Last night I drove into the city to see Jackie-O Motherfucker at Tonic. I drove in alone, parked somewhere on Prince and walked around SoHo for a bit. I stopped in a subterranean record store and dug around until I unearthed a nice copy of Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express. Then I parked somewhere on Grand and found a slice of pizza around the block. This is all very exciting, isn’t it?
The first musician was named Marissa Nadler, she sings in a very high and pretty voice, acoustic songs with unique picking/strumming patterns. She seemed quite OCD about her sound. After every song she would say “check” and then ask the soundboard operator to either pull the reverb or crank it. Same with the high end on her guitar. Her songs were good, but the lulls between songs took away from her set.
Second on the stage was the duo of Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty. Corsano is easily one of the most intriguing and fascinating drummers I’ve ever watched. Each time I see him perform he does something else that I’d never imagined was possible. They played two or three pieces that generally went from amusical to really groovy and back again.
Jackie-O took the stage relatively quickly after Corsano’s kit was broken down and transported to the rear of the room. The room was probably about half-full, and most of the attendees were sitting on the floor Indian-style, trying to “chill” or whatever the kids do these days. Actually, it was a relatively older crowd, by Friday night on the LES standards. This could be due in part to the fact that there were literally one billion other shows in the city last night. I chose JOMF over the Black Dice/Enon show at Irving Plaza, and someone told me Dresden Dolls were in town (still haven’t heard them), I don’t know what was at Bowery Ballroom but there was a line around the block. There was a five-band show at Mercury Lounge, and I don’t know about any other venues.
So yeah, before they started playing JOMF were just sitting around at the edge of the stage shooting the breeze, smoking some pot, and then after they were ready and lit, they picked up their instruments and began playing. It started out pretty terrible, but it got great in the middle, and then it got kinda bad for a few minutes, and it ended on a very high note. I’ve seen them twice before, and although this wasn’t the best (when they played with Adam Forkner it was most memorable), it wasn’t shit either. I don’t think the turntables were loud enough. If you listen to the in-studio they did for WFMU they sounded stunning. Also, the female vocalist, as she started screaming in a shrill, not-flattering voice, took away from the show. Ilya and Michele hated it and left about 2/3 of the way through. They probably missed the best part, and my attempts to assure them of this went widely unnoticed. “Suuuuuure they did. I bet it was totally life-altering.” Sarcastic remarks and stupid faces were abound, my friends.
Then Ilya needed to be “scene” and walk up Stanton to San Loco for some burritos. We sat there and I made faces and they talked loudly about the cute girl sitting at the table behind us writing in a notebook. In mildly offensive tones, they uttered middle school-like diary entry excerpts. I wanted to turn around and tell the girl I loved her, and that I have a diary, too. I call it a blog, though.
Then we went back to Ilya’s and passed the herb around and played some horrible music. The end.
