Live By-Proxy, or One of the Worst Ideas Known to Man

I could talk a great deal about the premise of the show I went to tonight. I could talk (or, more accurately, bitch) for days and days and days about it. But, in spite of myself, I'm going to keep this short. This might not be smart, as I am writing a blog here, and the whole purpose is to be descriptive and paint a vivid picture of how you see things, so that some lonely fuck somewhere can live vicariously through your experience and, after deciding whether you're cool or not, emulate it. I think perhaps my brevity is not only to spite myself, but the Hipsters of All Hipsters who thought this little diddy of a show up.

So. My good friend and fellow victim of higher education, Devin Moore (PhD, Edible Bubbles) enlightened me a bit about hipster philosophy today. Not because she's a hipster; because she's a hipster critic, well-versed in hipster studies (not really much to boast about, anyone who crosses the Brooklyn Bridge these days is). She talked to be about what the hipster elite consider to be high brow versus low brow. Apparently, it's a wide belief that art should be "appreciated" and not "experienced." This is high brow. Chances are if you've attended a concert in Brooklyn you have either practiced this or seen it. It's the sea of bobbing blazers, spectacled and hair all mussed about their faces because they just don't care enough (that they care so fucking much). Experiencing music is beneath them. It is plebeian. How dare you dance, how dare you enjoy yourself?!

Are we all so fucking numb nowadays? Music is nothing if not emotional. If you are not moved by music, you're the imbecile (or an emotional cripple). You're "low brow," because you clearly lack the capacity to truly understand what's being laid before you, the pure feeling and energy that makes a great piece of music. Silly rabbits. Hipsterdom is for kids.

And that's all that was on display tonight, at Uniondocs Bodega (bodega. bodega. bodega. you can't get more hipster than the fucking word "bodega." only hipsters say bodega because they think that people who are actually from Brooklyn say bodega. Well, a little information from a person shot out from her mother's womb in a Brooklyn hospital, and raised there her whole life - no one says bodega. In fact, I never heard the damn word until I started going to NYU). Pure hipster antics that did nothing but detract from everything good about a music show - all the feeling, the experiencing.

We watched two bands, People and These Are Powers play on a shitty, black and white projector screen from the room directly below us.

The opener, People, fit this type of scene exactly. All dissonant chords and what I called metamusic (like this little number, whose name I never found out, in which they began a cappella, while singing about how the lyrics to the song sucked a cappella, and informing the audience of when the guitar would start, and would it be distorted? yes! it would be! they went on to talk about time signatures and what have you, and the song predictably ended in a wave of discordant noise, as they said, "let's try 5/16!". or maybe it was 4/16. i don't really care.), they were perfect for tonights uuber hipster conceptual show.

These Are Powers is the band that inspired me to go tonight. After seeing an amazing performance at NYU in December and listening to their unbelievably addictive, dancetrance-inducing songs on their LP (Terrific Seasons), I was itching to see them again. And though I was feeling that all hope was lost for my night by 11:30, their performance made it all worthwhile. Even via a horrendous projector and even worse sound, the set had me dancing on my red floor cushion, and singer Anna Barie's feral, melodic yells over the intoxicatingly repetitive beats was enough to send me climbing up the walls and tearing shit apart. In a good way, of course. By their second song, Little Sisters of Beijing, I wanted nothing more than to start clawing at the unmoving people around me, picking them up by their collars and pushing them around a bit. Maybe then they'd smile.

If I were a more modest sort of person, I would have felt like an ass sitting there, banging my feet and bobbing my head and wiggling my hips in place. Everyone else was still as death, so silent you could hear people pissing in the bathroom between songs. That was the performance's only downfall - a shitty concept and an even shittier audience. I'd definitely recommend seeing These Are Powers, and will definitely be attending another performance of theirs. So long as it's not by-fucking-proxy.