By Chris DeMento
Saturday night, Oct. 27, and I'm at the Independent to see Two Gallants. Opening acts Songs for Moms and Blitzen Trapper did well to set the stage for odes. Soft white lights blanched soft white faces, making ghosts of East Coast transplants dressed like goons dressed like Double Dare buffoons. Meanwhile young city-bankers in serial-killer costumes put on cats' ears for listening. Still a half week shy of Halloween, and it seemed the lot of us, near and far, came quite prepared to be forgetting who we are.
I love rock 'n' roll when it smashes lullabies, even as it oozes sap. Two Gallants has me stalking my neighbor a day after the show so he can retell to me events I missed because I was sort of given over, maybe half transfixed.
The duo must have been tired when they hit the stage, road weary, but they hid it well, used it even. It's not easy to play with lots of energy after a whirlwind two-and-half weeks across the country, unless it's for a homecoming, which this was, and unless you know how to make it work for you, which they do. I wondered at their transitions - a reggae skeeze, a waltz, then back to indie peristalsis - felt them in my head and in my loins. I don't know their songs so well but I got lost in them for a while at least.
Then we hit the middle, the lull in the set, and my neighbor coaxed me outside for a cigarette (and this was when all those miles caught up to Two Gallants). I countenanced a certain apparition on the sidewalk there, a goon dressed up in blue like Double Dare, and we did Shakespearean Marc Summers and talked about his cousin's friend, his brother's buddy, I can't remember the nature of the connect but somehow he knew somebody who knows Tyson Vogel, the drummer, well enough. Of course, after all the banter, I relayed my sincerest compliments.
And I decided then and there that all the young sire Vogel needs is a super-rock 'n' roll mustache. He seems to have earned the right to wear it, which is more than can be said of what's-her-face the ladyghost, more than can be said of most who thusly brand themselves with handlebars.
Missed their show on Friday night; so here's a toast to those whose rhythmic wailing lets the rest of us pretend so well on Saturdays, creepy adults that we are.
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