The Theater & the Bar: A Live Music Meditation
by Chris Polley
After seeing a pair of concerts this past Saturday night, I have come to a conclusion a long time in the making: the best musical performances almost uniformly always take place in a theater or in a bar. And I’m not just talking any place that has “theater” at the end of their name and I’m not talking about clubs or venues that happen to sell alcohol. I’m talking very specifically about 1) the places we sit down at, are expected to be quiet in, and watch mature and established artists with captivated and relaxed awe, and 2) the dives and hole-in-the-walls that we get crammed into, where no one’s there on the weekdays but they’re packed on the weekends, where bands play while they’re still attaining their footing in the music world, before they can play a place where they’re guaranteed to get paid.
Tim Hecker “Dungeoneering”
The first live music experience I took in that led me to the first half of this conclusion featured the Montreal electronic/ambient composer Tim Hecker performing at a space called The Southern Theater in Minneapolis. Known almost solely as a venue for dance performances up until a couple years ago, the Southern is one of the most idyllic places a fan can see their favorite artist play. First off, while it’s a theater, it is by no means your average thousand-person monstrosity home to Broadway national tours or arena rock artists not quite popular enough to sell out the adjacent amphitheater. In fact, it’s not even downtown. Located in a small area between the inner city and the University of Minnesota campus, it sits modestly and comfortably between a freeway and a brewery, as if it were just another storefront or restaurant. Walk inside, past the box office, and up the stairs, and you’ll find yourself at the top of a set of stairs that can lead you to your seat (it’ll be one out of only a couple hundred) or straight onto the concrete performance area. That’s right, there’s no stage, but merely a slab of gray stone acting as both the floor and the spotlight for the artists. And lastly, a brick-exposed layout that looks equal parts bare-bones and elegant rounds out the visual feast. It’s quite the environment to take in.
It’s such a feat to absorb the beauty and pristine details of this place, actually, even though I’ve been there almost a dozen times now, that when I parked my car in the nearby garage at ten minutes before show time I started realizing that I was worrying not about being late but about not having a chance to marvel at the Southern’s architecture for a few minutes before the music started this time. Luckily I did, but I have to admit that I was a little concerned when the lights dimmed low, and then just basically shut off so that Hecker could begin his performance in pitch black, with just the glow of his Mac and the standby/power lights from his two pairs of amps piercing through the darkness like four sets of luminescent eyes in the background. It was off-putting to suddenly not be able to feel like you were in a place of craftsmanship and décor, but rather floating listlessly in nothingness as ambient swells filled the room and didn’t quit for the next 80 minutes. At the same time, it was refreshing and calming as well, and in a space that was already comforting and stunning, it only made the experience that much more subdued and intoxicating.
Tim Hecker “Borderlands”
As part of an innovative music series that the Southern is doing for their 2010-11 season, Hecker had interspersed visits from fellow ambient composer Ben Frost of Iceland throughout his set, just as he periodically joined Frost for his concert on Friday night at the venue. Near the beginning he came in to play with a bass guitar and a cornucopia of samplers and pedals and near the end he came in to jostle some piano keys on a very purposefully placed baby grand that had me screaming in my head “When will that thing get used?!” until Frost finally made plunks and twinkles turn into elongated swirls and sustains through the use of the duo’s expansive looping technology placed around the two of them. These appearances served not just as a way to gently twist Hecker’s usual M.O. (gorgeously slow-blooming synth pads interrupted periodically by welcomed bursts of static and crinkles) but also to prove the power of the theater. Without so much as looking at each other, and with the lights only brightened enough so the outlines of the pair’s bodies were visible amongst the blackness, it became more of a conversation between performers. It became more a dialogue or a silent yet interactive scene in which the audience, while lulled and appeased with the simple but breathtaking sounds (to make no mention of the sheer volume of these sounds), could cultivate in their own heads a kind of cinematic handshake between these two talented soundscape artists.
The quiet, the simplicity, and the elegance are all factors that made me fall in love with watching live music in a space like this, but at the same time, by the end of the show, it was only 9:30 and while it was the best conscious nap I’d taken since my last foray to the theater, I had a lot of energy in me. After all, it was the weekend and de-stressing comes not just in one flavor. So I booked it to another one of my favorite venues in the Twin Cities – The Hexagon Bar. And even though it’s arguably the best bar to see live music at in town, the high I was coming off from consuming the stately sounds of Hecker was not something I expected to be replaced so effortlessly as it did by a little band from North Carolina called The Bronzed Chorus, playing third out of four in an otherwise all-local bill.
The Bronzed Chorus “Underpass Sunrise”
But oh how quickly I filed my Hecker memories away and transported myself to the present, to being alert and alive in that room as this two-piece (one on guitar, one on drums and keys) blasted through the PA in this dank ill-designed room by the train tracks, where the closest other place of business is a Cub Foods a couple blocks west and a bowling alley a couple blocks east. During the first few notes of the band’s first song I thought the bassist from the opening band and myself were going to be the only ones watching these guys. And I would have been fine with that, but no, the sheer power and brute strength of The Bronzed Chorus’s songs magnetized the smokers standing outside and the pool players from the opposite corner of the bar and brought them all to the front of stage, almost tripping over the gear from the other bands, that just lay haphazardly on the floor because are you kidding me, you think this place has a backstage? With just a few brightly picked riffs and a drummer whose snare took the gravest public beating since [insert inappropriate historical reference here], a bar stops being a bar. It becomes a place of musical worship.
The room was galvanized within moments and out of nowhere, this band few have heard of and even fewer had listened to (they’re only here after all because they’re friends with a local band with a moderate following) had transformed from a couple of furtive guys just setting up their equipment like any other group of chumps with enough gumption to perform in front of drunks to superstars, if only for one 35-minute set. And that set was supposed to stay within the half-hour mark, but after the sixth song ended and those two guys with the dreadlocks that obviously are here on accident keep whistling and hollering, our new heroes from the East Coast are putting the sticks and picks back in their hands and wailing away, smiles glued to their faces, for one last epic jam as the party people in the room lock their eyes and ears toward them, even as they drop a beer bottle or shout to their friend across the way. They make noises not out of disrespect, but out of celebration and the kind of joy that is only produced via surprise. No one expects this kind of virtuoso performance at a bar, and yet, every once in a while, it happens.
The Bronzed Chorus “16Fifty Hundred”
These two places don’t have much in common, the theater and the bar, other than the fact that you can often find live music there and they’re a space to congregate with like-minded people. But what they do have in common that goes deeper than the surface is that they provide an environment for the music, something that I find more and more often that your traditional rock club simply does not, simply cannot do. These are entities unto themselves, whether because of their care and maintenance or their lack thereof, whether because of their accidental charm or purposeful ornate splendor, and they make a musical performance more than just some songs played on a stage at a group of people. They give the performances they house character and singularity, and that’s the reason I will always have the best times, standing or sitting, rocking out or taking it all in, and best relationships with live music in these two places.