No Music for the Weak Minded

For some reason that has always baffled me, the classic movie ’Some Like It Hot’ was translated as ’Some People Like Jazz’ into Romanian. At the time I first discovered this strange discrepancy in the Matrix, jazz was safely situated in the most distant of galaxies from my tastes, and frankly, it’s still somewhere out in the wilderness.

I occasionally gave it tentative tries, like when it was extensively featured in the screen version of The Talented Mister Ripley, or when a friend convinced me to accompany her to a Brad Mehldau concert or when I discovered U2 songs referencing jazz greats- to this day I can thoroughly enjoy songs that have well tamed jazzy bits, but subject me to an endless jazz impro solo and I will relinquish any responsibility for my deeds.

So it might seem thoroughly out of character that I would go to a concert by Belgian band TaxiWars who play, well, jazz. Yes, true, the reason why they are on my radar at all is that their lead singer happens to coincide with that of dEUS, and I enjoyed most of his other side projects, of which he has plenty.

The first signs of impending danger came during the opening act, Hungarian band Best Bad Trip- I could have spared you the cheap joke of how their name describes their music pretty accurately, but I won’t. Thing is, I can’t even say I disliked their songs, and by all accounts they are superbly trained musicians, but they’re just not the kind of tunes that will keep me concentrated through a concert.

So yes, we chatted and sipped our drinks and kept doing so during TaxiWars, which attracted the slight ire of Tom Barman himself. Truth be said, TaxiWars were more involving for me, at least, since they had a vocal, which definitely helps, and many of their songs seemed to actually begin and end somewhere, with a clearly discernible backbone in between these two points. Yet on the whole, they were also more like background music for when you mix cocktails, which is some sort of compliment, but not one that would justify attending a concert.

Therefore, the one thing I learned, as the Coen Brothers wonderfully put it in Burn After Reading, is not to do it again. Jazz might definitely be someone’s cup of tea, but not mine, and so as to spare any disturbance in the force, I will just stick with dEUS, in which Tom Barman filters his jazz influences and wraps them in enough rock to suit weak minded people like myself.

Smokers Outside the Pirate Den's Doors- Editors and Public Service Broadcasting at Barba Negra

One of the deepest darkest fears of a Budapest concert goer is that the band will jovially greet Bucharest at some point,  maybe adding a sprinkling of how are you doing, Romania, as a side dish. This fear is of course mirrored across the border by the ominous possibility of a friendly hello Budapest and let’s have some fun, Hungary. The only band to be trusted to get it right are probably Enter Shikari, who tour so extensively in the area they’re likely to know it better than Hertfordshire.

Public Service Broadcasting took things to the next level, by having the concert’s venue eerily located in Budapest, Romania (the Facebook page flaunted a tiny Romanian flag as well, which is actually not so off the mark, since before some brain dead city official found it offensive, Budapest’s flag was indeed red, yellow and blue.) Given that I happen to be immune to Romanian-Hungarian animosity for rather obvious reasons, I actually found it much more disturbing that the location of the concert looks like a recently abandoned pirate den, sadly minus the treasure. Consolingly though,  some of the gents at the bar looked like they might fling a parrot on their shoulder at any moment.

Managing to fend of the sudden urge to down a bottle of rum and break into sea shanties, we made it to the stage area, where we were greeted with the re-assuring sight of groupies plastered to the fence.  Taking selfies, the luxury of which was not allowed to our younger selves, as you really did not afford to waste a dozen of your twenty four exposures on a duckface.

This gracious activity was brought to an end by the somewhat subdued appearance of Public Service Broadcasting, greeted by a couple of acid remarks related to their geographical haplessness. This was later replaced by the burning desire to find out whether they would actually sing or talk to us- the most basic of YouTube investigations would have already provided the answer, they didn’t.

There was however something utterly absorbing in their act of machine music meets very human gaucheness- whereas most people getting into the business would probably settle for making music to dance to, Public Service Broadcasting make music to think to. And while this could sound dangerously abstract, it actually works live as well. I may not have set out on my Tuesday expecting to ponder on the implications of AI with a pint in my hand, but that’s exactly what I did, and it was most satisfying.

Editors are another matter altogether- although, in retrospect,  the two acts complemented each other better than I would have expected. From the very first time I heard Tom Smith articulate the word fragile so very oddly over and over again in their breakthrough hit ’Munich’, I had that strange gut reaction brought about exclusively by things you love so much they hurt.

There’s of course no logic in that, and there shouldn’t be. The guy’s just another bloke who sounds like Ian Curtis, they say. Well yes he does, and thank heavens for that. And they generally sound like Interpol. Yes they do, and thank heavens again. Though I double dare Paul Banks to try and move his hands quite like Tom does - yes, the hands mesmerize me to the extent that towards the end of the concert my lens refused to focus on anything else.  

Oh, and then their albums all sound a bit the same, they say. Of course they do. They sound just right, dark and moody, with the occasional crystal clear gem of a song or a gloom anthem that through its cracks radiates light. And that shouldn’t change just because someone feels you must reinvent the wheel every year. The wheel’s successful millennia are testament to the basic fact that it works. 

To create the utterly incorrect impression of an objective review, I shall also mention how so many acts either avoid the wild East (and it’s infamous capital of Budapest, Romania) altogether, or perform with their handbrakes on when faced with the disturbing unknown which might or might not include a sinking pirate ship. So it was refreshing to see that for once we’re not off the map and well, we are taken very seriously indeed- the band cruised through an impressive 21 tracks at full speed, even taking time to make a remark on the loveliness of the place. Though of course you can't help but imagine how in fifty years time they'll be mentioning to their grandchildren how there was that one time they ended up in pirate headquarters in Budapest. 

I’m doing so well here I can even bravely venture into, ahem, criticism of how their setlist didn’t include ALL the songs I love, thus not lasting well into dawn next day. To compensate for this, I am listening to Editors on repeat and find myself practicing elaborate hand motions while getting ready for work or cleaning the kitchen. Because great concerts never really end.

Dark Nights of the Soul- Grooms, A Place to Bury Strangers and Chelsea Wolfe on A38

Two weeks after the Colectiv club fire, here came another Saturday when I went to a concert in the aftermath of a tragedy. As I was waiting in the hull of A38 to hand in my coat, I could not help but notice the last band on this month’s schedule: Eagles of Death Metal, sold out. Only they won’t continue their tour after what happened at the Bataclan, and that’s completely understandable.

What isn’t completely understandable to me is some people’s reaction of don’t you ever go to a concert again, look how dangerous it is. Concerts aren’t dangerous, irresponsible and evil men are. If we give in and live in fear, they win, and we can’t let that happen. Music, and live music in particular, is about communication, and understanding, about people finding a common language that goes beyond the surface, beyond what is seemingly dividing them.

I couldn’t even claim to be a great connoisseur of any of the acts that played on Saturday in A38, but I went nevertheless, because I wanted to indulge in something slightly different, something outside my usual comfort zone and  just listen to some music. It’s such a simple thing that can work wonders.

I had actually never listened to Grooms before, not  even once, they were a bit the ’opening act to drink beers to until the bar is mostly empty’ but I ended up being quite absorbed and forgetting about the beverage altogether- they don’t even have a proper Wikipedia entry, so there, a pretty good name to throw around when you want to flash your musical knowledge.

A Place to Bury Strangers are a slightly different matter, they’re the kind of noise rock band that occasionally has a song or two seep through into the half mainstream, and also a cohort of die hard fans who dove into the merch section like vultures having found rare and exquisite morsels. As a generally irrelevant piece of information, APTBS love to play in the dark, interspersed with the occasional killer strobe, so for the first three or so songs of the set I kept seeing the classical Boromir meme with ’one does not simply shoot APTBS’ added to it.  

In the end I just let go and joined in the wall of sound, which was intense, distorted but also strangely melodic at times. The final song of the show was played by the band from the back of the boat, creating some confusion among the crowd (and blocking Its Holiness, the bar), and, though it was definitely intriguing, felt a bit like an anticlimax.

My grand objection to Chelsea Wolfe will sound somewhat silly and weak minded, and I would apologize for it if I thought myself unfit for the two previously mentioned adjectives, but I am not: so here it goes, the lady is lovely, but her songs have no chorus. And I love a good chorus.  I must have it in order to feel truly happy.

Chelsea is of course a bit too gothic and pensive to want us to be truly happy, and maybe this Saturday was a day when you couldn’t have been happy no matter what, but even really sad songs occasionally veer into a chorus, maybe a sad one, but a chorus nevertheless. There’s undeniably atmosphere in her music, and feelings too, but they just fail to take flight in the end- they hover somewhere close to the ground. Yet in such a dark November maybe that’s how things are supposed to be after all.