Old theaters have always held a romantic lure to me. And while I enjoy auditoriums that have been well preserved like shimmering early-20th Century gems, I am even more enamored of rooms that are skeletons of their former selves. Rafters laid bare and a long, raked floor where the rows of crushed velvet seats once stood, now only concrete. I picture some Keats-like figure, Jeff Buckley for example, singing a soaring ballad over the heads of a rapt audience, dim lights twinkling in their eyes. As I walked into the recently re-opened Irving Theater on the east side of Indianapolis this past Saturday Dec. 30th, I found myself standing in the exact room I just described. It was the kind of space that I always hope holds some magic power for bringing out remarkable performances from the artists that take that stage. The bill for the evening held immense potential, but I’m surprised and sad to say that very little of it was realized.
On the schedule to play at this all-ages show were the headliners, Margot and The Nuclear So and So’s and supporting acts Mike Bloom of Rilo Kiley, Cameron McGill’s String Quartet, and Chris Taylor, formerly of America Owns The Moon.
Knowing that it was an incipient performance space, I did not expect much as far as production values to be present in the theater. Upon a quick survey there was a very modest PA; however, Jonee Quest was running sound, so that boded well. There were fewer than two dozen lighting instruments, but since Mötley Crüe wasn’t playing, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference. The venue does not hold a liquor license, so youngsters were welcome and those of us of age would have to either drink early at home, or abstain altogether (or so I thought). Sodas were available for $.50, can’t beat that.
Taylor was the first to perform and after several minutes of rather unremarkable tunes, he began a song only to abruptly stop. He informed the audience that he, “Was going to have to go backstage,” that he, “was unprepared.” While I hated to see an artist who has been a great performer as the member of another group flame-out onstage, as one gentleman put it, “Sometimes people come to watch the crashes.” The promise of wreckage was never fulfilled though. Inexplicably, Mr. Taylor did not leave the stage, but attempted to soldier on through his set, thus sinking any chance of anything interesting happening during his allotted time. This night, only in failure would his performance have been noteworthy, and I guess he wasn’t willing to do that. I needed some air.
I returned for the last 15 minutes of Cameron McGill’s set. He’s a sturdy singer-songwriter who plays in Indianapolis quite frequently. Always a reliable opening act, McGill is an artist who I wouldn’t necessarily remember to go see as a headliner, but I am always pleased when I see he is on the supporting bill for a show that I’m attending. He’s never a spotlight stealer, for better or worse, but is able to whet the viewer’s appetite and leaves an audience intrigued enough to never be bored while waiting for the main attraction.
Mike Bloom took the stage carrying a guitar bearing the play-on-Guthrie inscription, “This Machine Kills Hipsters.” I chuckled and was relieved that in a sea of tapered jeans and scarves (Bloom included) a sense of humor was not absent. Bloom’s guitar riffs were fun and enthusiastic but his vocals lacked a punch necessary to carry off the solo performance. Whether it was insufficient clarity, volume, or just a muddy mix, I lost most of what he was singing about and quickly let my attention wander. Man it was drafty in that old place. And standing on a 22° angle floor can really eat up your calves after awhile. Bloom’s exceptional guitar work would, every now and again, pull me back, but sadly I still couldn’t hear what the dude was saying.
Then along came Margot. After a year banging it out on the road, those crazy So and So’s were back in the hometown to close out the year. A New Year’s gift to the kiddies who don’t get many all-ages shows like this and somewhat of a favor to a musical venue trying to make a go of it. With Richard Edwards, I had my Keats figure, and Emily Watkins, a sort of Fanny Brawne. Maybe a night of mystery and romance was still possible. Obscure poetic references aside, these two came onto the stage and performed “Light On A Hill” and sounded as mournfully beautiful as living souls can sound. Unlike the previous vocalists of the evening, Edwards’ diction was spot on (but only when he was singing) and the vocals sounded crisp and loud out of the same small PA that was there earlier in the night. The full band took the stage and began what was to be a serviceable set. It sounded above-average, buoyed by the material, but it was not the raw-edged, exposed nerve kind of set that they have played at The Patio and The Vogue. I couldn’t fault them for falling in line with the slower, more somber mood of the evening, it was thematically appropriate. Trouble was somebody forgot to tell their second percussionist, Casey Tennis. At other Margot shows, his court jester hijinx are less grating when the rest of the band is really rocking the wheels off. But during this more subdued performance he was positively unbearable. A kinesthetic air-horn seemed to go off whenever he did so much as tap a tambourine, flailing limbs and totally upstaging the other players and vocalists. Remember the 1998 Grammy Awards? It seems Casey has been interning at the Midwestern School for Soy Bombs. Ever seen a coked-up seagull breakdance to folk songs? 400 people at The Irving just did. Perhaps everyone else in the band was exhausted enough from the holidays that his hammy mania was okay by them for this one night. “Let the joker deflect the spotlight tonight while we just stay in our lanes.” But pull this kinda interpretive dance/percussion upstagery at the Double Door and nobody is going to remember anything about your music except for the goofy-looking bass drum-humper who apparently figures he’s the reason we all bought tickets.
Towards the end of the set, the band played several promising new songs. One in particular found Edwards sounding (in a good way) like a less pompous and more pissed-off Bono, but don’t tell him that. The overall vigor of the performance increased, but was once again undermined by two further annoyances. Apparently concerned that the audience was “not getting into it”, whoever was running the lights decided that blasting the house with super-wattage Par Cans every twelve seconds for a very Crüe video-esque crowd wash was the way to boost our involvement. My personal experience was that I didn’t like having my retinas seared that frequently and so I had to lower my eyes and look at the fucking floor every 11.75 seconds in order to avoid a career change to broom salesman. Not the way to get people throwing the proverbial ‘bows. Did the band really need to gaze out upon their scarf-rock acolytes that much? Vince Neil didn’t need to see the audience that often and he had boobies flashed at him on the regular.
As a final insult to the all-ages crowd who shelled out their cash to hang around in a very dark barn, there began to appear during the Margot set, various individuals backstage who started pulling back the curtains to watch the set. These gawkers were directly behind and over the heads of the band members onstage. Now, this was by no means distracting if you had already been fully blinded by the lighting engineer, but for those of us who still retained some vestige of eyesight it really STOLE FOCUS. It was as if the group onstage had been transformed into the upperclassmen rock band playing at the talent show and their too-cool-for-school pals were in the wings making fart noises and smoking Parliaments. Margot and the Nuclear Zack Attack. I’m glad you know the band, but perhaps people who are involved in the music biz and friends with the band should have some idea about things that detract from a live show and refrain from doing them. Or maybe they should just get the fuck back in the audience. Include the fact that these hangers-on were drinking openly in a venue that did not have a liquor license and it wound up making the affair look really quite bush league. If I were the owner who is hanging my future income on the possibility of getting a booze permit, I’m kicking these walking excise violations out asap. And at least have the decency not to rub it in the face of the under-agers present that, even at a venue they can enter, they still can’t enjoy a frosty beverage like the big kids can. And all we legal drinkers would’ve gladly brought our own spirits if we had known in advance that everyone would be sticking their dicks in the mashed potatoes. I guess Mike Bloom’s guitar missed a few of its targets.
Any of the romance I had hoped to experience in this venerable old building was squashed by the end of the evening. Even with decent-to-good performances by the artists, I was left cold and annoyed, almost wishing that The Irving was still a porno house and not taking a stab at live music. While there would certainly not have been any romance if that were the case, at least the evening would have had a happy ending.
