Talk talk
Thursday at The Cannery, when Girl Talk finally unleashed the first snippet in a series of thousands to come, he had a full house incredibly eager to get down. For all that Greg Gillis lacks in traditional musicianship, he definitely makes up for it in showmanship. In lieu of guitar amps and spinning drumsticks, we got animated visuals, streaming toilet-paper guns, confetti and a few dozen audience members getting buck wild onstage.
Momentum, however, was halted when, about 40 minutes in, the house lights came on and the music faded out. Gillis offered a distorted and unintelligible explanation which was later translated to us: A few of those fans onstage got a little out of hand and had to be dealt with. The sold-out room of drunken youngsters displayed an impressive degree of patience, waiting a good 20 minutes for things to get back under way. The party soon snapped back full force with a shirtless, head-banded Gillis literally dripping with sweat, mixing up snippets and samples of warped beats, Top 40 pop hits, dance anthems, indie classics, classic rock flashbacks and '80s guilty pleasures, occasionally grabbing the mic to lead the crowd in some between-song hype.
With his show at the Cannery last year being our only frame of reference, we expected to again hear a randomized shuffle of MP3s from his records, but what we got this time was hardly the same. He included familiar phrases from his last three offerings, but this time he mixed and cut them with alternate rhythms and sequences which—unlike with most "real bands"—kind of had us hoping for a live album someday.
Seems this party got a little too crazy for the venue's infrastructure to handle. At the very peak of the action, part of the stage caved in, causing a water line to burst under the stage and bringing the whole ordeal to a crashing close. For most, it was an irrecoverable buzzkill, but for a good many of legal drinking age there was thankfully an equally indefatigable after-party waiting upstairs.
Club Sportag's Boy Talk featured DJs Justin Kase and members of Jensen Sportag keeping the momentum up 'til closing time, blasting hyper-kinetic dance beats, laser lights and psychedelic visuals until everyone was booted into the street once and for all.
Proto-Maniacal
We showed up at 12th & Porter (which these days slightly resembles a Christian rec center) just after 9 p.m. on Saturday. From the outset we definitely detected the unmistakable odor of nerd ball sweat—a scent that was to grow more and more overpowering as the night wore on. We ignored it the best we could as we shoved through the proletariat to grab our first beer of the evening.
Considering the last time we caught Shoot the Mountain they were playing The Boro at 1 a.m. before an extremely sparse crowd, it was surreal to see them engulfed in smoke and bathed in purple light for 100-plus folks, some of whom had come from thousands of miles away. Their newer material sounds a bit like Gang of Four, and they were easily goaded into playing an encore song. Fans of The Protomen seemed to appreciate STM in the way that a robot from the future might view a record player—head tilted to the side, intrigued and impressed, though not fully able to compute its function.
With Eureka Gold backlit and a magenta spotlight in our face, it was difficult to make out Scene staffer Adam Gold behind the drum kit, but we knew he was there from his bombastic, sundry fills. Our typical complaint about Eureka Gold is that we can never hear keyboardist Adam White's clever parts, and while the sound was a bit strange (very dry, out-in-front vocals), he was perfectly audible during a couple of songs.
12th & Porter's Houses of the Holy Tour-era light scaffolding and five—count 'em, five—disco balls were finally put to full use once The Protomen took the stage. Seeing The Protomen's avid, fist-pumping superfans crowd the stage was like witnessing a ritual you don't fully understand. As the madness ensued—black-and-white propaganda flashing on screens above our heads, ceremonious helmet-tossing, seizure-inducing strobes flashing and spinning as a pulsating wall of sound issued forth from their dozen speaker cabinets—we posted up by the merch table so as not to be trampled.
The Protomen opened with Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak," though it was their old standards and sneak peeks at new material that got the fanboys (and definitely a handful of fangirls) gyrating so hard they were pushing their glasses up on every downbeat. The Protomen performed "No Easy Way Out" off the Rocky IV soundtrack—the B-side off a single that was free with entry—with near-flawless, aptly triumphant vocals. But when the rock gods started in on their encore, we heard the cheesy opening strains of what could only be the most epic arena-metal song of all time. That's right: "The Final Countdown." We took its completion as a damn fine cue to take our party elsewhere.
Brian's songs
We went into Monday night's Brian Wilson show at The Ryman with a pretty good idea of what to expect: a living legend sitting at the front of the stage making hand gestures and crooning away while his band of consummate professionals flawlessly executed his new record, That Lucky Old Sun, in its entirety, plus a set of Beach Boys classics.
As proceedings got underway promptly at 8 p.m., the band came out and the man of the hour was announced, appropriately, as the "Mozart of rock." Off the bat he surprised us with his extreme enthusiasm as he talked to the crowd and did his best to seem like a performer—which he really is not. This was reassuring, as it wiped away our fears that he would just go through the motions.
Opening with "California Girls," he and the band proceeded through a repertoire of classics including "Surfer Girl," "Don't Worry Baby," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows" and "I Get Around," among others, each retaining the resplendent beauty they had upon conception. This was made possible by the 11 aces up Wilson's sleeve that are The Wondermints—a Beach Boys cover band par excellence with authenticity provided by Brian Wilson himself, who lends them both his name and iconic voice. With almost every member of the band singing impeccable harmonies while utilizing a music store's worth of equipment to re-create the Beach Boys recordings to a T, they were what made the price of admission worth it. Pop symphonies played this perfectly simply can't be heard anywhere else.
After a brief intermission we headed back in for the predictably anticlimactic performance of That Lucky Old Sun. As in the previous set, the recording was impressively replicated—string section and all. While the TLOS material paled in comparison to the indelible classics of the first set, it is worth noting that it was performed with a greater sense of purpose by both the band and Wilson—who really did seem to revel in the midst of his own creation.
Nevertheless, the overall display did warm the cockles of our cold, cold heart, and we weren't alone, as overall this was about as warm an audience reception as you'll ever see, at least in this town. After the conclusion of the record, the band played a sock-hoppin' victory lap of classics including "Barbara Ann," "Surfin' USA" and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." This got the crowd—white people of all ages and fashion inclinations—up and dancing.
Wanna go get pizza after the show? Email thespin@nashvillescene.com.
