I'm going out tonight, going to catch Mission of Burma at Double Door. Some people complain about Double Door, but I think it's a great little venue for seeing bands. I saw the Buzzcocks there a few years ago, and that was a fantastic show.
I'm flying solo, which is often very common for me when I go see one of the rare bands I'm interested in hearing live. I don't bother to ask anybody if they'd like to go, because they've either not heard of the band in question or likely wouldn't like the music if they heard it. And because when I go on my own, I can just focus on the band's music, sans distraction, and soak up their sound. Not that I'd object to taking a date to see a band, but for me, the consummate audiophile, I'm very much there to watch the performance, to hear the performer play, to watch them.
That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate
Anyway, that's what's on my plate tonight. I'm so glad there's the smoking ban in Chicago -- it makes seeing bands so much more pleasant; you don't have to detox after seeing a show.
Dead Pool
Mission of Burma is one of the few active bands out there I'm at all curious about seeing, since so much of their sound was about sound, itself -- like their approach to music is very, I dunno, elemental. It's hard to describe, exactly. They were always in their own space, soundwise -- hard to classify or pigeonhole. There's their songs themselves, and how they present them, sonically -- which sounds maybe stupid, I'm not sure.
It's kind of like when you watch a movie (or when I do, anyway) and pay attention to not just the movie, but how it's shot, the decisions the director makes in the shooting of it. With Mission of Burma, there are the songs themselves, and there is their approach to tackling the "problem" of their songs, themselves -- the aesthetic choices they make. I respect them as musicians, for carving out their own space.
Einstein's Day
They're often a band I listen to when I'm brooding, or driving around, thinking. I look forward to standing there in the little crowd, nursing a beer, just awash in sound, at almost point-blank range.
