By: Steve McPherson
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Knol Tate performs with Askeleton at the Turf Club on Tuesday - Photo by Steve McPherson (click for full size version)
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We all know what you go to the Turf Club for on Tuesday night. Tacos, right? But last night also brought a free show moved from the 7th St Entry and offered me my first chance to check out Askeleton live.
I got there early (see above: tacos) and met up with Martin Devaney (who was in the middle of wrapping up an interview with MPR) and Bill Caperton and Knol Tate from Askeleton. The Turf Club was mostly empty, but looking fine under the Christmas lights. As much as I want every band to have a packed house, I like not having to fight my way to the bar. Knol and I talked about the recent tour they (Askeleton) had just completed with the Detachment Kit and Minus the Bear. Apparently, it was not nearly as debauched as you might think, given that Minus the Bear (including Erin Tate on drums) was just finishing a tour and had gotten most of their wild oats out of their system. Most.
The crowd thickened up a bit and roundabout 10 pm the music got rolling with the Mammy Nuns, a fixture at the Turf Club. And named after a Frank Zappa song, I just discovered. The Mammy Four (lacking a few members) are about as unpretentious and straight ahead as it gets, which is great. Starting with a song about stupid little bands in stupid little bars, and proceeding to a song about the minimum and recommended number of chords required to rock, the Nuns don’t ask for much and give a lot back in the way of junky classic rock.
Little Dirt followed, a band whose stickers I’ve seen in the restroom of the Entry. Really, sometimes that’s how you find out about things. Their sound evoked a country-fried Spoon, or, as Knol observed, Television’s second record, which sounds like country-fried Television. Precise breaks led into jangly guitar solos sometimes veering as far south as the Drive-By Truckers, but the digital Hammond kept the vibe oddly anchored in the keyboard stabs of new wave and Booker T’s soulful sound. Props were given to ODB and all the fallen homies.
Next up: The Close, from Hotlanta, GA by way of Seattle, WA, where they came in from after a 26-hour drive. That’s heart, especially for a free show on a Tuesday. Although featuring the same instrumental lineup as Little Dirt (singer w/ guitar, bassist, drummer, keyboardist), their sound overall was much broader and slower in tempo, bringing to mind early Velvet Teen with singer Brooks Meeks’ nasal delivery sounding like a young Liam Gallagher. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that he moved his capo in the middle of one of the songs. That’s hot.
Finally: Askeleton. I know Knol from Bill Caperton’s band Ela, and I’ve listened to some Askeleton on record, but I have to confess I never really got it. Live, they’re a whole different proposition. Perhaps the CD doesn’t grab me the same way because I never feel that there’s a danger that Knol Tate will come tumbling out of my stereo and clonk me on the head with his guitar, but I lived with that very real fear during their set, and liked it. Their music owes a debt to Wire, Television, perhaps a little more Gang of Four and P.I.L. than the other bands this night, but they also transcend stylistic similarities. Knol Tate, looking like the badly-in-need-of-Ritalin bastard child of Thomas Dolby and Brendan Canty, lurches about the stage (as do most of the band), knocking things over, hitting himself on the head with shakers before tossing them out to the crowd, and living threateningly inside the lyrics. There’s a friction between his songs’ abstract and repetitive words and the manic and spastic way he delivers them that makes it seem like he’s about to genuinely explode, in a mess, mostly all over anyone in the front. On record, that coolness of content can come across as aloofness, but live, you could never mistake Knol and the rest of Askeleton for calculating musos.
Exhortations from Bill to dance, Eric Vong coming out from behind the drums to jump down into the crowd, and calls for people to get up on stage all contributed to making the set (including “Queenie,” “The Future,” “Ghosts,” and “Shapes”) into a drunken party that nicely ramped the evening up before Knol announced, “We’re going to play one more song because it’s four in the morning.” Not quite, but pretty late for a Tuesday, and I was more than satisfied with what I had gotten, tacos and all.
Location Info:
The Turf Club
Artist Info: Askeleton, Little Dirt, The Close, The Mammy Nuns
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