WIRETAP LAUNCH PARTY
Featuring:
PIDGEON
LITTLE TEETH
El Rio
August 29, 2007

We finally had our launch party for WireTap Music! It’s now official, we’re a for real website.

The party at El Rio was the perfect event to celebrate the launch of the Bay Area’s new online music resource: Gioia was spinning the groovy beats in the bar and the vibe was chill in the crowded backyard. But the real action, the reason we were all there and the reason WireTap exists in the first place, was the live music.

Little Teeth’s punk as fuck experimental indie folk rock was the perfect way to get the party started for reals. When Dannie Murrie starts yowling and shouting and stomping her feet to sound the percussion she wears around her ankles, you can’t help but pay rapt attention, wondering how they manage to make it all work. This is truly what you’d call a magical live band. Each member plays more than one – hell, more than four or five – instruments, which, combined with the urgency and fervor of their strumming and singing, gives their live show a nearly chaotic feel. But no matter how much the music seems to be on the edge of completely and totally freaking the fuck out, it’s always magnificently enthralling, just the way live music should be.

“Heaven awaits all the boys and girls who make good grades,” Murrie sang. If there is a heaven, there’s surely a special place there awaiting a band that plays violin, drums, cello, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, melodica, mandolin, keys, tambourine, and a big ass pot all in one show. So many instruments, and Little Teeth still had time to put together a lite brite Little Teeth sign that they embedded in their headless bass drum. Awesome.

The band ended their set with a two-guitar dominated tune that was epic enough for an arena, showing even more depth to the band’s already considerable musicianship and setting the stage perfectly for Pidgeon.

Pidgeon’s set was one glorious cluster-fuck of indie/hardcore/thrash rock and feedback (being a glorious cluster-fuck, with an emphasis on the glorious, was most definitely what these two bands have in common). The one readily-discernible structuring principle of Pidgeon’s music is the frequent use of the loud/quiet dynamic, which keeps the crowd on their toes any time Pidgeon graces the stage. The quieter parts of Pidgeon’s music are often angular slices of haunting indie rock, and the loud parts are as hard and nasty as any crusty hardcore or thrash metal band ever thought of being. The crowd in front of the stage couldn’t help but dance; it almost seemed like a mosh pit was about to break out, even though you know Pidgeon’s crowd is surely too enlightened to indulge in such vulgar behavior.

Contrast is Pidgeon’s greatest weapon. The two lead vocalists are Micah, who does most of the screaming, and Val, who mostly sings in a sweet voice that belies the aural onslaught you can always feel lurking somewhere in the near-future. This is what keeps you on edge and engaged through every note of the show: not knowing where the next blow will come from, but feeling it in your bones all the same.

The end of Pidgeon’s set highlighted everything great about this band: after all of the band members twiddled knobs and let their instruments feed back until a soaring wall of noise had been erected, everyone but Val and Micah left the stage. The two then proceeded to play a quiet, beautiful little number all by themselves, which still contained some of the tension of the rest of the material but never boiled over into the massive sounds the rest of their songs typically aim for.

The bands were so incredible that it was all too easy to forget that we were there for a great cause. Not only did the evening commemorate the launch of WireTap and give many lucky Bay Area music fans the chance to see two awesome bands, but hundreds of dollars were raised for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

This was but the first in what will be an ongoing series of concerts WireTap Music will be promoting. Check back on the site every month to find out where it’s going down, who’s playing, and what great non-profit organization we’re benefiting.

Until then…Listen locally!

[Mike G.]

[STREAM] Pidgeon: Various Tracks

[STREAM] Little Teeth: Various Tracks

Photos by Mark Trammell.