Gravy Train!!!!
“Dear God: I knew you would eventually punish music geeks my age for the garage-rockabilly-retro faddism we have committed, and I was ready for the lash. Still, don’t you think turning the music underground into one long flashback to the junior-high dance is laying it on a little thick?” On the other side of the Abbey Pub’s bathroom door, the pitiless DJ pitched another 80s pop smash into my fiery pit. He was a very old-school DJ: he seemed to believe “mixing” still means “when one recording ends, put on another and start cheering for it.”
The show started at nine. As I waltzed in at ten-thirty a band of pretties was playing with a wall of feedback that would’ve bored an 18-year-old on acid; the crowd watched with fittingly folded arms. But when the first retro DJ got on, the underground kids started screaming for the worst crap that ever swamped the radio. Whuh? Did Cobain bang all that smack for naught? Thinking this a brief intermission, I hid in the bathroom, just like I did back when this stuff was big in a nonironic way. Since my dad insisted on oldies in the car, bless him, I’ve rarely heard an 80s dance hit without a backup chorus of flushing crappers. If you’re going to have a flashback, you may as well go all the way.
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I had been enjoying Hello Doctor just fine in the sanatorium of my apartment, where plenty of work wanted attention. So why was I here? Morbid curiosity, of course, plus a hypocritical good-sport spirit born solely of my reluctance to admit that “those damn kids” may no longer be a phrase that applies to me. Most important, the album backs up the merch guys’ claim: Gravy Train!!!! ain’t electroclash. They’re punk rock. And the best time to see a punk rock band is when you’re infatuated with their debut platter.
What ain’t broke in music is subjective. But there’s keeping it simple, and then there’s sentimentality. Electroclashers themselves would likely admit, with that so-bad-it’s-good smirk, that their songs–carelessly stitched from scraps of easily remembered material–aren’t much more than an excuse to dress up in the outfits their cool aunts wore to school. It makes sense that films get screened at an electroclash happening, which itself is more like a D & D version of The Breakfast Club than a rock show.
They’re all such pros that their feigned ineptitude is funny as hell. Rap cascades are followed by forced rhymes like “Doesn’t it feel goo-ood / With a lady and a dood?”; the vocals on the karaoke parody are not out of tune but sung in a different key from the accompaniment–such a blatant pisstake on the electroclash ethos that I can’t believe Gravy Train!!!! is welcome at this crowd’s party. “Punks” who are proud of being truly incompetent aren’t getting the joke.
So yep, it was all I’d hoped for and less: the set, begun half an hour before bar time, was too short for thirsty ears. Maybe this was the openers’ fault, but maybe they were allowed to drag on for a reason–Gravy Train!!!! hasn’t got much in the way of a catalog. Lazy bastards or obsessive rewriters and choreographers? Or “leave ’em wanting more”? I’m such a square I can’t decide. After a screamed-for wee encore, party people and rockists alike got kicked to the sidewalk, where to my surprise there was no standing around cawing about what a great show we’d seen. After great punk shows at O’Cayz Corral in Madison, before the venerable hole burned down, I remember standing in the street for a good hour, screaming praises and copping feels. Outside the Abbey the kids just got in their cars or cabs and zoomed away from me: if the party was still going it was going elsewhere.
