So I dragged my 39-year-old a** back into McCormick’s tonight, for a TUESDAY night tilt, as I guess now they no longer do it on Mondays. I think I showed up at 9:45 or so, whereas the gig is supposed to start at 9, and the dude on stage was like doing Linkin Park karaoke, or something along those lines. This really threw me by surprise as up to this point I’d envisioned some anticlimactic jam-rock band taking the helm at this event and sort of riding off into the eternal sunset, if you will.
A band went up pretty soon after Repressed Anger Dude #1 of the Night and really tore through a pretty brilliant 15-minute set of metal instrumentals. I know: the idea plagues you as it does me. Are these jams real? This shaved-head dude in a plain black t shirt corroborated: it actually was an original jam. I said it reminded me of Metallica and he offered, “Sure, like early ’90s.” I’d also suggested Pantera as another influence. Things seemed to come to a head when shaved head dude started backing away from me, smiling and apparently rejoicing over some nondescript de facto little victory in life, the next time they started making a bunch of ungodly noise. I just kind of said, yeah, Keep on rocking in the free world!
I could be wrong but I think the next guy up was a hip-hop artist doing a trap satire: the beats were trap and his vocals were sung, but the lyrics were something like “Tattooed mind / Tattooed heart / Tattooed so much I don’t know where to start”. I for one hate trap but I found this guy incredibly amusing, I have to admit.
These two acts were pretty good but it seemed like they were pretty much merging it with karaoke, which they do in there on Thursdays, I think, or something like that. And, yeah, the whole thing is hanging by a thread. That metal made my mind shoot back to my work, earlier, and how much of a dyke this server was being to me, I have to admit. At one point, this dude had banged his fist down on the bar like seven times, real loud, and the bartender goes, “If you slam your fist down one more time, we’re fighting!”, a threat which was met with one more slam, a second later, no longer, and, of course, no fight. But they still show up and that satire trap bit was a bit of something and when I snuck out the back I smelled rampant weed smoke and I’m pretty sure the cute little girl in a cat costume who’d avoided my stare checked out my a** as I was crawling up the alley to my sh**-old Subaru on Colfax. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything but it still stands.