Word-of-mouth seems to mean less and less as the words increase exponentially and the mouths become unified in space and time, this being of course exactly what is happening as the Internet’s role in “IRL culture” rises to prominence.
While the Baltimore underground has held tightly to some of the mainstays of subcultures — uber-free press in the form of zines and flyers, quasi-esoteric lingo (especially revenue names) — it has embraced net forms and integrated them into its arsenal of spreading the word.
So while there is something flattering about being asked where the H&H Building is on a rainy Saturday night, there’s less of an insider feel about it than there might have been just five or six years ago.
That’s not to say the “scene” has been “infiltrated” (whatever that might mean – and if anyone it’d be Hopkins kids like us who’d have been the infiltrators, no?) — your average H&H-er is still a stinky, young, “alt” early-20-something drinking a Natty Boh.
It’s just that you don’t have to know the band, or know someone who knows the band, or have any sort of “in” to walk the six flights up the nauseating and graffiti-ed stairwell to Floristree, Baltimore’s pre-eminent showspace, the most legit of the illegit venues.
And it’s also totally fine to be a little bit late, as we were on Saturday, unfortunately missing openers Rapdragons (note that the Saturday evening JHMI schedule is hourly, meaning you run the risk, especially at DIY venues, of getting there way too early or missing the first act or so).
The resident Copycat rappers (a duo: Greg Ward and Nick Often) have been working in the city for a while now, and it’s interesting to see how they’re paired on some Frankenstein DIY bills, performing alongside a variety of post-noise, -ambient, -punk, -hardcore, -music, -etc. acts.
What we did arrive just in time for was the outré Run DMT tuning up, shouting on the edge of incoherence into a heavy-effects mic about the Internet and other miscellany, and slipping into a brief set. Run DMT is just one dude (whom I only know as “Mike”), and sure, there are some affinities with other better-known one-man bedroom-projects, but where Mike’s got the edge is in his harder psychedelia. If the chillwavers (whatever) are blissfully stoned, Run DMT’s music — and especially his live performance — is always threatening to descend into a bad trip.
The looped rhythms of bass and keys have the same elements of soothing repetition as a lot of other projects, but there is a grittiness to it, with schizoid lead lines of shrill synth, genre-hopping guitar licks and zonked out vocals, which are delayed into oblivion. It should also be said that Run DMT can be totally exciting and energetic at times, and is closer to Baltimore noise than it is to Brooklyn epithetic ambient-pop.
And then, of course, as DIY bills tend to do, the night took a totally unexpected turn, with Oregon’s White Fang taking the stage. Or, um, not — setting up on the floor in front of the stage, level with the audience (which now is a good a time as any to say consisted of maybe 100 mostly drunk, mostly young folks).
Ostensibly one-half of the impetus for the show occurring at all (almost 3,000 miles away from home, it’s very much a part of the DIY ethos for a show to be held to support a touring band), White Fang was somewhat emphatically not a Baltimore band.
In fact, they seemed as dislocated in time as in space, looking and sounding a lot like what pop-punk was before it became pop — which isn’t to say straight punk, but the sort of happy boisterous fast, loud, three-chord stuff that seems like it got swallowed up by major labels some time in the late ‘90s when Blink-182 got huge and corporatized, if not earlier.
The main dude wore a mullet and an oversized white crew-neck sweatshirt, the gleefully pudgy and totally sweaty bassist wore nothing but gray briefs, the guitarist had head-banger hair and none of this seemed all that ironic.
K Records and Nirvana still loom large in the Pacific Northwest, and White Fang was a testament to that, though their subject was more stoner-oriented (cf. one of the tunes that brought down the house, “Stoned and Alone”).
And even if there was a strong strain of irony in what White Fang was doing, they still played hard and loud, with plenty of facemelters and power stances, and even if the audience’s appreciation did have an element of ironic appraisal, most everybody still moshed and sweated and had a generally earnest good time.
Which primed everybody nicely for the other half of the impetus for Saturday night’s outing at Floristree, namely Weekends’s record release.
Strange Cultures has been kicking around Baltimore for a little while now, with unofficial provisional cassette and vinyl releases at the Hexagon a while back, and stuff posted intermittently on the blog bmoremusicallyinformed, but apparently Saturday’s was some sort of record release, which provided a fine excuse for Weekends to let loose.
Weekends is the duo of Brendan Sullivan and Adam Lempel (Hopkins alum, one of the notable if perhaps few connections Hopkins actually has with the Baltimore music/arts world), playing loud, fuzzy, lo-ass-fi I-IV progressions over Sullivan’s manipulated vocals.
Which is basically everything you could want from an indie rock show in a downtown Baltimore loft at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night — something to sweat wildly to — and Weekends knows it. Despite a couple glitches with pedals and sound, the duo pulled through, sharing duty on guitar and drums, with Lempel energetically stagediving while shredding, characteristically standing mid-song on Sullivan’s kick drum.
After a half-hour set, everybody seemed basically spent. The crowd thinned a bit, people staggering down the vomit-smelling stairwell or braving the rickety freight elevator down to the still rainy Baltimore street, catching cabs or walking back home.
Which somehow didn’t stop Winks from setting up his guitar and drum machine and giving a raucous, staggering, sunglassesed set to 20 stragglers trying to get their $5-worth.
Winks is Chase O’Hara and sometimes Weekends’s own Adam Lempel (and maybe others? who can keep track?), and is basically totally pleasant, well-crafted lo-fi rock. About halfway through his set, I witnessed for the first time a performer at Floristree being asked to turn down the volume, being as it was something like 2 in the morning. Whether or not Winks played the second half of the set any quieter, I’m not sure, but we all had some pretty raging tinnitus throughout the $10 cab ride home.
