Lueders Haus Blog

Caught the Mountain Goats show at the Doug Fir in Portland last night. I expected the show to be great — and to be floored by John Darnielle’s literary rock — but frankly, I didn’t really expect the Mountain Goats to literally rock. And yet they did. I don’t even remember if they played with a drummer the last time we caught the Mountain Goats, a couple years back at the Tractor, but this time they rocked out with Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster. (Which brought me back to the two months in 1997 when I thought Superchunk was the best band ever.) I don’t know that it was necessarily the drummer that pulled everything together to make last night’s show stand out — maybe it was the venue, the crowd, or the lunar eclipse — all I know is it was a fantastic show and John Darinelle writes freakin’ brilliant songs. (He has a blog, too.)

Opening act Pony Up started things off with some entertaining Canadian girl rock. The idea of “girl rock” as a genre actually bothers me, but I couldn’t think of another accurate descriptor for the band. More Cub than Sleater Kinney. Entertaining, but lacking brilliance and prone to meticulous but downright boring guitar playing. They were fun; they were sexy; but they weren’t really as good as I wish they were musically. Or does third-wave feminism mean its all right for girls to be mediocre?

Maybe it was the after-effect of watching Lou Barlow perform with Sebadoh on Friday night, but I started wondering why female guitar players don’t assert themselves in rock with the same level of virtuosity as their male counterparts. While women in indie rock aren’t exactly an anomoly, they’re usually bassists (Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth – who does sometimes play guitar it is true), or vocalists (Karen O; Patti Smith; Cat Power; etc.), and sometimes drummers (Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo). But at least last night, J and I could not come up with a truly rocking female lead guitarist without going back to, oh, maybe Blondie. Somebody prove us wrong or explain the phenomena please! Why aren’t more women stepping front and center in the indie rock world and rocking out with talented guitar-driven (and not lyrics driven) music? At the risk of appearing dated with my musical references, why don’t guitar-driven “post-rock” (a term I picked up from the Wikipedia entry on Kinski embarrassingly) bands meditate on a melody for ten minutes with a woman on lead guitar rather than bass or drums?

Checked out the Sebadoh reunion tour last night in Portland. Its their first tour with the original lineup in many years. They mostly played their older stuff, written when Gaffney was still in the band. I think the Mercury had the best write up:

Underneath my graduation gown of San Dieguito High School’s Class of ‘96 (Go Mustangs!), I was wearing a Sebadoh T-shirt. To say I was a teenage Sebadoh fan would be a severe understatement. I wrote Lou Barlow letters (to which he never responded) and penned lengthy fanzine articles about how Bakesale was not such a grand departure from Bubble and Scrape. Granted, obsessively following Sebadoh was like kryptonite to the opposite sex, but I was content in my fanboy lifestyle, knowing that I’d most likely lose my virginity by the time the band reunited with original drummer Eric Gaffney in the year 2007. While I was right about the whole reunion thing, sadly I am still looking for the special girl who will take my tender flower. Sigh. EZRA ACE CARAEFF

I might well have been wearing my Dinosaur Jr. t-shirt under my gown in ‘96. They played a great set but it didn’t top the Dinosaur Jr. reunion of last year. That reunion resulted in a new album. For some reason I doubt that will live up to the genius of the 1985 original. But I do enjoy the reunion tours even if it feels like its just the members cashing out their IRA. Cross our fingers that Pavement is next. 

I’m not one for the Obituaries page usually but this piece caught my attention.

Mr. Eames called himself a beer anthropologist, a role that allowed him to expound on subjects like what he put forward as the world’s oldest beer advertisement, dating to roughly 4000 B.C.

In it a Mesopotamian stone tablet depicted a headless woman with enormous breasts holding goblets of beer in each hand. The tagline, at least in his interpretation, was: “Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion.”