April 16, 2003

I HAVE THIS friend, Jay, who has been nagging me for about two months to see this three-piece instrumental band called Hello Noisy. He is always telling me to go see bands and I always make sure to go see them, though not necessarily because I honor Jay's long-standing superfan credentials (he saw the Minutemen in '82! the Dead Kennedys before that!); I do it more just to get Jay off my back. When I first met him two years ago, it was Touched by a Janitor and the Quails; recently it's been Hello Noisy. The band have been playing a lot recently, at record stores, art galleries, and other makeshift local punk venues around the Mission District, but the shows are never well publicized, and the band missed one of them a few weeks ago because they were busy protesting the war.

Distressingly, the April 8 performance was already in progress by the time I made it to Bottom of the Hill after a no-thanks-to-Muni 40-minute hike. I thought I'd blown it again. It took about two minutes of watching the band, though, for me to forget about my foul mood and realize Jay was right – for once – and then two more for me to start uttering to myself, in true Jay-esque fashion, hyperenthusiastic phrases like "new favorite band."

Hello Noisy radiate good-time rock 'n' roll energy. They play a type of anthemic, noisy yet melodic instrumental rock that, despite the guitar-bass-drums lineup, has similarities with the new wave of spaz-noise-rock duos such as Hella and Lightning Bolt. They share Lightning Bolt's tendency toward simple, almost nursery rhyme-level major-key melodies, which ultimately become epic because of how they're repeated and stretched out and then driven home by possessed, crazy-limbed drumming and big, fuzz-toned amplification. Hello Noisy also bring to their songs a shade of Hella's slightly prettier, more melancholy melodic sensibility, although without their prog-level complexity. I have no idea whether Hello Noisy have ever listened to or even heard of those other bands. More likely, it's just a case of these bands starting from different places and arriving at the same conclusion. They are all right, just in different ways.

In one way, Hello Noisy are different simply because of their age and the audience they attract – they're younger than either of those other bands. I actually don't know how old they are, but the band members look like they're still in their teens – from behind, their small-framed guitarist looks like he's about 14 – and a good portion of the audience up front had all-ages "x" marks on their hands. Onstage, the drummer, Antonio, seemed to be the leader, not just because he was responsible for the between-song banter or because he was the only band member facing the audience, but also because the drums seemed like a big part of the songwriting process – often like a lead instrument given free rein to wail on top of the more constant guitar and bass parts. And he's a damn good drummer, with an especially quick right foot that makes it sound like he's using two bass-drum pedals – metal style – instead of just one.

Oddly, especially for a Bottom of the Hill gig, the show felt like a cross between sitting in on a teenage band rehearsing in someone's bedroom – they played the whole set facing each other and not the crowd – and walking into a casual get-together that all of the band's old friends were invited to. They invited people onstage until, by the end, there were 10 or 12 misfit Mission punk kids up there either dancing or else just hanging out, one wearing a bunny suit, and many of the others sporting the classic bike-messenger, high-water pants look.

It made me get nostalgic, kind of like that corny Queen song "Don't Stop Me Now" does, the way it's all about having a good time though with this lingering sadness in Freddy Mercury's voice that I guess comes from knowing those good times are always fleeting. Hello Noisy don't sound like Queen, but watching the stage and listening to their optimistic, loving-the-moment yet still melancholy-tinged sounds capture the exact feeling of that song for me. Sentimental old coot that I am, it actually brought a tear to my eye for a second before I realized I was being a wuss and got my act together.