Eve Black /Into The Nothing

  I must not have paid that much attention to this song after I downloaded the whole Into The Nothing EP.  Eve Black opened with Dancing With The Green Faire and it hit me as if it was a new song. It did not register as something I've heard before.  I made a note to ask Rani if that first song was new and lo and behold I already had it downloaded! This show was at Livewire Lounge, this dive bar way up on Milwaukee Ave past Belmont. I was trying to avoid calling it a dive bar, but yeah. The washrooms lean on the nasty side.
  It is profoundly therapeutic to have these small gigs to go. It is self-exploration.  These artists, they create the work that kind of holds us up. Individual songs on the EP are carving their space in memory, and some wait for the moment for it to feel like the first time.  And each song that hits when it does, renews the whole album for me. The shirt too is so beautiful, and understated, plain. So Green Faire is I was told is about absinthe.  I remember going to Whitby I would hear a lot about absinthe and all the history with it.  By the time you try it, you already have had so much better over the years. It's a cassette without the download code. Anyway, that is not about the song. When I see Rani, I cannot help but see the continuum of performances from the one Girl Detective show I saw through her Dream House days and now in Eve Black. If I mention bands that are at least 10 years old and beyond in comparison I think it is because they got some dark staying power. Mephisto Waltz, Changelings, The Shroud....Swarf. These bands were our contemporaries. Or at least......No longer were we appreciating from our high school years but well into our adult years. Those are the bands that come to mind when I think of Eve Black.  
  Marci and I are friends with the band. It's so unique to have this with the music you listen to. When it's small, support carries a different meaning. Some things are magnified as they are small, because you as a fan are small as well. There is uniqueness that comes with small. It's not saying you lose it by the time you are supporting fucking Mode on their North American leg of a world tour.  Fuck...where did I park the car again?  Right...so, we walk in just before they set up. There is this sloppy drunk couple stumbling about.  I know it's a dive bar, but let's not get taken by that. They must have gone into them nasty bathrooms twice to have sex  like they was in Shameless. It was amazing they were not kicked out. They were mostly behind me but you could not truly ignore them.  At first it seemed as if it was the guy held it together for both of them. By the time Eve Black was on that was not the case. Anyway. The pictures I got were all on my ipod and I am having trouble uploading them on my aging mac. So here are some pictures from the one show at Martyrs I think. I really had to hall ass to this Martyrs show.  It was after seeing Fauvely somewhere else and then Eve Black.  I really liked how great the band sounded live.  Songs that I did not notice before, they put right in front and made me a fan all over again. It did not just happen with Green Faire. It's three dimensions once you have a live drummer....Hi Rick!! Yeah, I believe I was dancing to this. It was a good time after the show as well.  Going to these events is a necessary thing to do, or all these negative news cycles combined with one's own negative ruminations can take over the space and time you give them. I think it's important to recognize the Emily Dickinson's early, in their lifetime and not all late about it. In recognizing something you help it survive. We see ourselves in this music and so these mirrors must continue. The culture we collect with our time and memory we seek to archive and continue it.
Zig
 

Claude/Fran

  This I saw almost last minute at Empty Bottle on a Free Monday 4 February. Sometimes I look the Empty Bottle website. I did this half-ass search, not really wanting to find something to go, but kind of knowing I may find something that will sting if I miss it.  Oh look, Fran is playing. So I go. I saw her last I think a year ago at East Room with Staring Problem. She even remembered me when I walked over to buy the Fran shirt. I'm jumping ahead.  Claude was playing last. Fran was cool without effort, kinda under the radar sweetened cool.  The song that got me into her is Desert Wanderer.  Yeah, put that one in for Audrey from Twin Peaks to dance to. Her voice reminds me of Karen Carpenter/Aimee Mann. Yeah, I think Fran is kind of Twin Peaks cool.  And while we are at it. So is Ms Claude. She sold me when I heard Screen. Her voice is velvety chalk sidewalk art. Damn....now I gotta get off my ass and shower.
 
  Off I go. As the process of me getting ready continues. The laziness wears off and now I really want to see this.  I search the memories now to connect this story. The casual pace that compelled me to see this was from deeper with more authority. Some things are gonna hit later. Your appreciation will be light at first but it will deepen. Desert Wanderer from Fran got me because I stayed still long enough while waiting for Staring Problem. And now Fran got me to stay and now I like Claude. The Fran Goes South tour was kicked off at Empty Bottle. I wonder how the stages look like as she plays Desert Wanderer. Songs like that can capture moments without apparent effort beyond just being cool. Hmm... I can have this same curiosity with every band I see....yeah I do.  Claude, then let's say...when she's playing Enactor, Screen.  Someone put that on YouTube.
  Claude had enthusiastic fans there at Empty Bottle. One girl I think wore the long sleeve white shirt. The artwork on it was nice.  Enactor is the 6 track EP released on cassette with a download code via Just For You Records from Indianapolis. Claude is Claudia Ferme....from Chicago. I had to space that out. You try saying that fast. Anyway this is ethereal dream pop similar to Fauvely's Watch Me Overcomplicate This. Only Claude does not seem sad so much as numb and distant. I'm just enactor she breathes. There is a fascinating video for it.  Claude has this gothic casual tai chi dance style, and it's not just because she wears black in parts of the video.  Her moves can be included if not partly take the piss out of Angela Benedict's how to dance like a 90's goth. How she dances triggers memories of going to pre Covenant/VNV Nocturna and Neo.  The dance styles varied so widely because the pace was mid tempo mostly. Regular goths betrayed movements unique to them. Anyway, damn....this tangent made me forget where I parked the car. I'm just taking the scenic route in saying I like how Ms Claude dances. Anyway, I'm glad I caught the show. Claude without effort made me a fan.
Zig

Walking Bicycles

  The Walking Bicycles discography that I have is greatly treasured. I feel very privileged to have it down and swirling about in my head. They play relatively rare. It gives time for one to explore more deeply the music that is out now.  The time you would spend listening to what is new from them instead is spent longer on their present work.  Every show I see is a mission accomplished and forever remembered.  I hear it in the right moment, its empowering. There is a reason why the word "punk" is always in their description.  It is music for underdogs by those who lived as such. There is this park near where I live they got these elliptical machines. On the ipod they randomly played and I worked out to the entire To Him That Wills The Way LP. Other tracks find their way into daily mental soundtrack or randomly on the ipod. There is this .....maturity that stretches into their earliest works.

  Perhaps it's the 70's inspired artwork that came with the two newest releases, but there is that cool dark 70's vibe....the way movies now like to portray them.   70's noir...John Wick's muscle car .......driving to Walgreens to pick up mom's meds.  Damn, I need to stop mercilessly drowning my own metaphors in the bathtub like that.  It was a bubble. No 70's muscle car all in Bauhaus black....puuf! Just me in mum's van picking up her meds listening to Walking Bicycles along the way. I am rabidly getting into Fat Cat and ESP. These last few gigs I saw they were playing more and more of their new music. Hellz yeah I was into it.  It is perhaps ESP that I recall telling Julius in some long winded way how awesome it is. I throw that word a lot but I mean it always.  ESP was a further refinement, smooth and still intense.  And I know this is just subjective speculation, I hear traces of GO? in this one song. (I tried to look for the upside down question mark on my keyboard, really I did.)The path that was suggested in GO? is bulldozed, plowed and paved in ESP. It's refined, smooth and still powerful. Its a path finally taken and owned. Fat Cat reminds me of To Him That Wills.  I place it comfortably among my favorites of the band.  And these impressions so crudely expressed are but placeholders. Early chances at reaching wider audiences they turned down. And I can see why. They were not for those audiences. Theirs is for an older wiser.....cooler crowd even back then. An innate maturity comes with their punk. They have been tested by the hardest times. Defiance from a place of experience is scarier, tougher. There is a reason why my mind drifts to playing their music. In all scenarios it's light in the dark with the burn power of a laser, a burning simmering ember with a promise to burn it all down. I cam down from that elliptical machine feeling like that forward burning wick, but I was going to shower first.
Zig