Ever worked in a call center? It’s boring and it smells funny, but do those guys and gals up in there go out at night? Oh, hell yeah they do. In fact they spend the day yelling from cubicle to cubicle trying to decide where to find a booth come quittin time, searching the web relentlessly looking for a reasonable cover price, that is: when they’re not busy talking about where they met up for a freakish time the previous night. Ever worked at a Hotel? How about a Restaurant? It’s this sortof deadend service job(s) that lints pockets and breeds drunken hooliganry in our cute little Salt Lake City. A man that I bumped into at the deli I goto, Gandolfo’s (I reccomend the Hampton on honey wheat bread), mentioned to me that Salt Lake had no night life, and when I asked him why he thought that explained to me that the reason was because of the stringent liquor laws, to which I nodded my head politely and left him to his delusion. Please reader, tell me you don’t think all of Utah to be a bunch of cotton shirt pussies who goto straight bed after MacGuyver! If I only get 2 shots of liquor in my Long Island does that mean I can’t have fun? No, it just means that I gotta spend twice as much to do it, therefore I’ll have to work that much harder to pay for it. So don’t tell me the liquor laws are making these call floor kids hang their heads and stay home playing Tekken, it’s not happening, sorry. I have another theory, a better one.
Salt Lake, until just recently in it’s history didn’t have us all up in it’s guts looking for something to do on the weekends, searching for a place to go to meet people and have fun, checking the local paper for anything we might use to stimulate my senses. There you have it, Salt Lake didn’t have a life at all, until you and I came along, and apparently some people haven’t caught on to our quest yet. That’s the real reason Salt Lake has no night life: because we just got here.
That’s my rant for the week. I am, by no means a patriot or hydrant hugger, but like you, want something better for this city and it’s peeps. That’s why I’m starting a campaign called OPERATION: PULL THE ETCH-A-SKETCH KNOB OUT OF YOUR ASS. Of course anyone who spends night after night brooding around clubs and hangouts without getting any action whatsoever is going to get a blurred social picture of our fair city and likely to give up, go home, turn the television to Benson or Charles in Charge never to be seen or heard from again. So what’s to get them up and out of the dorm? That’s the focus of this edition of Salt Lake Music. I really should apologize, I was the one at the back of the theater during The Fast and the Furious yelling “Caparzo get your head down!” I could afford to apologize for Josey too, the preppy white guy you always throw your slurpee at when you see him pull up bumping to Jay-Z, making an imaginary gat with his fingers and pointing it at pedestrians sideways, goodfella style. We’re both sorry, but that’s us anyway, and here’s an idea of a few good times in the valley of a two week non-stop unscrupulously trendy submersion into the Salt Lake underworld.
Saturday Night at Todd’s Bar and Grill
There’s nothing better than a Saturday night crawl-into after an exhausting day doing those things your freaky life makes you do, and not one of those places where everybody knows your name, actually well, if they know your name it only adds to the freakiness of the evening. So it was, and we crawled into Todd’s, the hidden, converted pawn shop and diner hybrid next to the steel scrapyard 5 minutes south of downtown Salt Lake City to see Summer After in their home element 4 weeks after they rocked our West Valley townhouse. Todd’s is the bar for that one ostracized Hell’s Angel who carried a Franklin day planner, had it not been for the armitage of unattended vehicles crammed into all 3 surrounding lots I’d have sworn after the first pass the building was abandoned. Void of most the stereo meathead and/or Laker fans usually associated with a dive sports bar, Todd’s has more than enough Salt Lake character to carry the official Joe Seal of Coolness unrepentively. Highlights: The spare unisex bathroom by the dart board with no lock on the door and the newsless corkboard above the urinal just begging for a fresh edition of Delete Yourself Digest (get a hold of me Todd, you’ll be glad you did.)
Mona
Mona opened up the evening providing a geekishly soft brand of music box rock. Mandy Jeppsen(Singer) singing with a soft projection headed this quintet into the first set before we even knew they’d stopped warming up. Finally, a band that both my 5 year old neice and my dead grandma would’ve loved had they been old/young enough to drink. I deciphered the enigma immediately: this band doesn’t care what we think. I enjoyed the geeky lullaby music by so many other bands of this nature, and certain properties of Mona’s sound impressed me, whether or not they cared whether I liked it or not, but there should’ve been a way to arrange the ascending play so that I could’ve been awake to enjoy it. The sound, as I enteurpreted it, was the child of melancholy emotion paired with effortless melody, raised in a garage beneath a pretentious old couple, who’d stomp on the floor when there was a “ruckus.” It could’ve been my imagination, and maybe I’m crazy, but none of them, up there on stage looked like they were having fun, scratch that: I saw the bassist trying a few times to get jiggy wit it, but mostly I emitted pity. The article I’d written before this, which outlined the positive and negative with an underlying patronization, didn’t fly with my conscience, it just wouldn’t be fair to give them a undue praise because damnit, I paid five bucks.
King Tree
This band accidentally sounded a little like Everlast, with a dash of Hootie. Let’s not beat around the bush: These dudes opened up for Thin Lizzy the night before at Club Expose and I detected a familiarity in the croud, some of whom removed jewelry and sweatshirts ready to bang heads in the mosh pit. Surprisingly the vibe was folksy or blues-esque, much to the dismay of the young excited knuckleheads poised at the stage ready to skank away (or whatever you punks do nowadays) but much to my delight, I was able to enjoy my tall boy and tap the empty stein to the sounds and absorb the intricate but still upbeat sounds of this local trio. King Tree, I have a question, are you guys progressive? If so, great job, I loved it. By the way I realize that you played (or tried to play) that same song 5 times and blew the fuse just before the bridge every single time, not your fault guys, it happened to all the bands. If you’re not progressive, you sure sound like it, no offense intended, but every song sounds like an anthemic version of the opening song with varied solo parts intertwined. Mad Props to Nate (Bassist) for his excellent slap happyness and whiskey-jug-washboard contribution to the rythym, loved it. Overcoming tech problems, fighting a spirited folk sound to a socially atheist crowd, opening for Thin Lizzy, you gotta respect this band.
Summer After
The music these 3 guys brought with them was utterly, deliberately garaged out. That classic guitar fuzz, the incoherent screaming into the mic, the taped drum heads and disregard for any and all equalization or gain. These boys take their listeners back to the shack in the ways of ambient, aggressive rock, which dances on the border of Punk and Metal. Being the culmination of all the great self starter garage groups I grew up with, the songwriting ability of Summer After wasn’t bad, but not the best either. The drum fills lacked diversity, the vocals ran together, in many ways this power trio fit the stereotype of an aggressive skater hardcorist group perfectly, except one. The ritual: at the end of every song the guitarist would swap instruments with the bassist, the bassist swapped with the drummer, the drummer would swap with the guitarist and the set would continue, sounding almost uncanny to the sound we’d heard previously. Every song they’d switch, trying new combinations, passing around the microphone, consistantly rocking. All this impressed me as a musician and fan, the energy these guys output was by far enough to carry their set, but obvious problems arise when 3 guitarists take turns drumming, and 3 drummers take turns playing bass, and 3 bassist take turns playing guitar: there’s no singer. Ringo even took a stab at singing (he got by with a little help from his friends) and while the result was entertaining, we weren’t out in front of circuit city waiting for the Ringo Star Band Single. Summer After lacks the leadership only a singer/songwriter can provide, I suspect it’s because they do great at what they do, and have fun doing it to boot. I would encourage them to do just that: have fun, and this experiment of theirs has all my hopes and wishes for success.
Thurday Night at Club Naked
This club felt like it’d once been a fancy restaurant then reopened under new management, Lord of the Flies style. I’d heard some horror stories about this place, some said it was empty, others, too crowded. Some said it was a sausagefest, others claimed it to be a babevault, so I tried going in with a clear head, and form my very own opinion. Showing up at about 10:45, having very little trouble finding parking I was pleased to hear “No charge tonight guy” from the bouncer at the door when I asked about the cover. The atmosphere was kickin, the lighting fairly low and the music of a transical and ambient house nature mixed by the master himself who rocked so many clubs, raves and parties I’d stumbled into, DJ Nebula who I know to be the most acclaimed local spinna, who’s underground house you may have heard at a slew of parties and happenings during the winter Olympics. This guy is awesome, one particular mix I liked and recognized blended one of my favorite sketches from Cheech and Chong’s: The Big Bambu (Sister Mary Elephant to be specific) and a certain particular groove I’ve always liked but never really knew the name of by trance guru Paul Oakenfold. This kind of old school collector deserves recognition for all the good times he’s brought to this city, look for his name and be assured that his house will NOT put you to sleep like many, many, others will.
So I wandered through the lounge area by the entrance in search of the dance floor, noticing 2 abandoned bars along the way. I tapped a skinny guy chatting with his girlfriend on the shoulder “Where’s the dancefloor?” I asked. He obliged and pointed to a small, clean, almost dusty square of carpet in front of him lit by a spinning disco globe, so at this point I discovered that not only was Club Naked
very tiny, but also very, very, empty, even for 11:00 on a thursday night. The free cover was a mere pity ploy, I’d been duped, to liquify my troubled mind I headed to the only open bar being maintained by a lone bartender where a short line of people had collected. There I stood in file like I do once or twice a month at Wal Mart for 10 or 15 minutes while good looking women and their boyfriends bypassed the line purchasing drinks from the descriminate barkeep without so much as a 60 second wait.
The great part about an empty club, of course, is there’s more than enough places to sit. Our party nestled in the corner near the handmade wrist deco stand in a cozy booth, and while they waited for their next round I operated my way upstairs like a pastel plain clothes ninja through a maze of barracades (one) and witnessed an enourmous ballroom with hardwood floor, an actual DJ booth and a kickass view of the pierpont district, all sealed off, hidden from the clubbers. Around midnight, just when we were ready to leave mildly sober, a sortof birthday or wedding party showed up with a slew of folks, and within a half hour, as more bodies started pouring in off the street, it began to feel less like my house on sunday morning with a stranger working the stereo and began feeling more like an actual night club.
The best I must confess, has been saved for the last: TopRockers. Here was something I’d really never seen in a club like this (standing breakdance), and by the reaction of the crowd I sensed they felt the same way, this place turned into a private rave on carpet. Chad Fulton brought it to the house, this guy pops around effortlessly but I could tell he got a workout, it’s so fun to watch this dude. From out of nowhere swooped in Becky Johnson, with the dopest breaks of all, putting my weak 70’s robot to absolute shame, I fell in love. I was lucky, this evening could’ve ended like the campfire stories I’d heard from any and everyone about Naked but with endurance, a little help from my good friends the Gatsbys, platter master Nebula himself, a coincidental reserved birthday party, and the coolest bunch of ravers and beatniks I’ve met in a while, this evening turned out kick ass. The moral of this story: Thursdays at this club is like throwing a Sunday night Kegger at your house (no that is NOT an invitation dude) and with the right attitude, if people show up, you got yourself a party. So make this place your homebase, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket, lest you find yourself drunk and bored at club Naked Communist (no link currently available).
11:00 – Men’s bathroom completely flooded, but remarkably clean.
12:00 – Men’s bathroom flooded (much worse than the first time) due to a lodged roll of toilet paper tossed into the throne hole. Remarkably clean besides for the crimson residue of vomitous in the sink.
1:00 – Men’s bathroom still flooded, sink still puked in, toilet paper roll still lodged in the toilet, not yet drunk enough to wash hands in urinal. Sucked in my gut and dodged quickly and unnoticed in and out of the luxurious women’s restroom. (mostly unnoticed anyway)
Tuesday Night at The Puck
Normally I’d keep my distance from this sports bar on Monday, it’s crowded and loud, every fifteen minutes the KUTV Sports talking head with a pompodor starts broadcasting and a wave of meatheads looking to be on camera knock you from your stool. Located right next to the E-Center , home of the Utah Grizzlies pro hockey team and host to numerous concert venues, monster truck and motorcross rallies, this high pro-file skybox style sports bar keeps a steady flow of customers every day of the week, especially on monday nights. To add to the chaos, this particular Tuesday was the same day Linkin Park came in concert with P.O.D. and Hoobastank, three bands I don’t personally care to listen to voluntarily. Ask any resident of West Valley (home of the E-Center) and they’ll tell you “Stay away from Decker Lake road on event nights, stay away! Awwwwayyyyy! Muahahahaha!” because damn, this little town just isn’t built to hold all these crazy fans.
I’d heard through the grapevine that Hoobastank would be performing a live set here around 5pm, three hours before the start of their show. I’d been to The Puck plenty of Tuesdays around that time, I knew it was dead, and knew they had drafts for 2 bucks, so this sounded like a new version of this bar which I could really tolerate, and perhaps even enjoy. It’s all mathematical. We take a bar on it’s slowest night, at it’s slowest possible time, then we bring in the most popular bands in the country and slip them in there to play for the “masses” Ideally, this kind of equation wouldn’t work, and I had my suspicion that it wouldn’t, just the same I sent my hip hop correspondent Adolf behind the firing line to save a table. There he sat for 3 hours, waiting patiently in an empty bar, watching the lunch rush die off, scanning the 30 or some-odd monitors for another eye-candy episode of “You Gotta see this.” For one hundred eighty minutes he sat there, god bless him, waiting and watching the place filling up slowly, drinking and smoking, eating and talking to passerbys and waitresses. The following is an account spoken from his own mouth.
“I got here like at 2:30, had a couple beers and I sat here for like ever all by myself. I started calling people, I just started calling random people I knew, like crazy. I didn’t wanna get a booth ‘cus I felt like a jackass taking up all these seats for just me so that’s why I got a table. The band (Hoobastank) showed up about 4:00 and started setting up, Beaner got here about then, so did Steve and Chandra, and we got some food. It was totally packed by 4:30 and they sat there with their guitars for like ever, then some dude comes up like just before you got here (me) and says ‘Sorry but we’re not gonna play I guess there’s tech problems or something’ and a big mob of people were like Booo! and left, which was cool cuz it was way too crowded, even for a tuesday.” – Adolf
I showed up just before 5:00, the tragedy of my tardiness sinking in as I fought my way through a sea of punks gathered outside the main entrance. To my amazement, as I stepped inside the bar seemed quite irregularly empty, and I could tell by the beaten look on the bouncer’s face that he’d been through hell that day. So it occurs to me, this sea of punks outside the door are all underage, as most Linkin Park, P.O.D, and Hoobastank fans are: not old enough to drink. I’d like to find out (but too dumb to operate a simple search engine…scratch that…too “dont care” to look on a search engine) how old the actual band members really are. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the reason they never performed had been because the band members themselves were too young to get in, since only 2 of the guys from Hoobastank had even bothered to show.
So there they were, just hanging out there talking to the staff and friends: Douglas Robb (vocals) and Dan Estrin (guitar) while outside the bar a mob of teenagers cried and begged to get a glimpse of them. Adolf explained the situation, that there would be no music, and I’d even gone all the way home to bring along my microcassette recorder. So I figured “what the hell,” got up and met the singer, had him sign an autograph and politely pretended to know who he was (later I’d search the web and discover how much this appearingly average dude was worth in dollars, and believe me, he’s got some wealth. Please don’t sue me Doug. Hoobastank rocks. Please don’t sue me. You’re cool) I didn’t really ask him to go on record, but put my tape recorder I’d trekked all the way home to grab to good use just the same.
Joe: So Let me ask you a question.
Doug: Sure man.
Joe: What do you think of Salt Lake’s whole music scene?
Doug: It’s really great, and…
Joe: Be honest dude.
Doug: Ok, to be honest I have no idea. I’m from the west coast man, sorry. (laughs)
Joe: It’s all good dude (laughs)
Doug: But I tell you what, there’s about 4 cities that always treat us right when we tour: Washington D.C., Pheonix, Salt Lake City and Portland.
Joe: That’s good to hear.
Doug: Yeah, we started out small here doing little shows on our own, and this state was always one of my favorites.
Joe: Why is that?
Doug: I guess it’s because they love us here, and believe it or not even now, some major cities we go to we don’t even sell out, I mean even now. Here it’s like Whoa they love us. It’s great. Plus this place is fresh and people got an open mind Y’know?
Joe: Uh, sure dude.
Doug: (laughs)
We talked a little bit more comparing west coast women to east coast women, and other things mildly innapropriate, then I let him alone to his other guests. I kid, I kid, but I think these two guys showed a lot of class doing P.R. stuff in my hometown like they did. Who knows? Perhaps if Linkin Park had been old enough to drink they may have joined in, but as it turned out these two alone drew an enourmous crowd (the majority of whom were too young to enter), even for a tuesday afternoon. This turned out nicely, really: not too many people, I was able to meet some really cool guys from a band I’ve really never cared too much for (please don’t sue me), Buds were only 2 bucks and I played a mad game of Golden Tee to top it all off. If you’re headed to this bar one of these days, try the Fish Taco, take good care of your bartender and have yourself a good time…Oh and even poor Adolf’s patience was rewarded, lucky guy. Buying two tickets at the door in a radio station raffle drawing eventually won him a sleek, stylish, budwiser T-shirt and matching lanierd.
“Yay…a t-shirt.” – Adolf
Don’t Stay Home
Don’t get me wrong: I make a mean chicken rice bowl and enjoy a good holiday version of Reader’s Digest just like the next guy, and after two weeks of this madness my liver feels like a burnt piece of brillo and lungs feel like I somehow inhaled a ping pong net. I’m so poor I can’t even pay tithing and the same dishes from that Tuna Helper last weekend are there in the sink waiting to be washed, but the point is: well, I forget my point. Don’t stay home people! Start building up your tolerance to a hazy existence of comprimising your ethics ever so slightly for the sake of Operation P.E.K.O.Y.A. Now that I think about it, staying home sounds far more logical. I’d be a rich man had I done it, could’ve done some serious writing while I sat on the couch with the cat (who I could’ve spent some quality time with) and worked out a little more, maybe conquered a few more levels of Double Dragon or relax and design brand new tatoos…wait, what’s this?
Joe From Two Weeks Ago: Hey Joe, it’s me, yourself from two weeks ago.
Wow, you’re looking fit, so healthy. You have a definite skip in your step, but what’s with the Bolo tie?
Joe From Two Weeks Ago: Nevermind that Joe, I’ve jumped forward in time to stop you from turning into a spiritless bohemian lush! Look at those bags under your eyes, see how your hair stands up on it’s side from sleeping on floors and couches of strangers, and what’s that smell? It can only be the balsamic residue of a Kosta’s 4 dollar Cheese omellette. The abbhorence of over-indulgence, barely visible outside the not-self weens, but the drained confidence and sensibility you may already have met will only swell and pulsate until an outside source intervenes lest it become spore for more hideous afflictions. Thus I penetrated the hymen of time to bring you back from behind the battle lines of materistic values. Change your ways, Joe, change those wary ways. Besides that, I’ve got a much better article in store for this edition, it’s a tribute to MASH that chronicles the adventures of the different characters and how the various actors’ interraction helped those characters evolve.
Wow Joe, you’re really a tight-ass, I think it’s time you pulled the Etch-A-Sketch knob out of it. By the way it was a Cheese and Bacon Omellette, and these aren’t bags they’re battle scars, show some respect. So thanks Joe From Two Weeks Ago for proving my point, and I’m assured now that this article may have turned out alot crappier had I let you write it, Mr. Richard Nixon Baseball Bat. There are ways, people, to leave your home one night and return home feeling well. It may not happen every time, in fact some nights I found myself rubbing my temples in a corner scribbling my last will and testament on a napkin, my cab driver kicked me out in the middle of nowhere for slandering his favorite radio station (Give me a break man, I don’t like the Eagles okay!?), snoochie boochies, looking at it without the hardcore Salt Lake Music spin one might say I’d been through hell, and to start your own personal quest to perdition please click here (this site of SLC clubs rules!) brought to you by SLCParty.com, you’ll find a helpful list of not all but many noteworthy Salt Lake area cesspools ready and willing to take your money. Enjoy.
Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City Weekly
Slug Magazine
KRCL Online
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