Panda Riot Vinyl Release/ Nocturna

   Shimmer is the night for shoegaze  the second Tuesday of the month at Slippery Slope.  I was happy to go to this months. Yes, people do dance at this shoegaze night.  It retains a good casual crowd. It has its regulars and its casual visits from people that are in bands I've seen. So here is this kind of old school way the music gets circulated around. Still, its hard to know if this crowd (beyond the few familiar monthly faces) really pays attention or are they there because its no cover and there are four bathrooms. Philly and Sarah still make the effort of setting up the night where it totally makes sense to play and dance to this specific network of music. Its where it totally makes sense dancing to Panda Riot. The Tuesday before the vinyl release, I made sure I went to Shimmer.  I had a fucking plan for that Saturday.  I saw the Panda's at their show at Beat Kitchen, and because that was not enough, I went to Nocturna. And that still wasn't enough, 'cause I missed something. With Philly I got someone that is familiar with worlds within worlds. I suppose to him I recited my entire night ....well some of it...like the Fauvely show I missed....but mostly about the Pandas.... but lets go back to Nocturna, and the Panda Riot vinyl release of Infinity Maps at Beat Kitchen. And these moments I recall sharing with Philly at Nocturna while we recovered from dancing and hitting that wall where you are just so fucking tired.
  There was three separate events going on the Saturday 17 Feb and I wanted to make all three. Two concerts and then Nocturna. It was gonna be Fauvely somewhere in Oak Park, then Panda Riot where having their vinyl release of Infinity Maps at Beat Kitchen...and then Nocturna. I could not find out on time where exactly in Oak Park Fauvely played. I drove by where I read on the Facebook event page, but perhaps futile was the drive, but from there I made it well on time for the band before the Pandas at Beat Kitchen, Silver Liz and they were great. Well, futile...I take that back. I do not regret trying at all.  Missing a few is good, you don't seem as too intense a fan.  I don't want to come off as weird or awkward.  Well, the awkward I cannot help, but the creepy I want to avoid like at all cost. And so there I was in observation of these performances. I was also in thought about what I know did occur but did not witness. My mind would drift to Fauvely in Oak Park.   OAK Fucking Park!!!  Sorry....they imported spanish moss for the show because Sophie was doing new songs about her home town, and I fucking missed it.  And that thought is like a black hole that orbits around fast when especially alone and cornered. But the black hole orbits still farther away when warmly greeted by the Pandas, the guys from Lighfoils, their girlfriends, wives, friends all. Being in the present moment, and not rear-view squinting letting drifting thoughts ride what I observe and not the black hole. Silver Liz was indeed great. It was my first time seeing them.
  
Infinity Maps is the third Panda Riot album. There's a whole lot of mileage between that and She Dares All Things from 2007. Perhaps in hindsight its quite expected to note the innocence of that first album. This is a perception common from hindsight. Would we know the difference if we shuffled the albums around. Hmm, fucking hell, that came out of a parallel world of me, sorry.  There feels less intensity measured from Northern Automatic Music. But still there is a difference. Between all three of them names, a whole lot of shit happened, not with the band specifically, but culturally around them, around us. So each LP soaks up a different world as it gets time-stamped with it.  She Dare conjures and frames different set of memories because I observed a different world than now. What I mean is the world that saw the debut of Northern is so alien to now, seeming more innocent almost.
  With Infinity Maps, Panda Riot enters a most polarized world for me as a recognized Chicago shoegaze dream pop band with years behind them.

. As they play a lot locally I get introduced to other acts, a mental simulation of a scene gets introduced to more cool ass bands.  They do their part to form roots and circulate within the network of communities. I can tether a whole web of bands to them. The Pandas also retain being this lean and hungry band. They still have to live, survive, battle the cruelties of this world. Still small enough and yet I've seem these mother fuckers at Resistor!  I've been to their after parties! And so for me shoegaze dream pop is a local thing, a small thing. They remain something close enough to relate to.
  Arrows has a video. Hmm, a lot of them do. I keep recalling how the guys from Ghost Adventures filmed there looking for fucking ghosts. They filmed Gold Lines live from Resistor. That guitar in the very beginning has this morning confidence. Its a stride that wakes you up. That morning splash of rose water, that fills you innocent wonder about the day ahead, that sentiment I found most in She Dares, a tourists stroll, is now a confident stride. I have no real favorites with Infinity Maps. There are so many. 
 It was nice to have these contacts with friends and it was nice to have Philly Peroxide to mostly speak to about these bands almost in a kind of short hand. I finished the night at Nocturna dancing and in between chats with friends about seeing Panda Riot before.
   I came home with a shirt. It was black this time, and its my fucking weakness. By now, I got fucking shirts from Switchblade Symphony Siouxsie, Faith And The Muse older than my nieces. The shirts get cooler with age even as they betray that age, even if very well preserved. It is a tangible wearable relic, and more than ever we need these hmm things to help keep the memory of the music intact. They are a kind of time capsule as well. Shirts that I bought in the 90's are of thicker cotton. They are not as form fitting. Identity also..has this way of expressing best your own identity and so ....we fucking wear it. I just noticed how I went on about....nothing.
Zig

Starcrawler at Empty Bottle

  Shirley Manson from Garbage, changed in Arrow's bedroom. Arrow's mom is the photographer Autumn de Wilde. I read that somewhere and it blows me away. And here I am now seeing this live gig, describing the evolving, churning memory. Arrow sings lead. I saw their video for I Love L.A. and that got me to see them in Empty Bottle. There were a whole lot of videos to trip over that I noticed later. Starcrawler has been touring all over with their debut self-titled album. And I can see why there are so many videos. Its a real sight to capture Arrow going nuts and spitting fake blood, wrapping the cord of the mic around her neck.....and then around the neck of some random nearest fan.  They make a point of shattering that forth wall between them and the audience. They are not stoic performers. This can be seen with what they wear. Arrow's long and gangly frame makes whatever she wears a costume that adds to the crazy for the stage. And its only for the stage, in interviews Arrow seems way cool and chill and nice and not....weird. The entire band I read is very young.
  On stage they are live wired and animated. The wanton burn of chaotic energy starts with her eyes. Arrow is crazy and I was lucky not to be the poor guy to be pulled up to the stage by a lasso made by her from the mic cord. Anyway, well that happened but...I kinda jumped ahead to it. But...well. What do you expect. After they break the fourth wall, they tend to come after people. I don't mean just Starcrawler. And Ms Arrow could not help but to come back to the stage with this dude on a leash...singing the whole fucking time. I don't mean she kept her stray audience pet. Arrow is strictly catch and release. But still she goes and hunts. Anyway it was over and done in seconds it seems. What are you gonna do, keep the bastard on stage with you? And she would get down from the stage during I think Chicken Woman and ran around the crowd.  
  LA Weekly has Ms Arrow calling bands nowadays boring. I'm starting to see where her thirst for hunting into her audience comes from. I'm blaming you shoegazers! Behold the monster you unleash when ya'll are too busy staring into the pedal board and not bothering to actually perform! I'm sorry...I kinda ran with this and I was just taking the piss out....totally in jest I assure you. But anyway its interesting to read about and see impressions of who you just saw.  And they are not boring. And they are fucking young! I got band-shirts that are almost out of university and some still in high school. I got a retirement home full of band-shirts older than Ms Arrow.That same LA Weekly magazine calls them glam punk revivalists like The Lemontwigs. The punk is there to toughen up, dirty up the theater, the glamour. What Ms Arrow wore indeed looked beautiful and weathered for the Empty Bottle show. I apologize for mentally bouncing between the memory of the band and the band I research and read about.  That magazine called them glam punk revivalists. Did not stop with the glam punk. This well describes the rear-view mirror on their forward driving classic muscle car. That would explain...nay....describe what they sound like to me. And it reinforces and adds an extra layer of depth into the memory of the live show. The CD sounded great in the car on the way home.

It was not just the amount of videos on Youtube that you can trip over, it was the written coverage I looked up on line. They seem to be getting a lot of attention. There was even this interview done by this kid on Youtube. Arrow seemed to be genuinely sweet and cool. So I came home with the CD.
Zig