The Wildbirds 9/20/07

Disappointed by the opening acts of previous shows at The End, I decided to skip the first forty minutes or so of music on September 20 in favor of a much-needed meal at Cafe Coco (apparently I'm much too skinny). As soon as I walked back into the club, I was blown away. A band called Bona crescendoed their final minutes with Explosions in the Sky-intensity. The music was so dramatic, the lead singer started banging his entire forearm on the keyboard. "Go back! Rewind!" I shouted, hoping to hear more the beginning of this act if I could force some sort of time warp. My pleas with the space-time continuum went to little avail, and the audience was too enthralled by the band on stage tearing their instruments to shit to listen to me anyway.

In a few minutes the Wildbirds took the show back to traditional Rock n Roll. Of course I use the word traditional loosely. This is Rock in its original, unadulterated form. With roots in Wisconsin, lead singer Nicholas Stuart explained his music by discussing one of his idols, "I think Bob Dylan was filled with intensity and that's what's missing from a lot of music theses days." These guys are definitely not a punk band, but they played this venue like it was a 1970's CBGBs. The guitar solos alone proved this dixie-steeped garage band could just as easily have held its own performing alongside classic Zep as they could have Jet. The band is touring in support of their new album "Golden Daze"

When Dark Meat took the stage, it was like watching a a tie-dyed Volkswagen pull into ring three of a Barnum & Bailey show. Straight out of the indie music hotspot in Athens, Georgia, the band's ten attending musicians marched out, all with their faces painted, holding saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and piccolos. Membership apparently doubles when they play at home. The dance punk collective still managed to avoid highfalutin ska by layering anthems that sounded like Los Angeles destroying itself in a fire. Singer and band founder Jim McHugh said, "The crux [of our band] is we're all into annihilation. The best musical representation of any human experience is when it goes from being controlled to being eradicated... that's what we aim for." The chaos onstage quickly manifested itself in the crowd; hearing the same four measures played by almost every instrument in "Three Eyes Open" was tremendous. They're album "Universal Indian" is out now on Cloud Recordings.