Helmet: The Double Door

For reasons I cannot explain, I've never been to the Double Door before. It's a small and charming place. After I got there I sat in the balcony, drank a couple beers and watched the first band.

Bruiser: Bruiser was lots of fun. They had a sort of nasty, edgy, Buzzcocks kind of thing going, and two of the three band members had really long hair. It's always a treat for me to see guys with long hair.

Villain vs. Villain: I made my way to the stage to see this act. You can get really close to the band at the Double Door, and I took full advantage of this feature. I was close enough that I was able to study the way the musicians' arm hairs contrasted with their florid and sweat slickened tattoos. Since I'm pretty sure no one from Villain vs. Villain will ever read this, I will mention that I found the singer's histrionics a little on the comical side.

Intranaut: More LA noise rock which I love so much I think maybe I should move to California. Some of the music was painfully beautiful. Then it was jazzy, then it was convulsively loud. I really enjoyed Intranaut.

Helmet: However you want to categorize Helmet, they sparked my love affair with sludgy, emerging from the swamps, syncopated, enormous machine making its way down Broadway type music. Also the "Meantime" cassette playing  too loud from my little Walkman lit the way through a very bad period in my life. I parked myself in front of a monitor providing an excellent view of Paige Hamilton's fingers on his guitar. After the show I had a very enjoyable conversation with Helmet's new bass player, Dave Case, about what it's like to play the bass in Helmet. A good time was had by yours truly.