Saturday Night @ the Rendezvous - Jewel Box Theater

SPOILS + DIMINISHED MEN + WAH WAH EXIT WOUND

10:00 p.m., $6

Spoils

The first time I saw Spoils is when they opened for Kinski and the Pink Mountaintops at the Crocodile Cafe earlier this year. I was positively blown away. The band consists of Milky Burgess, Don McGreevy, and Diamond Vincent. These guys all do double duty in a variety of other freaked out projects: they form the musical core of costumed ritual rockers, Master Musicians of Bukkake. McGreevy is played bass on doom metal/drone forefathers Earth’s newest album and is a member of the Stares — a boy/girl indie rock Seattle band. Jim “Diamond Vincent” Davis plays in splatter punk godfathers, the Accused. Here in Spoils though, it’s all about one thing — big ol’ fun dancing drinking smoking rock & roll. Milky plays and sings guitar — and he does both with a style, passion and sincerity — his voice sounds like a combination between John Fogerty and Prince. He fingerpicks his guitar, but not in a folky John Denver way. More in a “how the fuck is he doing that right now” kind of way. If you like straight up rock & roll to party to, to dance to, to fuck to, to get high to — this is it.

Diminshed Men

“Don’t call it surf rock,” Dave Abramson, Diminshed Men’s drummer told me once. But it’s hard to avoid — technically, Diminished Men do not play surf rock. It’s more or less Spaghetti Western soundtracks realized for a psychedelic guitar band which just happens to use surf rock tones (i.e. heavily reverbed Fender guitars and groovy saxophone solos). Last fall they put out a cassette tape (a fucking cassette tape!) titled American Volume Swells that is pretty groovy. The first time I listened, the walkman’s batteries were dying and it sounded like the most warped insane psychedelic record ever. That was just the motor speeding up — it’s a fantastic listen though. Since they’ve been in the studio with Seattle producer extaordinaire, Randall Dunn (Earth, Sunn O))), Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter, Lesbian), they’ve just been getting better & better.

Wah Wah Exit Wound

Dave Webb (guitarist for Seattle art-metal freaks Girth) and I have known each other for awhile now. A few years back we began meeting up in his tiny U-District apartment and recording songs I’d had lying around. Somehow, that started a musical collaboration that has lasted for awhile and through many projects. We hit the road last summer with our noise rock group, Wolf-Horse/R.I.G.E.L. We’ve cut two complete albums of straight rock songs featuring friends playing everything we couldn’t under the title “Contraband Countryband.” Last fall we started a series of projects to occupy Dave’s time when Girth went on hiatus — veering from the screaming two guitar noise of Crazy Wolf, to the quasi-indie-rock of Cobra Wolf, and the bar band revelry of Beer Sandwich. Along the way we fantasized about a band that could take the epic songwriting pretentions of King Crimson and Yes, combine it with the ambient groove of Sonic Youth and Can, and filter it all through the neo-psychedelia intensity of Comets on Fire. Finally, we can do this in Wah Wah Exit Wound. Joining us are Andy Pease — a 21 year old drumming mad man who toured the nation with drum cores for years — and Bowie McLean — who provides us with a spiritual center, long rocker hair, and sweet bass lines.

Morl to the story? Come on down and check this shit out — you’ll probably be out drinking anyway, some come for a night of sweet local rock!!!

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