Like Murphy’s concert — which you can read about over in the Poppa Post — the Aug. 17, 1998, show featured another mostly forgotten act, Gaunt. The show was at the long-gone Metro Cafe, and it was a disaster waiting to happen. But artistry trumped anger, professionalism beat bitterness, and both acts put on shows that will stay in my memory banks for a long, long time.
How I remember these concerts, however, will be subjected to the gradual erosion of details that happens with all memories.
It was really Monday morning when the Columbus, Ohio, quartet Gaunt took the stage Sunday night at the Metro Cafe. Five minutes after 1, to be exact, a time when most Washingtonians, punk rockers and office drones alike, are fast asleep. The ridiculous start time is why there were 25 people in the Metro Cafe, including both opening bands, the bar’s staff, a few fans and Gaunt itself. (It didn’t help either that Gaunt’s excellent major-label debut, “Bricks and Blackouts,” received no promotion due to mass layoffs in the marketing department at Warner Bros.)The lack of audience could have rendered the gig a non-event, but the members of Gaunt dug in their Converse Chuck Taylored heels and blasted their way through 13 songs of rip-snorting punk rock in a whirlwind 35 minutes. The band kicked in with “Now,” with dressed-in-black singer-guitarist Jerry Wick and rail-thin Charles Manson look-alike guitarist Jovan Karcic leaping into the air like a couple of young Pete Townshends. Wick writes fast, melodic, punchy songs in the tradition of the Saints and Superchunk; live, the tunes sped faster than a drag racer. Wick and Karcic’s twin power chords were thick and powerful, and songs like “Revolution to Spite Your Face” and “Rich Kid” felt like boots to the head. It was a bang-up way to get ready for bed.As the years have gone by, and I’ve racked up more concert experiences than I can recall, I’ve told the story about this Gaunt show dozens of times.
As with the Murphy performance, the Gaunt event felt special, and the legend of the evening grew in my brain. In 2004, when MP3 blogs were still nascent, I was in the thick of posting digital files and writing in a peppy fanzine voice that had mostly been subsumed by my profession. Here’s a Gaunt post I did on my blog, published April 21, 2004:
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Gaunt played Washington, D.C., during the “Bricks and Blackouts” tour at a rotten club called The Metro. Actually, the club space was cool, but the joint was totally mismanaged. They had to wait until 10 p.m. to start shows because of a theater next door, and yet they would still double-book shows — even on weeknights — or cram way too many bands onto one bill. I went to see Gaunt on a Sunday night, and they didn’t go on until 1 a.m. There were seven people in the audience including me, my wife, Bruce, and four guys from the opening acts. If you throw in the bartender and the manager there were 9 people total. The way I figure it, none of us paid (I was reviewing the show). And yet Gaunt jumped up on stage and played about 13 songs in 25 minutes, and they tore up the place. It was a punk-rock ephiphany for me. One of the best damn ROCK shows I’ve ever been to.
In six years, the headcount went from 25 to 9, and the 13 songs were compressed from 35 to 25 minutes. Otherwise, I’m surprised how well I recalled the gig.
Share this articleShareBut one thing hasn’t changed in my withering brain: It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen, in large part because of the circumstances. When a music critic gets enough shows under his ever-increasing belt, they tend to blur together because most bands are stable and competent in performance, most clubs are reliable in their presentation, and most of the audience is polite and unremarkable.
It’s the strange events — coupled with spirited performances — that help lift concert experiences to the top of the ever-growing heap. Off the top of my head, I can recall several favorite concerts, each with a detail or two that helps fire my synapses:
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» The J. Geils Band, circa 1982: someone was actually peeing on the wall outside the bathroom during the song “Piss on the Wall“; also, it was my very first concert.
» Squeeze, circa 1985: the first time I experienced ringing in my ears after a show (and this was just my third gig).
» Circle Jerks, circa 1986: my friend did a stage dive, was caught by the crowd, was thrown back toward the stage, and he landed on the knee of singer Keith Morris, who had to be helped off; he returned, limping, after a 10-minute drum solo. Meanwhile, my friend was lifted by his neck by a bouncer — he looked like Shmoo being wrangled by King Kong Bundy — and tossed out of the club. Later, we saw a live video of the Circle Jerks playing in Cleveland a day or two after, and Morris was wearing a full leg brace.
» Dinosaur Jr., circa 1989: blew out the sound system, Murph broke his drum’s bass pedal, the members wanted to kill one another.
» My Bloody Valentine, circa 1992: nausea from the band’s extreme volume.
» Aphex Twin, circa 1993: because of the insanely loud music and epilepsy-inducing light show (no intoxicants), my equilibrium was so messed up that I had trouble walking from the front of the stage to the back of the club to escape the assault.
» The Verve, circa 1995: a presumably drugged-up and certainly peeved Richard Ashcroft called me out from the stage because of something I wrote; still, the band killed in what should be considered the last days of its best era.
There are numerous recent concerts I remember fondly, too, but I wanted to just riff on the oldest shows that hold special memories, especially because as I get older, my brain tends to empty out the past to make room for the future. (It’s not just musical events that get jostled; I pretty much have to have my brother re-create my entire pre-college experiences for me via his very funny stories about us growing up.)
While Gaunt’s tale always ends favorably in my head, my 2004 blog post reminds me that reality wasn’t so kind … and it never is:
I’m almost positive that “Bricks and Blackouts” tanked — indie numbnutz thought the CD was overproduced and the group didn’t translate to the mainstream — and the band broke up soon after. You can probably find the CD in cutout bins coast to coast. … And just to add to Gaunt’s rotten luck, guitarist-singer-songwriter Jerry Wick was killed in 2001 in a hit-and-run accident.» Click here to download a free two-CD collection of Gaunt songs, courtesy of the band’s memorial MySpace page.
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