April 11 2006

Skags/Oroku/Creosote

@Kendrick House

Show Review

So I was a bit late, as I was mourning the death of D12’s Proof, or at least, looking on the internet to find out if he was indeed dead. I think that he is. I also found out, that morning, that my undergraduate advisor, Dr. Val Avery had also passed away. So I was also mourning her, if drinking a tall boy of Tecate and Myspacing out can be called that. She was a fantastic lady. Proof, was a fan of Jerry Garcia and was a fine rapper.

So I missed Creosote. They looked sweaty, so I imagine it was pretty good. Oroku was setting up when I arrived, and there’s a pretty good chance I’m misspelling that, but I don’t know what it means anyway, so there it is. They’re from Seattle. They did a relatively slow, throbbing thing with the minotaur vocals and a cello that added to the otherwise intentionally monotonous chugga pretty well. It was like an extended rock out in slow motion. Their fast parts got dready people moving, the ones that would later throw fire sticks around in the front yard. Oroku’s amps seemed to be frizzing out, and I wonder if their lack of volume was because of that, or to make the cello stand out more. But for a band that wore all black and had a logo with spikes and vines and whatnot, they didn’t seem all that loud to me.

The Skags however were pretty loud. They’ve really changed a lot over their illustrious, lucrative career, in all good ways, and this is from someone that liked where they were coming from in the first place. And it occurred to me, last night, that presently, they are Flagstaff’s most tenured band. Now, if they could just get a little older in a legal sense, and tour. They had one of those sets that every band has: a frustrating, tense hullabaloo, that just gets the drunk crowd more amped. Or at least Ash really liked it. (Completely unrelated: In some pictures, Ash’s father, looks exactly like Leonard Cohen.)

During the Skags set, I was informed that a jerkface from the apartment on Agassiz that beat the shit out of me on New Year’s was present at the show, and I should identify him and see if he was one of the dudes that, unprovoked, kicked my faggy head in. He proved not to be, and I’m really not sure what to say about it, other than those dudes suck big time and I’m not sure what type of blackball situation needs to take place, but perhaps one does. Of course, the dude claimed to know nothing about his roommates’ violent and anti-social behaviors, and I for one would love to believe him, but I’d also like to find the Republican-imitating ass that does and have him point the perpetrators out for me. And I really don’t want to see anyone, including him and his minions, beat up. I’d really just like to ask him why, on god’s earth, he enjoys hurting people and kicking them in the head. That’ll never happen, of course, but my guess is that it has to do with his mother and his confusing sexual emotions. There it is.

One more thing of note: The Kendrick House, at this point, is quite a phenomenon. It’s really nice. I’m not sure there’s another spot that’s so enjoyable to take in a near terminal amount of secondhand smoke and squander drinks. And the Kendrick folks are smart. They’ve got a logo, and it seems to get bigger on every flyer. If they’re still going in a year, the flyers will just say KENDRICK all big, with a date, and the band names will be like a little appendix in the corner. Sort of like a rave, like that. Except with far more dudes in all black clothing in various states of disrepair. And facial piercings. Those look like they hurt. And they’re not attractive. I should end my rant right there. There.

Oh, one last thing. Make sure to check Boddhisatva in a couple weeks. They rule, in a way-better-than-Hella sense. And I’m pretty sure I spelled their name wrong.