Just a tiny bit of clarification, there wasn’t enough light to take photographs last night, so this is an old photo from the last night of their Echo residency in August of 2009, just FYI.
Having to come home under unfortunate circumstances was one thing, but finding out the Growlers were playing a Halloween set on the Friday before I left (I am typing this from LAX, spending all Halloween night on a plane) was just the pick me up I needed. Everyone who reads this blog semi-regularly knows that the Growlers are Nu Rave Brain Wave’s #1 favorite band in Los Angeles, for both Colette and I. I hope I’m not speaking out of turn saying that but I wrote about them & took pictures of them at so, so, so many gigs this summer. But this gig just blew my mind.
They played with Pocahaunted (not my thing) at the Bootleg Theatre. Have you ever been to the Bootleg Theatre? No? Oh, well it’s a box made out of wood with a shitty little wooden stage and a bar made out of wood and a really cool little outdoor smoking area complete with basketball court. Yeah, tis quaint, but it’s a fucking bootleg. Anyway, so the doors opened at 10:30 and my little body on English time was weeping and Pocahaunted went on around 11:30 and then finally, finally the Growlers went on around 12:20. Shit, that was late. Only 8:20am by my body’s clock.
So like I said, it was a Halloween party basically and we knew ahead of time that the Growlers’ costumes would probably blow away anyone else’s costumes. I was right. Brooks Nielsen, vocals, had the most confusing costume. He was wearing a purple “skirt” that he hiked up, plus a weird t-shirt with an American flag tied on the back, a hat with nasty white trash hair fixed in, zombie makeup and a sign that said, “I’ll Suck Yer Dick”. Guitarist, Matt Taylor, was wearing a Pippie Longstocking costume; wig included, with a very short skirt and some cute cowboy boots. Scott Montoya, bass, was in KISS attire, complete with full face-paint. The drummer, Brian Steward, was wearing this fantastic (and I know how wrong this is) wizard/KKK robe with an old white face sewed on the neck – it sounds weird, but it was pretty amazing. Now, for a little confusion. The normal key/organ guy who plays guitar was mysteriously absent onstage, in fact, he was in the crowd, just not playing. And the guy who was filling in wasn’t wearing a very obvious costume. CONFUSING.
But regardless of costumes, this was all about the music. So the Growlers take the stage around 12:20 like I mentioned previously and just tore the teeny little flimsy wooden box down to the floor. Yes, I have been touting the Growlers as the best band on the planet for a couple of months now, but Colette, Mia and I are not the only ones who think so as Devendra Barnhart and Fab Moretti were there to support them, which I thought was sweet. Neither wore costumes, though.
It struck me, during this gig, that the Growlers are kind of like a dichotomy of The Snake Charmer vs. The Snake vs. A Mongoose. I can never pin point whether the instrumentation follows the words and vocals, as if the music is the Snake and Brooks Nielsen himself is the charmer. And that would make sense because he moves like a charmer, I say that regardless of his beauty, because while that factors in, he’s got that it-factor; he sings and moves in a way that compels other people to move, and on-stage he swaggers like some kind of hip-hop MC of psychedelic proportions. That interpretation of the Snake Charmer vs. The Snake would make sense because that’s what is mostly expected – a band who is great, but is led by the singer of the band. Totally normal. But that’s what’s great about the Growlers, they’re not normal. They’re mentally insane. And it’s 100% plausible that Brooks is actually the Snake and his band are the Charmers. On the 30th of October, they were as tight as I have ever seen them. Montoya’s bass was heavier than I’ve ever heard it in a mix, and it really led the music forward, a kind of blitzkrieg charge. And Matt Taylor, the soul of the band, just has endless composure and cool. He churns out the riffs like a sidewinder but effortlessly so, even while wearing a Pippie Longstocking costume and cowboy boots manages to just look like the picture of Southern California beach chill. So it was easy for me to switch my metaphor and say that the instrumentation, the music, is what drives Brooks. And he’s, in turn, the snake, writhing and dancing. So, which is right? Both. All. None? Well, the relationship that snakes (badabing!) between the band, the instrumentation, and Brooks, the vocals and the words is what makes the Growlers so special. In some cases, one charms, one leads, and the other dances, follows; and vice versa. It’s what makes their live shows so entertaining, so consistent and magical.
But who is the Mongoose, you may ask? Well, that’s the crowd. It’s like the crowd are fighting the band, or more realistically, fighting each other. They, too, move like charmed snakes, but they also push and ram and dance and groove. It’s all part of what makes each Growlers concert such an incredible experience. And that’s what this October 30th/Halloweenie show was, an incredible experience. The Growlers played a lot of the material on their record, Are You In or Out?, but did like a greatest hits (not as in their album, Greatest Hits) performance from their 8 Volumes of ‘Couples’. The highlight of the gig for me, personally, was ‘Underneath Our Palm Blues’ which might be one of the best romantic songs I’ve ever heard in my entire lifetime.
See some of the two hour-long setlist that I can remember below:
Acid Rain
Something Someone Jr.
Underneath Out Palm Blues
Red Tide
Barnacle Beat
Mean People Suck
Met You In The Past
Tijuana
Kick The Habit of Dredd
Sea Lion Goth Blues
& many, many, many more.
