there was a short part of the walk to trinosophes that was a bit unsettling, but it was because it was an unfamiliar area in a large city and not because there was any rational reason to deduce it as unsafe. that will evaporate as i become more familiar with the area. i have every reason to think this is a safe walk.
so, this is what i did on thursday...
i went down a little early because i wanted to get tickets for boris. that meant walking up to the magic stick which was about a half hour detour up woodward. i think a part of me wanted to walk the street during the day to get a grasp of the safety of it...
there's some construction up woodward, but it's otherwise an affluent downtown street full of banks and other things of the sort. that holds until you get to a highway, on the other side of which is a short walk past a field into an area called "midtown". midtown is apparently the hipster area of detroit, and is considered to be safe for affluent looking white people to walk around in. but, what actually struck me is how many affluent looking black people i saw. it's really the first time i ever walked through a middle class area that is also predominantly black.
now, if you look across the field that separates downtown from midtown you get a good eyeful of "scarytown". i don't want to gloss over the reality: it seems to be that woodward is a sort of a sheltered walkway through some rough areas. i wouldn't want to wander too far from that street, at least not for the time being. but i think i'll be comfortable walking back from a show at the magic stick, as i will be next saturday.
the soundtrack for the walk was pinkish black, and it fit the atmosphere fairly well:
walking back, i went back through downtown (including a walk through a total doppelganger of confederation park in ottawa), before crossing another huge highway on my way out of the downtown core, which is actually quite small. i don't think this little area has a name. it's kind of really just a strip of highway between two interchanges. but what defines it is the contrast between very old structures (the GENERAL HARDWARE sign on the ancient store looked to me to be at least a hundred years old, plausibly mid nineteenth century) and encroaching gentrification. directly over the highway, there was something that looked like a gated castle on one side of the street and a string of boarded up, long closed factories on the other. the venue (trinosophes, which is an unlicensed coffee shop) was locked from the front, so i walked a few openings up and stumbled into an overly bourgeois jazz-themed lunch restaurant with all the fancy dinnerware that was closing for the day. can't sit and have a beer, they're closing....
i was about an hour early, and there wasn't an open bar i could see in either direction, so i just sat outside the front of the venue and watched people walk by. there was another interesting contrast: designed landscaping contrasting with strips of grass that haven't been mowed all year. private v. city property. and, there was actually a smokestack in the middle of the road. this really tripped me out. a literal smokestack, pumping out nonstop pollution from somewhere, parked right in the island on the road, at a level of about four feet from the ground.
pedestrian traffic up the street was very light; there's nothing but highways in either direction, making the area very isolated. the little bit i saw was not intimidating: kids in their twenties doubling each other on their bikes, people walking their dogs without a leash, hippies with a bit of a swagger in their step due to obvious reasons, etc.
eventually, somebody came and knocked on the front of the door and got waved around to the back, at which point i realized the entry point is in the back. so, i made it into the venue....
it's a nice little hippie haven, full of potted plants and nice little benches. no alcohol; just coffee, and you know what that *really* means. i wish they'd just fix the legislation, already. i have to be very careful about that, actually, until i get a better feel for customs. i guess it's technically a loft and was probably initially built for an industrial purpose. this opens up into a second room with a small stage and a standing room capacity of roughly 500 people, although the slightly scary cracks in the floor suggest it wouldn't be smart to test that capacity.
so, first up was a band called brothels, which i can't find any information on online other than that it's a side project of another band. the style was psychedelic punk, and it was nothing particular original, but it was pretty solid at a few points. the second track they played is actually very structurally similar to the song i'm recording right now. i feel it's hard to make an overall assessment, though, because it seemed like the bulk of what they played (in the middle of the set) was unfinished. if they can work the middle of the set into the same level of detail as the first few and last few songs, they'll have a pretty solid set of psychedelic punk tunes. but that is something that remains to be seen. i'll keep an eye on them and update further as they develop.
oneida, on the other hand, is a well understood entity and they basically did exactly what they were expected to do. the crux of the band is their rhythm section, and especially their drummer. the two guitarists mostly drone out, while the two keyboard players are mostly for percussive and mild harmonic effect. the style traces back to late 70s attempts to merge noise, punk and jazz together; much has been written about this, so i will not bother repeating it.
there was a bit of an awkward moment in the set where they played a song about a "cat fight" and half the place got up and left. i can't say i had such a visceral reaction to it, but it's mostly because i can't take things of the sort that seriously. if i could take it that seriously, i may have. it certainly made me cringe. i mean, there's always been a bit of a sausage rock character to this style of music, not just this band. what other kind of reaction did they expect? they may want to think that through a bit more.
but, it was otherwise a solid noise set from a solid noise act. and it was nice to get a blast of sheets of easter in real time.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/07/31.html