A Summons to Murfreesboro
Come to the 'Boro for the punk bands, stay for the Sundrop and Lucio Fulci movies
by Jason Shawhan
Driving around Murfreesboro is a lot like Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good." You know you'll find your way back to the main road/hook eventually, but you're not exactly sure how long it will take. I'm not looking for churches or meth labs, but they do seem to proliferate throughout the state. I don't have any Joe Walsh with me in the car, but a Lou Reed mix CD from several years past will do. If "Life's Been Good" fits with the actual layout of Murfreesboro, then "Street Hassle" embodies the getting there perfectly. Let it be said that after the unending bullshit on I-65 north of Nashville (going on what, six or so years now), traveling down I—24 seems quaint. The only serious obstacle to watch out for is accidentally getting on 840 (a.k.a David Lynch's Lost Highway) and never being seen again.
When it comes to music, restaurants, sexual experimentation, drugs, or just needing a recharge on a Larry Clark vibe, the 'Boro comes to mind naturally. Nashville tries to hide its desires, shunting them to outlying areas. Murfreesboro's passions are forthright and open.
My friend Catherine had told me once about driving back to Nashville on a Sunday morning in the last stages of coming down from acid. What's scary and interesting is that it seems all of my friends have some story about making it back from Murfreesboro in some form of altered state. "On the drive back," I say to myself, "I'm going to be extra careful. Death is not on my agenda for the evening." "Waves of Fear" is on the Lou Reed mix CD, fitting as always. Irony is along for the ride.
Gas is cheaper, certainly, by about three or so cents. No one would make the trek just for that, but it does serve as a nice fringe benefit. Like Sundrop. "It certainly is different from the kind you get in other parts of the state," the attendant tells me. "Different bottling facilities." I don't know if that's necessarily true, but I have friends who live by it and who expect some Murfreesboro Sundrop on pain of horrifying trouble when I get back.
Video Culture remains the best video store in the state. I love any place that's devoted enough to the history of videocassette that you can rent old Italian splatter in the cut-and-retitled U.S. tapes that have been around for decades, at the same time you can rent the restored DVD version on a nearby shelf. That's video scholarship made easy, and any visitor to that venue can feel the love. That Campus Liquors is right next door—well, that's just gravy.
I have come to Murfreesboro to see one of my favorite local bands, a fine collective of fierce rockers called On Command. It is through them that I have begun my slow infiltration of the Nashville punk scene, and it is through them that I have learned to appreciate the focused power of postmodern cock-rock. (Of course, that phrase is misleading in that their destroyer goddess of a drummer, Adrian, is both female and peerless.) So I have an objective, and it is to allow pulverizing riffs and That Scream to distract from all my own drama, then let the nurturing community I have fortunately stumbled into take care of the rest.
The Red Rose Coffee House and Bistro is an institution I remember visiting back in the day, and its Weimarish industrial-bakery vibe remains as intriguing and pleasant as always. Drinks are plentiful, as are chocolate confections and baked muffins and cookies of all sorts. I am unwilling to let my guard down in front of these baked goods. But in Middle Tennessee and, metonymically, the rest of the nation right now, eating carbs is fairly punk. People on Atkins keep at it and seep away their serotonin, and the next thing you know you've got the most boring and petulant zombies ever. Too much meat, not enough sense.
The crowd here looks refreshingly free of bullshit, drama, and angst, excepting what I've brought with me. I always worry someone will look at me and say, "You don't belong here." Some nights, they might be right. But as the show gets underway, I realize that that is not the case tonight.
South Dakota-based openers Sinking Steps, Rising Eyes were working a blend of "Bends"-era Radiohead, Kate Bush, and Jethro Tull. Unfortunately, their low-tech yet impressive light setup couldn't balance out the fact that their vocalist, when audible, was off-key. I still give them props for unironic use of flute and sufficiently crunchy riffs. Their album is probably quite good, as studio recording could fix many of the problems that plagued their intriguing and exasperating set.
Octopus is another of Nashville's great bands, a three-man dynamo of nervous energy and focus. These guys are a fragmentation grenade of rhythm with the slightest echoes of both Gordon Gano and Richard Hell. Precision is the key with this mollusk, which strikes with 20 minutes of full-power crunch then withdraws, leaving the audience wanting more every time. The crowd both increased in numbers and became more involved, moving closer to the performance area.
On Command is a perfect example of audioviolence—the sound of chaos executed perfectly. The crowd was won over completely, advancing close enough to feel the supernova of stage presence that is frontman Mike Raber. The five-piece On Command ruled ass and pummeled the souls and ears of all around. The faces around me shared two things in common; feeling the music and providing a physical manifestation of what you get when you go out in and around Nashville. The possibilities are near limitless, and that is both comforting and inspiring.
The cars stream back up I-24 toward Nashville, and all I can think is how many of them must be half-drunk or coming down off something. The stories in all of these vehicles may vary, but all fix on the desire for something that just can't be found in the confines of Nashville. Somewhere between Laurie Anderson's vocodered coos at the end of "Hang Onto Your Emotions" and the wall-of-sound Don Cherry saxophone apocalypse of "The Bells," I make the drive back home with a glad heart.
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