January 1, 2003

S.F . four-piece fuck-shit-up artists NAM played at the Hemlock Tavern Dec. 21 with Comets on Fire. The Hemlock is easily the best place in the city right now because there are almost never more than two bands on the bill. Who needs more than two bands? I sure as hell don't. And I think if there had been a third band, by the time we were finished getting pummeled to death by NAM and then tenderized like a piece of veal by Comets on Fire, everyone in the club would have had blood squirting from their eyes and there would have been a great gnashing of teeth, lamentations, and much renting of garments.

It was just so loud. Loud as hell. Louder than that. Fucking-A LOUD. And the whole time NAM was playing, I was having these visions of them on a massive outdoor stage in the blazing sunlight of some southern California love-in, with stacks and stacks and stacks of amplifiers all pushed to the cone-frying threshold, and there would be a sea of hippies, thousands of hairy, naked people in front of the stage, screaming in pain. That is where NAM belongs, in front of thousands, with a thousand huge amps. They could change the weather, I know it.

The first couple times I saw NAM, they played this free-form rock noise that was all crashing and chaos, nothing to hold onto at all, two guitars splintering off each other, and the rhythm section off on its own, barely decipherable amid the confusion. They used to play behind camouflage netting, dressed in army fatigues, and the music was so loud and haphazard, clanging and ringing all over, the whole scene was like they were trying to make the rock music equivalent of a firefight in the jungle. It really approached that level of chaos.

But the thing about those early shows that really transported you to the shit were these red-and-purple smoke flares they would set off – the ones that G.I.s used in Southeast Asia to mark the landing zone for when the Huey would swoop in and pick everybody up out of a real hot spot, except for that one guy who would get left behind until 20 years later when a ragtag team of outcasts wearing jean jackets and headbands would return to save him and his fellow POWs, showing the uncommon valor that lives and breathes to this day within the breast of every American soldier. The best show I saw during this period was at Galia, and the band went off on this psychedelic tangent that really blew the top off the building when one of the guys from Crack: We Are Rock got onstage with them and started making this air raid-siren noise with his synthesizer. The purple smoke drifted off the stage, and there was this rumbling horror of a song going on, and cutting through it all was this mournful wailing sound. Beauty.

On Saturday, this other band came out and played. It was the same NAM, but the songs were tightened, calibrated for maximum impact. Where once the songs had flailed willy-nilly, they now landed devastating punches. Few bands evolve with such startling results as these, I think. I liked NAM before, but I would lose interest here and there. At this Hemlock show (and at the last few shows they've given, I'm told) this band comes out and is all business – they grab your skull and just rattle it for 30 minutes.