Qui / Neptune / Black Helicopter
By Tim Bugbee
Monday. Oct 22, 4:49 PM
live at The Middle East Upstairs (Cambridge, MA) Oct. 6th, 2007.

Today's kids just don't know it, but David Yow was the greatest frontman of the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s, right up there with generational titans like Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Iggy Stooge, David Lee Roth, Henry Rollins, etc. Manic, frenzied, sweaty, naked, Yow could be all these things and more. I will never forget the first time I saw Yow: it was on the Goat tour, and immediately when Duane Denison started the spidery guitar lines to "Here Comes Dudley," Yow sidled onto the stage, looking left, right, and then locked eyes with the entire audience. Aside from the first time I saw Butthole Surfers, it was the only time that pure unease, foreboding, and a genuine sense of unpredictability was palpable throughout the entire room. In my mind, latter-era The Jesus Lizard lost the plot, but the other two times I saw the band perform were similarly outstanding.

Fast forward a decade or so, and Yow got restless enough to join in with a couple of young bucks already playing as a unit and give it another go; that's kinda like Michael Jordan randomly joining your YMCA hoop team. I'd heard that, in the meantime, he was making a living as a realtor, and I was curious to see if this new band Qui still had the fire in the belly. The record (Love's Miracle) is pretty strong, but just how would the live show roll out? It didn't take long to find out: the first thing Yow did was take some nail clippers out of his pocket, stroll up to some unsuspecting, hapless soul five feet away from me, and proceed to give him an impromptu haircut. Nice.

As soon as Matt Cronk (sporting a very nice Nadja shirt) started abusing his guitar (and it was refreshing to see an absolute lack of effects: a single Big Muff pedal was the only thing he'd stomp all night) and Paul Christensen (looking like Napoleon Dynamite, shirtless and with a Radio Shack-style headphone/mic set) proceeded to start splintering drum sticks, Yow dialed back the clock and it was a restless, pacing, screaming, launching-into-the crowd performance that's been sorely lacking in my gig-going experiences over the last decade. "Freeze" sounded like a mutant White Stripes romp if Jack White's balls actually dropped, and ended with the classic penguin/ice cream joke. Zappa's "Willie the Pimp" took the primal stomp of The Black Keys but with a kerosene gargle and a long overdue and unfilled thorazine prescription. At one point, Yow asked for a chair, and used it to have a beer and smoke break while Matt and Paul shot dum-dum bullets as notes and tones careened into the crowd. Break over, Yow promptly rendered the chair into splintered kindling, smashing it repeatedly to the stage. At another stage, Yow asked for more drums in the monitor; a woman yelled out for more penis, to which Yow gladly obliged, though there was no “tight and shiny” tonight. As they moved their way through the set, from the bracing fret runs of "Belt," they gradually ran out of songs to play, and ended the night with their surprisingly effective cover of Pink Floyd's "Echoes," with Yow off the stage as Matt took the helm and steered the Qui ship through coral caves. Yow'd eventually be back on stage and strap on a bass to render the two-note bottom end. He looked a bit like a fish riding a bicycle, but was up to the task. Welcome back, David.

Sweetening the lineup to the point of diabetic shock (but in a good way) was the addition of Neptune and Black Helicopter, definitely two of the best local bands playing right now. Neptune are a band who exemplifies the DIY status to an end point most bands can't even begin to visualize. Looking at their stage setup, it appears to be a mating of several midnight forays to a local junk yard, married to a mad scientist/inventor-staffed fabrication assembly line. Hacksaw blades, beaten and welded shapes of metal, welded rods, trash cans, gas masks: it's all been given a very useful second life in the capable and creative hands of Jason, Dan, and Mark. Had they been playing Iraq when Hans Blix was poking around, Mark's crescent headstock-shaped guitar might have been fingered as a weapon of mass destruction. As for their music, it's a muscular, percussion-heavy assault which wouldn't be out of place next to your early Sonic Youth or Swans records, and the kinetic energy and sheer visceral joy they bring to each gig is a sure winner.

Black Helicopter can always be counted on for two things: the guitar-centric sound of the early ‘90s (think Touch and Go, Sub Pop, Am Rep, etc. This is not surprising given the pedigree of Green Magnet School and Kudgel) and bassist Zach Lazar's on-stage banter. When asked about guitarist Jeff Iwanicki's absence that night, he replied that there was a news cycle delay of one to two nights, and that his “touching little kids” problem would soon be public. Despite lacking the second guitar, their sound was reassuringly muscular, and songs like "Casio" and "Creme de la Bouche" rang strong. After all, a song about high school oral sex can never go wrong.
www.neptuneband.com
www.black-helicopter.com

Tim Bugbee

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