To celebrate my road-iversary, I went downtown to the Solar Culture Gallery, to check out the Joe Lally (who is a tiny little man!) show. I took the bus (sadly, Tucson is no Austin), so I got there a bit early, but it was okay, because the venue is also an art gallery. I spent a bunch of time checking out the paintings and listening to the trains go by the back door while I waited and waited for other people to trickle in. Not only was it Cinco de Mayo, but it was apparently also finals week, and they were competing with another show.
The audience ended up being me and a dozen or so other music dorks. The opening guy had to cancel, so Joe and crew played two sets, which was fine by me. Their style was... I dunno... I suck at describing music... Jazz, punk and blues influenced mellowish trippy hard rock? In the same basic vein as Fugazi, but differently interesting. If anyone knows some kind of music geek terminology to describe this, please share, because I always just want to sum up this type of music as "adult punk." It has the same sensibility as punk, but with a greater range of style and talent. Joe Lally was solid on bass, and although I don't feel he's the strongest vocalist, I was digging the lyrics. The drummer, Ricardo Lagomasino, was heavily jazz influenced, and proved that it's not the size of the kit, but how you use it. He had his eyes closed for most of the time, and when they were open he was kinda staring blankly into space. I wondered where he went, but it must have been somewhere good. The guitarist, Elisa Abela, was tight, ranging from bluesy to controlled noise with plenty of stops in between. The crowd was subdued and respectful. I wished, and thought others were with me on this, that we could have been more people for them. We stood up close and clapped a lot, but it still felt kinda sad. Maybe it was just my mood and extreme lack of energy, due to me being on the retiree schedule, and the show starting after my bedtime. Also, this is an art gallery, not a bar. A beer or two might have upped my energy levels a tidge.
Between sets I chatted with Elisa about tattoos and travel, and she told me about some women she had met on the Isle of Lesbos. She also said it didn't bother them that it was such a small crowd, that they just loved to play. It showed.
Sorry about the super detailed show review. After five or six days as a retiree, all of the stimulation kinda got to me...
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5 comments:
Happy road-iversary... LOL
-Bill
I enjoyed your review--I was at the show, too (just googled my way in here). I was the dork with the biggish video camera. I had been hoping to get some YouTube-able footage, but was only moderately successful (audio quality was an issue). I may post some of the better bits, if you're interested (my YouTube name is "Mexiquot," if you want to look for it).
I feel odd, as a complete stranger, leaving such a long comment, but I can't resist adding that I'm sort of jealous of your enormous road trip (though I prefer to do that sort of thing in a car). I ended up looking at your Flickr photos. I haven't decided whether to thank you for the amusement or scold you for giving me another way to waste time.
I'm glad you posted! I'm always curious if other people that I only sort of encountered have stumbled across this blog. I'm glad you enjoyed the time waste-- eventually I will pay flickr and then you can see all of the photos, but I just haven't quite cared enough yet.
I'll be sure to check out your videos when I'm somewhere with better reception (I'm currently out in the desert past Three Points, so streaming video on my phone is right out.) I checked out your blog, and I dig your writing.
For anyone who has recently encountered this blog, I've been telling people that I think my best writing is from August 2008. That's when I ran over that chihuahua, after all...
I'm glad you liked my writing. As far as I know my blog doesn't see much traffic, so it's nice when someone I'm not related to stops in.
Speaking of your Flickr page, I liked it when you posted pictures of mosaics and such. I hope you got some photos from downtown Tucson while you were here. For whatever reason, murals and mosaics are popular in Tucson.
I checked out your blog's archive for August of '08. I think you're right; that was a good stretch, writing-wise.
Sadly, I pretty much spent zero time in Tucson-- I mostly hung out in the pool at the retirement community where my grandparents live, so no good pictures at all... I was noticing the murals everywhere whenever we went to bingo and whatnot. More cities should have that, I dig it.
I'm about to fly, though, so maybe I'll get pics next time I'm in town.
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