more stuff where I compare stuff to other stuff and stuff

Date: 8/23/07
Location: Push
Bands: Rubbed Raw, Juiceboxxx, Horse Spirit Penetrates
DJs: OCDJ, Rand Sevilla
Video: Jimmy Joe Roche
Cost: Advertised as $5, but $8 requested at the door
Drinks: $1 Old Style or BYO
Things I missed to be there: Cophandz and Menowah at Liar's Club; Lord of the Yum Yum at Darkroom; 20Khz at Quennect Four
Reason for going: Half of the city was flooded and powerless. Where else would I want to be but a dance party?



A good reference point to start with would be Wonder Showzen. It's not a great starting point, of course, because it's not so big that it doesn't need reference points of its own. In fact, if you don't live in a dorm, or at least a place with a bong readily available, you probably don't know what Wonder Showzen is. Wonder Showzen is a fake kid's show that airs sporadically on Mtv2. Think of the gross-out cartoons that air on Comedy Central, or some of the post-Aqua Teen Hunger Force shows on Adult Swim. Wonder Showzen is like that, but grosser, smarter, more offensive, far more surreal, and oddly, fairly anti-corporate in a way that doesn't feel like lip service. Wonder Showzen is a cartoon-and-puppet show that aims to fuck with its audience, like Andy Kaufman animating some old Zap Comix, but angry.

It takes a lot to get under people's skin these days, at least the people who're watching Mtv2 at 1 in the morning. Show me grotesque cartoon characters eating shit out of their own ass or puppets performing sex change operations or using real children to tell pedophile jokes, and I'm fine. After a certain point, the racial stuff gets to me, and for some reason, a cartoon about homeless Vietnam Vets really got under my skin but I guess those are some of my hang ups.

It's not just the content of the show that makes it hard to watch, but sometimes it's that they literally make the show difficult to sit through. One episode played forward for fifteen minutes and then backwards for another fifteen. Cartoons and sketches are often separated by a quick blast, a barrage of jarring sounds and images, a woman screaming, Satan, napalm victims, the sound of a chainsaw, time-lapsed photography of molding fruit. These little vignettes, if you expanded them to five, ten, fifteen minutes long, that's what the films of Baltimore's Jimmy Joe Roche are like.

The first film had it all: a nude, masked chick with a knife performing a castration in the woods, a raw meat helmut, "Magic: The Gathering" cards shaped into a Swastika, mysterious cowboys, and more.

The video at the top of this page, was also done by him. If you haven't clicked on it yet, it's an ad for the tour that this show was a part of. If you haven't been paying attention, youtube concert adverts are the new animated .gifs, just like Daisy Dukes and lofts with electrical tape body outlines are to 2007, what 1930s swimwear and basements full of stencil graffiti were to 2006. All of the above was present at the show last night, which was pretty spectacular for a new-ish space, in a hard to get to part of town, on a night where the sky was out for destruction. The people who were there though, were there for business.

On any other night, Horse Spirit Penetrates might have been met with indifference. They were a good band, but they sounded like a two-piece Fantomas on a night when the rest of the bands were doing hiphop and the DJs were doing juke. Still, there was bumping, grinding, and a general spazzing out for them on the dance floor.

Rubbed Raw were next, a horny duo of DJ Dog Dick and Big Daddy Nugg, who played their own slooooooooooooooooooooooooooowed down blends of g-funk, b-club, and crunk. A lot of growling, a lot of sweating. If Big Daddy Nugg didn't get laid yesterday, it wasn't because he didn't put himself out there.

I can't even imagine Juiceboxxx getting laid, but that's part of his charm. He's underage. He's cute. He's from Wisconsin. He's rapping.

Juiceboxxx has an awesome presence, if he plays it right, he could be an arena rapper, like a one-man Naughty By Nature. The only thing is, he needs to go the Dan Deacon route and the hell away from legitimate venues to get there. If he keeps playing parties and spaces, where he can command the crowd and do whatever he needs to. Last night he was tearing around the room in a swivel chair, jumping up and down in a trash can full of empty beer bottles and climbing on motherfuckers backs to rap. When the long mic chord started shorting out and he had to switch to a short one, he was able to get the whole crowd to choke up around him. The second he gets on a stage and separates himself from the audience, he becomes MC Chris, a novelty act, at least until he starts writing hits.

Of course that's just my theory, based on what I've seen and what my friends have told me, and it's about to be put to the test. For the next month, Juiceboxxx is going on tour with Brazil's Bonde Do Role, whose debut full length, "With Lazers" is the sleeper party hit of the year. Anyone going to those shows is going to expect to party, and when they hit the Empty Bottle on the 29th of September, I'll be there, and I'll be more than happy to be proven wrong.