The Furniture is kinda too great to have a name like the Furniture. It suggests something you take for granted, the background of the scene, but you just try to take them for granted when they're onstage. And sorry, but they were a better opener than Superchannel the night before. They even had the balls (or ovaries?) to do a Stooges cover with a bonafide Stooge in the room! They're kind of Pixies-meet-garage and Aramis Starfish is a very compelling frontperson, the guitarist offers a lot of interesting tones and it's fun to watch Lana thank LanaLou's for letting the band play. (She seems very differently pitched than Aramis, much more solid/ grounded/ serious).
The set by Casa Sueño was the same or close to the same as last night, and the high points for me were the rockin'er numbers, like "Electric Chair." I want a lyric sheet for that one -- what does tugging on one's mortal knot entail? It can't possibly mean what it brings to mind for me...
I didn't take many photos of the night (Bob was there!) but I did get a couple I like of actor Tom Scholte with Watt.
Bruce Stayloose came by as well and sat at our table with Tom and Bob and Erik Iversen and Erika; I gifted him a Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra LP (and received gifts in return), and heard stories of how he recovered a Watt album he'd made the mistake of selling because he recognized damage done to the cover.
It brings to mind, perhaps weirdly, a Kathy Acker quote: "We wear our mutilations as badges. Wearing badges is the only proof we have of human love." At least, I applied that quote when I recovered a Dead Kennedys EP I sold because it also had recognizable damage to the cover. Without the patch that got torn off when someone taped a coat-check tag to it, I would never have recognized the album when I stumbled across it at Audiopile.
It was a great night, but I don't really want to give away too much of the material they played, so the only vid I'm posting for now is the same song I posted yesterday, "Diggin' That Hole", but now at a different angle.
I got some stories from Watt about What Makes a Man Start Fires?, too. He had pointed out last night that it was the first album he wrote all the music for, but not the lyrics. We continued that story tonight: I asked if it began with a piece of Pettibon art or if the band had come up with the title and commissioned the cover. Closer to the former than the later, but he'd had an experience as a child of having accidentally started a fire. "I was playing with matches. I was seven."
Flash forward some years to adulthood. "It was a weird time in my life," he explained. He'd just had knee surgery and was laid up. He was going through a box of art by Pettibon and found the drawing you see, and it reminded him of having started a fire once himself.
So.
Anyhow, that was a great two night stand (and Mike Baggetta explained on mic that it was in fact their first-ever two-night stand). You should see this band if you can! They'll be playing Seattle soon, I think for another two-night stand... and then recording in Oregon. Looking forward to that record.
Meantime I got two fIRHOSE albums I don't know so well, including fROMOHIO, which Tom says is his favourite. It's also the one fIREHOSE album I've never listened to before -- I think I even gave my CD of it to a friend. And now I have it signed by Watt and endorsed by a local actor/ filmmaker I admire. (Tom, you really really have to put your movie Crime up on Vimeo, so I can direct people to it!).
And I got a Tortoise record, my first ever on vinyl (I have a couple of their CDs around).
Happy travels, guys, and thanks!
