Hey Stormy thanks for asking!! So we went to see a local Houston band called Anchor, the Mammoth. Doors were at 7 but they weren’t set to play until 10; Andy ( @theindoorsisnice) and I got dinner and then got to the venue at like 7:45. Flirted with the ticket girl for a while. She said the first band wasn’t wanting to go on because there weren’t enough people. Eventually we went inside though. The room was nearly empty. That’s fine, I’ve seen really small shows before. No biggie. But like.. oof. Weird vibes. So the band got on stage and it was some sort of almost but not quite metal band? With weird allusions to biblical figures and drug use. They were fine. Had a bloody Frankenstein head on stage?? Whatever. We hung back to the side of the venue because it’s a weird exposed feeling to be in a mostly empty room?? Idk. Second band came on. They were in from Oklahoma which was cool because I thought everyone playing was local. Called Future Tapes, actually were quite good. But I think they beefed with the sound guy because they had such technical difficulties that only like 4 songs were able to be played. They were good though, kinda like Arctic Monkeys/1975 meets indie surf rock. I enjoyed it. But they didn’t have a bassist and that makes me concerned bc typically bands without bassists run into some sort of tragedy (if you look at popular bands etc... my dad says bands without bassists are cursed, and I take that to heart). Band three. This is the doozy. Don’t even know their name. Just two guys, a Mac book, two guitars and a bass. Their sound check kinda just bled into their set?? One guy was in a Marilyn Manson shirt so already I was like 😬 but whatever. Have you seen Friends? Do you know that episode where Ross ‘discovers his sound’? If not, pull it up on YouTube. That’s what I was thinking as the set began. As it progressed, they added in out of tune guitar chord smashing. I think the Marilyn Manson dude was reading lyrics from the laptop at one point. Maybe a song in, the other dude (who had backed himself into the corner of the stage to play, also kept yelling at the crowd, which was quickly leaving for the bar in the other room, from maybe 25 people to about 10) threw himself on the ground and held his guitar over his head until the other guy came over and switched guitars with him. About three minutes later he cut his finger on a string and held it, bleeding, out to the crowd and yelled, “Look at this! This is for all you guys. I love this shit!!!” 😳 the vocals at this point went from heavy breathing in the mic to wailing and kinda Jonathan Davis of Korn-esque. Idk it was so uncomfortable and just really wild because the whole time there was the electric keyboard going on a loop and the Mac was playing some frequency too. Anyway, the fourth band was Anchor, the Mammoth and they were really great. Totally sweet, talented group of good local guys who are really nice to talk to. Yeah that was the show. I also talked to the Future Tapes frontman, he was sweet and cute and very very polite and apologetic about the short set (“technical difficulties”... yeah I’m pretty sure the sound tech was just pissed but ok). We had an old standard for the oddest band (last February, another local band called “Fight Me”) and this band that played third totally blew them out of the water holy shit.
