March 12 2003

SAD BUT TRUE : a show organizer or music promoter's nightmare can be a jaded, oversaturated music fan's idea of a good time. Maybe I'm just talking about having a nose for news, at best, or a fascination with novelty, at worst – that feeling when I get a whiff of something out of the ordinary. In any case, for every seamlessly smooth, technically adept, and heartfelt concert – Mr. Willie Nelson, you rang? – there are the onstage psychotic episodes, the lashing out at the unseen sound person, the ornery listener who gets up in everyone's grill. My favorite moments at Noise Pop 2003 revolved around those types of instances, the ones that jolted me out of a complacently mulelike stupor, stirred my sleep-deprived senses, and made me forget about the gnawing, free-floating anxiety of the world outside. I'm a rock show rubbernecker, OK? At the very least, I own it.

The queen of onstage spontaneous combustion has got to be Cat Power, a.k.a. Chan Marshall. But unlike other miffed audience members who vow never again to pay hard-earned cash to see her, I get to be on guest lists (yeah, I hate myself too) – and over the years, I've come to see her as a particularly erratic and skittish old pal, even though I've never spoken to the woman, nor do I want to. She's like an unpredictable houseguest who never seems to have an itinerary, an agenda, or a set departure time – she just arrives, strews her junk all over the place, punches all of your buttons, dredges up a lot of murky emotions, and then drifts away.

I still hold out a little hope for the sheer excitement of discovery and the unanointed pleasure of her What Would the Community Think tour, when couples cuddled with one another on the dance floor of Bottom of the Hill around '96, lightly swaying to the music, and she shyly picked her way through her then-tiny songbook. Later, when she started performing in near darkness, stopped completing songs, and would spend good parts of the evening inaudibly talking to audience members, I accepted Marshall for what she was: reliably unreliable. While other fans fumed about her being an overly indulged indie folk diva, I stuck around, latching onto a purity of intention and spirit that seems antithetical to Britney, Christina, or Madonna.

This time, at Bimbo's 365 Club, Marshall was playing with a band for the first time in maybe forever, and though they didn't exactly mesh, it was lovely to hear her songs fleshed out by guitarist Coleman Lewis, bassist-violinist Margaret White, and drummer Will Fratesi. Things fell apart amid "Nude as the News," one of my favorite neohillbilly rewrites of, dare I say, "I'm My Own Grandpa." She seemed to be purposely drifting away from the mic during the chorus, perhaps to get a more echoey, far-away effect, and suddenly ended the song in a burst of "Sucks ass" and "Fuck ass" 's that probably startled the sound folks. As the rest of the band tentatively continued, she disappeared from view and started playing a piano lower than the rest of the stage. From where I was sitting, she was completely invisible, beneath the heads of the crowd, and after the band carefully crept offstage, she began to sing even more eerily, more disembodied, and more bone-chillingly than ever. After climbing back onstage, Marshall whispered an apology to the sound crew and coursed through a brief soul set of oldies by songwriters like Smokey Robinson. She whispered, "Sorry. Sorry," and slipped out.

Her Club Silencio show a few days later for fewer than 100 people at the Hemlock Tavern sounded like more of the same, but without a band. "It's good to be back in the Land of the Dude," she said, according to Bay Guardian editor Lynn Rapoport. How does she continue to do what she wants – when others might feel the pressure to conform to the conventions of performance, theater, folk music, whatever? Simply and crudely put, as she sang with menace on What Would the Community Think's dissonant "Fate of the Human Carbine," she can still "keep the bastards guessing." And the community thinks that's just what it wants.

• • •

Other random Noise Pop impressions:

• Marshall's polar opposite and her reputed ex-boyfriend, Bill Callahan, a.k.a. (smog), delivering a stony-faced yet touching rendering of "Blood Red Bird" at Cafe du Nord.

• Being scrutinized, high school-style, as someone who was clearly not from Danville or Concord by the smooth-faced boys and would-be Avril Lavigne girls at the Tsunami Bomb-Hot Rod Circuit appearance at Bottom of the Hill. No, I'm not on your yearbook committee.

• The two screaming, wasted dudes who treated the Tortoise show at Bimbo's like a Jack Daniels-washed night with a Southern boogie band in a biker bar outside Baton Rouge. You had to love it when they started yelling, half-infatuated with their own voices, "Say yeah, muthafucker! Oh, shit, now I gotta say 'Yeah.' " Or just stating loudly, "That was totally cool yet amazing," and pleading, "Why you gotta be so good?" before the band played encores like "Seneca" and "Benway."

Word from the Streets

Calling Mike Skinner, alias the Streets, Britain's Eminem is going a bit too far. Like ole anti-Em, Skinner's a storyteller, yet in many ways so much more innovative a rapper than that movie star. His method of making the rhythms of his language, in this case Ozzy-like Birmingham-speak, work with garage is ear-opening; in some ways he's doing a stern, more baleful and literary version of the blunt, lo-flow hip-hop that indie rappers like Cex and Gravy Train!!!! are doing here.

His preferred medium, though, is completely different – Skinner, 24, sees himself as a maker of records rather than an act that comes alive, live, like the Train. Talking from his current home in London, he's dry and flat as a plank, as unadorned and bullshit-free as his much-hyped album, Original Pirate Tapes, hints at.

"I don't really regard myself as a good live performer – that's not what I rehearse, so I kind of come from that point of view," he says. "People go to see me because they like the record, and I try to entertain them by making it funny, but I'm not skillful. I know I'm quite a confident person, but all I'm saying is that's not my art. My art is actually making my records – all I'm doing is presenting the record."

When he returns to Bimbo's Fri/14, he hopes he can spend more time seeing the city – his stop last fall consisted of crashing in bed after a flight from Australia, waking up, going to the club to perform, and then getting on a plane to Los Angeles. The reaction he gets when he does show up, he confesses, is mixed. "I think some people think it's a bit weird. I didn't expect anyone to really get into Original Pirate Tapes. I thought it would be respected in a certain area in England and grow from there. And if anyone asked me, would anyone release it anywhere else, I would have laughed. It's a local thing, really."

Yet the album is currently getting airplay on stations such as Live 105. Skinner believes that has to do with its unique sound. "Yeah, I mean, after it's all said and done, the reason I'm standing out so much now is because I'm totally the opposite of what rap music is," he says. "That's become my strong point; that's what's so powerful now. I spent years and years with all these rap groups, being turned down, because we weren't really – "

American? Or African American? Skinner did want to sound like his hip-hop heroes Redman and Raekwon "because in your heart, you want to be like your idols, make records like the records you're really into," he says. "You can make a bold step to go against that and stand up and talk about things that you experience."

Trouble men

Zeigenbock Kopf's new Tigerbeat6 album, Nocturnal Submissions, should be coming out – barring acts of nature, outraged printers, and disgruntled record-store staff – as this goes to print, yet the controversy surrounding the local group has continued. KimoSciotic Records owner Chris Rolls sent an e-mail out a few weeks ago detailing his troubles getting the I.D.M. (I Dig Men) disc made and then sold, stating that the band "has been subjected to severe censorship since the inception" of the album.

Talking on the phone last week, during a move to West Oakland, where he'll be living with the Coachwhips' Mary Ann McNamara and John Harlow, Rolls says the album was first held up last November by CD-duplication house Discmasters, which had farmed the sleeve to a third-party Midwestern printer. He was told the printer would not complete the job because of homoerotic song titles such as "Hot Cocks on Fire."

After Discmasters found another printer, Rolls says Z.K. casually dropped off a few disks at Open Mind Music a few months ago. "They took them on the spot, blindly, I assume, because it was a local artist," he says. "Then a few days later the artist went into the store and was handed the CDs back by the management of Open Mind Music and was aggressively told they would not carry music that was so offensive to the homosexual community. None of the copies were opened that were handed back. My assumption is that they never actually listened to the music, and that it was a shallow opinion based on artwork and song titles. It was offensive considering after that happened I went into the store and went through titles, and they carry outfits like the Brain Bombs who have songs about rape and what have you."

Open Mind manager Ian Knox has a slightly different story. Someone who works at the store, he says, personally took offense at the band and the discs and decided to hand them back one day. "Banned is not quite the right word," he explains. "We have a used copy in the store, so it's not like we banned the record. There are no hard feelings, as far as I know."

Rolls admits Z.K.'s reputation has preceded them to a degree, especially after their live appearances and the recent queer rock feature by Jimmy Draper in the Bay Guardian (see "Queer Rock Now!," 2/05/03). Since then, Rolls says he's thought about the band and the ideas they provoke. When he accepted the demo, he wasn't fully aware of the Z.K. aesthetic. "I just knew they were faux German, potentially queer characters creating music that was relevant," he explains. "I can see how people would be offended by this particular project, a parody of homosexual culture and playing with stereotypes.

"What's happened though since the release is that it has created a dynamic and sparked a dialogue that the homosexual community is not monolithic in opinion," he continues. "A lot of gay men do come to these shows and do enjoy the music and find it extraordinarily relevant. I have had to deflect mail from members of the gay community about how can I release something that's a slap in the face to young, queer males. My response is, that may be true but I think they should look within the queer community for answers – how can a CD that's so offensive be on the jukebox at the Stud and be very requested by the older leather-daddy community?"