“Oh. You’re Being Gay. What a Surprise.” (Towers of London/Rakes/Boy Kill Boy, Bowery Ballroom) [EDIT]

[Image at right from the assaulted woman's blog.]

The audience was going to be a part of this show whether it wanted to be or not.

No, I didn’t see the girl who got hit in the face with the microphone stand.  And no, I didn’t see what the guy did to piss off rhythm guitarist Dirk Tourette – though a cameraman said the guy had been yelling things like “Get guitar lessons!” and giving the band the finger.  And I didn’t see what happened after Dirk jumped into the crowd to go after the guy he’d meant to hit in the first place.

But I think everyone could see it coming.

The Towers of London are every bit as brilliantly stupid as their name implies.  There’s a serious personality crisis at work in the band:  They straddle the wide gaps between punk and heavy metal, between sincerity and shtick, until their too-tight jeans split right down the middle and their bollocks drop out in your face.  The schism is in the formation:  The Tourettes – Dirk and lead singer Donny – are punk crudeness and confrontation; lead guitarist “The Rev” is all showy metal flourish, drummer Snell looks at the world through Ozzy-mascara’d eyes.   The schism is in the wardrobe:  Wifebeaters bearing supposedly self-scrawled slogans, leather jackets... and teased, glammy hair.

It’s in the repertoire:  The band slammed out with rhythmic barkers like “Air Guitar” and “Fuck it Up” but indulged in a pair of ballads.  The Rev cleaned up the punkers, Donny mucked up the metal.

And it’s in the performance, only it’s not Metal v. Punk anymore; it’s Us versus Them.

They challenged the stand-around crowd before playing a single note, and the room stood its ground.  Demands were made, fluids were exchanged.  Violence was implied, employed.  The Bowery Ballroom, during the Towers’ entire set, was a study in dynamic tension.  People were laughing, people were yelling, but it was really tough to tell just who was kidding.  “You suck!” is a time-honored compliment in some circles; some grinned, some nodded.  At one point, a  pocket of vocal FOBs in the balcony chucked several half-filled cups of beer; other cups followed from elsewhere, but it didn’t feel like a show of love.  Donny pointed into the crowd and dedicated a song to “Milky – the abnormally white guy in the middle” – then hawked a big fat loogie in that direction (and missed, wide right).

There were a whole lot of spittakes going on.  Liquid would come from unknown sources – the drum kit sprayed like a vandalized fire pump at one point; a water bottle (I think) exploded when Donny slammed a mic stand down on it (I think).  As The Rev played a solo at the edge of the stage, a fan held up the last quarter of his beer; Rev grabbed the cup with his teeth, sucked the backwash out and released, all without missing a note.  And there were other antics, the broken mic stands, and broken mics, and the climbing – Rev out over the piled instrument cases that almost reached up to the balcony on the left side of the room, Rev and Donny up the tall speakers on either side of the stage (while up there, Tourette crouched and really gnawed his way through “I’m a Rat” – sample lyrics “I’m a rat, I’m a rat, I’m a rat, I’m a rat”).

Musically, the band wasn’t particularly good... and shouldn’t be.  While I have a personal preference towards it, this isn’t due to the you-could-do-this-shit-too punk aesthetic.  Here it was yin and yang, slop vs. well-crafted turd, live vs. Memorex.  If you go to their myspace page you’ll hear a handful songs buffed to anonymity by some polished production team.  Some music just doesn’t work unless it almost falls apart; everybody stops to stare at an accident, nobody cares about your smooth commute.  The Towers’ aren’t a disaster, just a rough ride that’ll give you a sore bum and a bit of a shock when you actually get where you’re supposed to be going.

Especially when you have no idea what the man behind the wheel is thinking.  Donny alternately looked bored and fascinated, strategically scouring the crowd for its weak points.  Prodding, retreating.  Not unlike other quasi bands (The Darkness, Spinal Tap) you wonder how much of the act is an act.  He coughs up an accent thicker than a Ken Loach flick and sings about class (“I’ve got a job, you’ve got a degree” he defensively blurts in “Beaujolais”); it’d be great if it was a put-on.  The Tourettes make a decent comedy team (Donny looks a bit like Dana Carvey, Dirk a little like that embarrassingly unfunny woman, whatser... Molly Shannon, right):  Once, Donny abruptly broke in with, “NYC Sucks... but I hope by the end of the night to change that to ‘NYC Sucks Me Off’”;  Dirk very earnestly took over, “But seriously, this show means a lot to us.”  Well played.

And was that bit at the end a playlet?  There’d been some back-and-forth with someone down front and, after the last song, Dirk kicked the mic stand down in that direction.  He jumped in afterwards, but the “fight” never seemed to happen and the supposed victim was quickly spirited away.  I saw Tourette after the set and he said that no one had gotten hurt.  He couldn’t even remember what it was that made him so angry.  If it was a hoax, it was a perfect one, bringing to a head a show that mined the performer-audience relationship for laughs and energy.  How could it not all come to mock blows?

Afterwards, someone up front said, “They probably won’t be allowed back here.”

They’ll probably need a bigger place once word gets out.

Instead of a Towers’ song, this seems wholly appropriate:

New York Dolls – Frankenstein (mp3) (buy)

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They certainly do script their jokes:  Look at Donny’s shirt in these pictures Brooklyn Vegan took at their CMJ performance.

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[UPDATE: Oh, look.]

[UPDATE 2:  The woman who got hit has a blog: 

Because long, punctuated titles seem to be en vogue.

Lead singer Alan Donohoe dances around like Ian Curtis, if Ian Curtis were made of overcooked pasta.

The Rakes bored me – most of this music does.  They would have had to be something truly special to step out of the Towers’ shadow.  They were not.

Besides:  There was this rotund gentleman nearby who, along with his waist-high girl friend, alternately sang and talked through the whole first part of the set.  Dude, you either love the songs enough to sing with them or hate them enough to talk through (and even then, you do not talk through them).  Before the band went on this guy bragged about seeing Nirvana headline at the Pyramid in the days before Bleach; “They were awful,” he claimed.  I wonder what band he talked about through that show.  In addition to the talking, someone in the immediate vicinity was farting up a storm.  I’m not making any accusations, big guy in the Flash t-shirt, just observations.

I took my cue and left early.

Here’s The Rakes’ myspace.  Enjoy!

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If you ever get caught watching Boy Kill Boy (myspace) – presumably as an opening act, because you wouldn’t pay to see them headline (like, say, at Rothko, tonight) – be sure to keep your focus on the drummer.  As the band tries to decide whether on this song they’d really rather ape The Strokes’ jangle or Muse’s sweep or (insert bland Britpop band here), “Shaz” will roll his eyes back into his head and twist his mouth into a perfect imitation of the “tragedy” mask.  Sometimes he looks like he’s hit a crying jag, sometimes you worry he’s going into some sort of seizure.  This against the backdrop of a “That Girl” hairdo.

It’s quite a fascinating facial presentation, and I understand why someone would feel the urge to give it a soundtrack.  But remember how they took Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and recut it with a blazin’ 80’s rock score?  Expressionist horrors are best left silent.

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Plan B (myspace) is a soft-looking white Brit who raps tough talk – lots of “f*cks” and “c*nts” – while playing acoustic guitar.  A black drummer accompanies him and rolls his eyes a lot.

B says, “I talk morbid/to make you feel awkward.”  Dude, you talk shitty to make me feel pity.

tags: plan b  towers of london  the rakes  boy kill boy  

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