"A thousand acre canvas and you couldn't bear to crop it."

I attended The Joggers’ performance at Rothko Saturday night. This is not a review. This is not a music blog. This is not a Joggers T-shirt. I am merely passing this information along. And I want YOU to know it was magnificent.

{ED: Much of my griping throughout this post about the lack of reviews on the internets is pretty much obsolete now. So I've redacted some of it. After I posted wouldn't you know Yeti, Gothamist/Central Village, Catherinespita, etc. all posted reviews. Now hopefully I can at least be the first to declare that The Joggers are sooooooo over.}

They did finally sell out Rothko on a Saturday night when most of the hep world was at Webster Hall. I have no particular beef with the Monkeys; they make charming punk-inspired pop with just enough of an edge to enable grown hetero men to approve without shame. But to compare apples and oranges for just one trifling moment, the Joggers’ fresh compositional ingenuity blows the Monkey’s verse-chorus-verse-chorus retreads out of the water. But that’s ‘just like only my opinion, man’.

Now, I can’t with a straight face accuse the critical world of “criminally sleeping on” the Joggers like they’ve slept on The Evens, Q & Not U and, well, just about every Dischord band. I’m told the Joggers made some 2005 top ten lists. Indeed, Yeti and the great Pitchfork review is how I found out about them in the first place, if memory serves.

All I’m saying is that it was a little surprising to me The Joggers' show was not even listed in the Voice last week.

Not that that stopped the Joggers from melting faces Saturday night. They took the stage, tuned up and, after each member of the band got comically zapped by their ‘hot’ mike stands, bit the head off the bat with “Ziggurat Traffic.” Off to the races. In addition to a great number of songs from “Cape and a Cane”, they played some sweet cuts off “Solid Guild”, the highlight for me being “Back to the Future”. The a cappella part of B2F was sung sans microphones, which was ‘far-fucking-out’, man. (Sort of reminded me of another band that dare not speak its name.)

There was even a lovingly, un-ironically played Yes cover: “Long Distance Runaround”. Not only did it rock exquisitely, but also threw into relief how superb their own compositions are. As much as I appreciated the from-left-field cover, I couldn’t wait for them to get back to dropping their own fresh joints.

There was a tall bespectacled guy who looked A LOT like me who kept shouting “HORSEPILLS” between songs. Finally, before the encore, the band placated him by saying, “We acknowledge your request.” However, their acknowledgment stopped short of honoring said request.

Post-show, I talked with the Darrell (bassist) and Ben (lead singer/guitarist) and they explained that “Night of the Horsepills” is played in a different tuning (Open C) than all the other songs and that it messes with the momentum of the set to have to stop and re-tune. In fact, according to the bassist, they don’t even call it by the track title. It’s just referred to as “Open C Slow”.

Makes sense, I guess. But it is such a perfect little sapphire and would make for one sweet encore. So I beseeched them to revive the lost art of stage banter and pleasure the audience verbally, as it were, while they tuned up. They agreed to take it under advisement. In the meantime, let’s not let up on these guys. If there’s any dead air between songs, I encourage everyone to shout “Open C Slow”! Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Oh, and during “Wicked Light Sleeper” some drunk lunatic exuberant music-lover charged into the acoustic sweet spot where I’d set up shop and started thrashing about as if he was at a Pearl Jam show circa 1992. (See above for retraction & developing contretemps) All while holding a beverage, man! Everyone had to clear out of the way and there was a weird moment where I think we all collectively wondered if he was going to persist with this – and during “Wicked Light”, no less.

He was truly harshing the vibe, so I stepped up and grabbed him by the shoulders. “SIR! YOU MUST CHILL!” I shouted into the void of his dark, inebriated eyes. He immediately shook loose of my grasp but I think something must have clicked in him because he staggered back to wherever he came from. It was kind of funny in hindsight, if only because that guy was actually acting out how pumped I felt on the inside when they ripped into that song. And no, the guy was not me. Although I was guilty of an inordinate amount of fist-pumping and my neck is still sore from the spastic gestures we call ‘dancing’ in the capitol of the Empire State.

And a very honorable mention goes to the second opening band (I missed the first) Georgie James, (featuring John Davis from history's Q & Not U). To paraphrase Lionel Hutz, ‘they're sounding good. They're sounding VERY good.” I’ll be checking them in the area and not just because I loved Q & Not U.

For inquiring minds, my weekend ended on a very creepy note with this horrid bit of news (to me) and a little French film called Cache. The latter gets under your skin not unlike the former. The brilliant acting, cinematography and meditative pacing all result in an atmosphere of quite palpable dread - without a single note of incidental music, which I greatly appreciated. I also loved how it left you walking out with more questions than answers. It took a long walk in the cool night air, lots of pickled mango and a pipin' hot shower to get me to unwind after that one. Apparently, that’s how I get my kicks.

(Pic of half of The Joggers - Ben Whitesides and Dan Wilson - at SXSW '06 by Haaaley.)

Comments

[J]

This should make you happy, then: http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/03/27/opinionist_the_10.php

[Max Power]

Sigh. Now I have to go back and revise the entire tone of this post from "The Joggers RAWK!!!" to "Oh, the Joggers are sooooooooooooooooooooooo over."

[jerry]

max, have you heard the leak of !forward russia!?

-from a fellow joggers fan to another, since they are similar.