In an excited frenzy from a day off from work and alone time for music news binging, I spent an easy fifteen dollars to see the latest so-hipster-you-could-puke band Best Coast at Georgetown, an exclusive DC event. Being put on by Georgetown Radio, even better. I thought I could befriend the students and get back on air (something I’ve begun to miss deeply.) Tuesday I buy my ticket, Saturday night I attend the show alone. With immense directions on how to get there, I follow the print out signs once I find the building on campus. Only to discover I’m attending a show in a less-lounge-like-lounge in their ‘campus center.’ Lingering for forty minutes or so with no friends in the area, I wait around and make notes to myself about the make shift surroundings. The cinder block wall turned chalk board matched the slung xmas lights, lo-fi meets lo-fi. I checked out their set up and it looked surprisingly efficient. It wasn’t until the music started that I realized I wasn’t in Ithaca anymore.

The first band, a local duo, Long Walks On The Beach, was fun yet incredibly underdeveloped musically and lyrically. The few students who showed up by this point, still early at 9:30, were toe to toe hipsters dancing around in a sea of flannels and leggings to boot. Cults, the second band went through a half hour set up with only 25 minutes of play time. Their dirt lip mustaches and long stringy black hair fell to the wayside when they knew every detail up of set up for their equipment. But when their vocals were drowned out I could feel their frustrations with the student engineers. By their 10:10 start time I realized I was one of six non students out of the 100 that were beginning to fill the room. My lack of alcohol intake, on a STRONGLY noted alcohol-free event (aren’t they all), didn’t help much in dealing with the overall atmosphere. I’m surprised the band wasn’t distracted by all the students screaming conversations over their music. Drunken Georgetown sophomores with no one to make fun of them with proved to be a lot less fun when you’re getting elbowed and shoved out of a place you’ve been holding for yourself. With no record out, where would they go from here? Meanwhile, the crowd was restless and getting worse and worse.

I befriended a shorter-than-thou grad student who at first seemed to be the only other person annoyed at, or noticing, the crowd’s behavior. Even drunk Ithaca hippies were never this rude. I felt myself longing for a complacent crowd at the State Street Theater. The silent crowd at the Sufan show at Castaways, or the old Lost Dog lounge where I saw Beach Fossils. But after being what felt like millions of miles from the comfort of Ithaca shows all I could do was make conversation. Best Coast is a sound-the-same band, I began to tell my nameless friend. Their lo-fi sound is incredibly well produced but their day by day lyrics distracted me from enjoying any further. He began to tell me that lyrics meant nothing to him. If he wanted poetry he would go read (name drop obscurity here.) I rolled my eyes and when he mentioned the last great lyricists (or only great) were the Beatles, I lost interest and laughed at everything else he said, without looking him in the eye.

frontwoman bethany cosentino

Best Coast was drunk. I was happy to see her playing guitar after expecting just another helpless female lead vocalist. I saw that her up and down slide of the same  bar chord helped her sounds stay the same. She was smiley and making friends with the crowd, only two feet above her hipster minions on fold out platforms. After stripping off the outer layer of her own band’s tee shirt, she apologized to those of us who paid to see them. (I learned students only paid $5 after the school subsidized their performance.) She said they’d be returning with Weezer in January. It was then that I decided I no longer needed to stay to hear the same song over and over again, purely empty music. All I could think about was the coming soon to DC Weezer “Memories” tour, back to back nights of full album run-throughs of Pinkerton and The Blue Album.

I went there with a mind to write something substantial about the night. The take over of lo-fi pop, how so many new bands sound the same: Girls, Wavves, Black Lips, the Smith Westerns, Crystal Castles (and the fact that we so easily embrace this.) I want to question why in the height of known technology that the most popular recording styles are on few channels with some reverb on the vocals. Anything but flashy, with thrift store frames and hand me down hats, the drunken crowd that was there just to play along with fame got the better of me. I wanted to ask them why they liked this band, who else they listened to. Is the popular musical simplicity present to balance our complex world? (Ironic that musical recordings are so stingy while release methods and coverage are generous in their efforts.) With environment meaning everything to impressions, I was overexposing my brain and couldn’t shut it off. Clearly I still can’t. Thank god for that-