The City Veins

Next Friday, February 8, we’re playing IOTA in Arlington and I’m pretty freakin excited for it.  The opportunity came up yesterday last minute and sort of luckily fell into our laps.  IOTA is one of the most respected, well-known music venues in the DC area and it’s definitely a step up for us.

There’s an element of nervousness though too. We’ve played 2 shows in the last month in the greater DC area and I hope people will come out for this one too.  If we bring a good-size crowd we’ll have a shot at playing there more regularly, which would be awesome.

So, dear reader, if you are in the DC area, we would be really grateful if you can come out to IOTA next Friday and help us out.  I’ve never made a personal appeal like this before a show, but this is a big opportunity and we unfortunately don’t have much time to put it together.  Your support would mean the world to us.

Another weekend, another trip up I-95, up past Bodymore, Murderland (The Wire reference, anyone?) and into Delaware. Last week we were in NYC, this weekend a little less cosmopolitan. But I’d take a Wilmington show at Mojo 13 any day. Not necessarily instead of Arlene’s Grocery, but it’s a great experience regardless.

In our last band, Charles and I often played in this small blue-collar town south of Philly, Aston, PA. And there were many great things about that venue: electronic trivia games, a “Strikemaster” bowling game, $1.50 beers, a guy who repeatedly offered Charles snort-able illegal drugs, and a solid and devout crowd. While some of the listed elements of the club were unimportant and un-useful (Charles says no to drugs), the fact that there was always a natural draw was a load off our mind. To this day, we constantly worry about the number of people we bring to a show. Thus, a place where people just show up to have a good time can yield some serious benefits. That’s not to say these places are ideal; the people who go out to Whitlow’s and hear music are not likely to be live music enthusiasts, which is why we avoid that Clarendon strip with the Ballroom, Grille, and Whitlow’s. But out of town you’re looking at 100 or so potential fans, and it’s the best proposition you have available. We’d rather play Velvet than Whitlow’s because we know people will show up and actually care, but out of town that’s not necessarily the case. In fact it’s not the case at all.

Alright, I’m tired of blogging about that crap.

Let’s do some random thoughts about DC area bands.

JukeBox the Ghost: As Charles likes to say, these guys are “blowin’ up”, which means you’ve already heard of them. Or if you haven’t, it’s your fault. While we were playing a venue of 150 square feet in a suburb of Wilmington, DE, they (along with Bellman Barker) were selling out the Black Cat. So I will try to keep my venomous jealousy out of my mention of their music.

If you have not heard them, they are neat. I think that’s actually the best word to describe the goodness that is they. They have that same sing-songy I-love-the-Decembrists-but-I-understand-that-songs-should-be-less-than-six-minutes-long thing that Bellman Barker has, which is to say they also love Steven Sondheim. But if you cannot have fun listening to their music, well, then you have no appreciation of pop melody. And I’m not talking about N’Sync pop, I’m talking about classic pop—Jerome Kern, Hammerstein, Schwartz, Porter—the Great American Songbook. Sure, Jukebox the Ghost is a modern Indie band, but they love something about old forgotten melody. And it’s pretty good.

There is a lot of crazy-good shit happening in DC these days. I think for the better, it seems a diversion from the classic DC-Punk scene—which was wonderful—but there needs to be some branching out for DC to get its due. I need to read more about these bands; I wonder if all of the members of Jukebox the Ghost, Bellman Barker, Middle Distance Runner, etc. grew up in the DC area. My suspicion is that they did not and that this new sound is a result of the growing transient population of DC. But what do I know?

I’ve been in and out of bands for the last 14 years of my life. In that time, the press that I/my bands have accrued is probably 3-4 articles aggregate. That is to say that one article is written every four-ish years. To be fair, there was no press in the first 7 years, no articles written, and general disgust meeting my early “work”. So I guess you could say that things have really picked up in the last 7 years, in that ascending from nothing to 3-4 “somethings” is a pretty large increase. But to sum it up, no-one really writes about us, or at least not more than a line or two. And by “us” I mean me. Because, lets be honest, as a narcissist I hardly notice that Charles and Spencer are there. There is not “Roosevelt” press separable from “City Veins” press, there is only Aaron press. It is a monolithic historical viewpoint, but that’s what you get with me.

So in the last few weeks we have been contacted by two separate media peoples with interest in the band. As a reader of this blog, I am assuming a level of intelligence enough for you to calculate how statistically significant two separate and unique media requests are. (And to weed through my cumbersome English).

Two is a lot. The first media outlet—making it sound like Fox News—claimed a million hits a day. A million little City Veins followers! That would be amazing, and is certainly a more than likely proposition given how impressionable blog-readers are.

(Aside: We need to think of some inside lingo to go along with City Veins fandom….like “The Replacements” are “The Mats” to fans of the band. Please leave suggestions in the comment section—I fully expect Jon to come up with the best, like “The Main Veins”, or something border-line inappropriate).

The second “media outlet” made no such claims, so I actually trust them. Actually, I trust both because there’s really no incentive for them to lie to us. What were we going to say: “you’re not big enough for access”? I contacted the Lo-Fi Social Club for some press passes at the behest of both groups of journalists, but I felt ridiculous doing it given the fact that access is really not an issue. If they wanted to they could probably jump up on stage and no-one would know the difference or question their actions. These are not tightly-run ships; they are run by individuals that envisioned a grander existence. And while that may be true for us all, many of us operate in what is at least a partial meritocracy, while I’m certain they do not. Thus, there’s not always a whole lot of “caring” about how things go down at the small clubs. It is for precisely that reason that we love playing Velvet; that they actually give a shit about the musical product on every single night, and they do the most they can in order to put the artists in a position to deliver quality. I’ve heard Lo-Fi is the same way, just with fewer resources (ie-no Rob Curtis). So we’re psyched about that show and our millions of potential fans located in the mid-west who have yet to read of our excellence but almost certainly will by February 10th.

Three songs into our set at Arlene’s Grocery on Saturday night, things felt good.  We fortunately had a so-so practice on the Thursday, and as we’ve mentioned here before that usually means we’ll have a good show.  During our first three songs, that pattern appeared to be holding true still and we seemed to be on our game as much as ever.

But then a more recent trend held sway and the bass amp at Arlene’s stopped working.  This time the equipment wasn’t actually ours, but I’m pretty sure our presence had something to do with its malfunction.  After taking like 5 minutes to fix it, we got through one more song, then took another 5 minutes to fix it again.  Once we got going again, we rocked pretty hard and well for the rest of the set.

On a positive note, when we did get to play we played real well and had a lot of fun. Charles played especially well, though I’d have liked to seen him put on his new dance moves.  And 1 am is an awesome time to hold a show in NY it turns out.  Everyone’s drunk and really into it, plus more people come become 1 am in NYC is like the equivalent of 11 pm in DC.

This is not a shameless plug for our Saturday concert in NYC at Arlene’s Grocery (we go on at 1 am). No, this is the God’s honest truth. The last time I saw Spencer he was curled in between cushions on our L-shaped “living room” couch in a position last seen in the Kama Sutra. He made a bowl of soup that required the use of a ladle, and we don’t actually live next to the Arlington Homeless Relief Shelter. The logic, I believe, is that if something is good for you, a lot of it is even better. This is the logic of Wino’s. A glass of red wine prevents cancer? Then a bottle must cure the cancer of nations. Chicken soup will aid my ailing stomach? Then I shall dance in chicken soup. It shall rain chicken soup from our 3rd floor loft, down the stairs and over my fucking face.

With Spencer as sick as he is, and given the fact that we chose to take the same day off work—he for illness, I because of a court appearance—it is hard to imagine that I will not also fall to this great plague. Spencer suggested Lysol—a remedy I had not heard of. My assumption is that he meant for me to apply the Lysol to anything he had touched, but given the fact that breathing is the primary perpetrator, the only use that would yield true benefit is if I stick the Lysol in my nasal cavity. This I am not willing to do, not without having heard first of evidence related to its efficacy from a more reliable source than Spencer.

So come to our gig on Saturday to see if it is the Spencer Vliet memorial show. We’ll play it without Spencer; I have a friend who is traveling with us, and though he has never played drums before he sort of looks like Animal from the Muppets. Besides, if Spencer is good at the drums, how hard can they really be?

Photo by Flickr user melyviz.