Charlie and after some bitching about the weather and selling some cds, They let us into the lounge. Never before has walking into a tiny rock club felt so much like coming home to a nice warm living room. With cheap beer.
We were there to see some Cex. And whaddya know, there he was, swaddled unrecognizable behind the merch table. Charlie charmed him into an autograph on a free 7" and we all had a good laugh. We joked around with a couple members of
Weather--the bassist/singist of which is Robie, Rjyan Cexwell's wife. We talked about swimming in quarries and about the Northeast and Chicago--another good band from Chicago, will it never cease?
So Weather took the stage and, well, rocked it. The screamy/breathy female vox were quite pummelling and sexy and the guitarist spent a lot of time sticking metal objects in his strings. Oh, and yarn, he pulled yarn through his guitar strings. Melissa would've swooned.
So after that was more beer and Charlie bought a record and a shirt from Weather for ten bucks and a bag of quarters because such is the social maniplativness of Charlie that were he to have run away with the circus, they would have sent him home with the tent.
Aloha means goodbye, but also hello, it's in how you inflect. Aloha is all about inflection. Aloha is also about more instruments (guitar/bass/drums/Rhodes piano/keyboard/vibraphone/floor tom/tamborine/PBR) than band members (four guys who look eerily alike). They all trade off instruments, sometimes mid-song.
Toward the end of their set, Robie from Weather pulled out a trunk of animal hoods she had made and put a furry white one with husky ears on. A couple girls we'd met in the parking lot who were big Aloha fans dove in and dressed up as a unicorn and some sort of round-eared plush creature. Crissee appropriated some big red harlequin/devil horns and I pulled on a teddy bear hood. I wish someone had gotten pictures.
I'd describe how Aloha sound, but I'd rather put the adjectives toward describing Charlie some more and besides, there are mp3s
here.
Charlie is tall. He has perennial bedhead and the gaunt cheekbones of a French caracature.
Cex has expanded his live show to a three-piece, assembled from both of the opening acts: a member of Aloha on drums and Robie on this modded out, two string bowed bass. Rjyan worked a tangled assortment of knobs and buttons. And there was no rapping. "Might they play 'Balls Out' or perhaps 'Earth-Shaking Event'?" I wondered and was answered with a noisy, glitch-happy, dual-vocalised, drum-pounding, grinning defiant "No."
Charlie [calling from audience]: "First for Wounds!"
Cex: We don't do requests.
Charlie [in same voice]: I was just kidding anyway.
And... this is all true. Twelve beers deep and sobering, we stumbled back into the cold two AM. Back to Milledgeville, back to Conyers.
Charlie's Swag Tally:
1 autographed copy of Cex's first 7" [free; said Rjyan, "I've got a million of these"]
1 Weather cd [for Crissee]
1 Weather t shirt [for Charlie]
1 hand drawn Weather poster [from their merch table, free]
1 Aloha back patch featuring library rules for handling records [free]
Wish everyone coulda been there. Later.
I've moved home to Conyers. I'm sharing a room with my brother. We are looking for an affordable apartment in Atlanta.
Help me get out of my parents house.
Thanks.
