Gimmie Indie Rock

OK, Zelmo, I was wrong. with the additional Sebadoh songs, I've got just over 27,000 songs on my box. Now THAT's the sign of someone with no discernment.

Sebadoh played, Zelmo left. He's been a bad boy, and was due for chastisement, apparently.

Opening bands: Bent Moustache from the Netherlands, and You Am I from Austria. Good stuff, but you know what? They don't sing with accents.

Now, the IMS contingent assures me that Sebadoh are "over-hyped indie rock from yesteryear" so it seems that even though this is pretty damn hip for Milwaukee, it strains my credentials as a minor Insufferable Music Snob. So be it.

Because I didn't even really tip to Sebadoh until after this Gaffney left the band for more-or-less good (he was intermittent since basically the inception of the band) and since he was with the band last night, they mainly played the stuff HE was familiar with, which was the stuff that I am unfamiliar with, and the less mainstream of the whole batch.

But their sound is basically the same either way, a lo-fi mix of plaintively-voiced semi ballads punctuated with thrashing noise fests that would do Sonic Youth proud, often within the same song.

Before playing a note, Barlow was bitching about his amp, and I feared and Alex Chilton act (story for a different time). But he explained that he'd just had it fixed, and the repair guy assured him it wouldn't need repair for years, and it was already acting up, so maybe he was justified. After a bit of twiddling, he just moved on and borrowed a head from another band, and moved on to the show. The sound was just clear enough, and started at a comfortable level, but by the end my ears were ringing.

All three members sang, and all three played any of the instruments, so much time was spent rotating seats. Much time was also spent in "Interminable Tuning Breaks". Calculatedly shambolic, like they wanted people to drift out of the club.

And then they would hit a song like it stole their lunch money. No excuses, no mercy, no extravagances. which is kind of their charm. You watch them, and it sounds like they came out of the basement yesterday. Today I was inspired to search out the newly re-released "III", which is a tremendous bargain at 41 tracks for $10.

I could try to tell you the set list, but I didn't know the names of many of the songs. They played a handful from 'bakesale' which I recognized. A trio of encores careened the night to an end with "Gimme Indie Rock" which came across as a sarcastic blast through the noise and shouted vocals. Barlow drank a glass of whiskey and left to look for Indian food.

You know? It was good.