Crooked Fingers at Little Brothers

I saw Crooked Fingers play Little Brothers twice.

The first time was forgettable.

Eric Bachman played alone, opening for Superchunk. His dirge of a voice was barely audible over the talkative crowd.

What made his set even more forgettable was the fact that an unknown ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead also played on the bill. It was Trail of Dead's first gig with Superchunk since joining Merge. The lead singer at some point leaped into the crowd and screamed into the face of the biggest guy in the crowd.

(That happened to me once at Stache's when the front man for Six Finger Satellite screamed into my face while opening for Brainiac. I was not the biggest guy in the venue. But I digress.)

Superchunk played well.

Then, I saw Crooked Fingers in a nearly-empty Little Brothers on a cold, winter evening.

Crooked Fingers, now a three-piece, played their first three songs on the floor with no amplification. The third song was announced as a Prince song. Someone gave a sarcastic cheer.

Bachman gruffly replied, "Seriously, it's a good song." Silence.

They played "When U Were Mine". It was maybe the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.

The rest of the set was fine. My friend Brad yelled for a few Archers of Loaf songs to no avail.

The Best Show I Ever Saw

I remember seeing Pavement at the Agora Theater in Cleveland with the Dirty Three and Come. While I was hanging out in the lobby before the show, some kid asked me about my t-shirt. I was wearing my blue Archers of Loaf shirt that featured the same picture of a hockey player as their Vs. the Greatest of All Time EP. The kid couldn't get into the show since he wasn't yet eighteen.

I saw Archers of Loaf show was in Columbus, OH at a venue called Stache's. Stache's is no longer in the same location. Within a couple of years, the dark, dingy rock dive would be torn down in favor of a shopping center that would feature a Gumby's Pizza, a tanning salon, and an H&R Block storefront. This was same venue that Sonic Youth played in for the first time with drummer Steve Shelley. The place was a historical landmark of college rock and the indie scene.

It was my sophomore year in college and I was still learning about indie rock. Despite living in Columbus for almost two years, I had yet to attend a show at Stache's. Of course, they were constantly going back and forth between allowing those under eighteen through their doors. In fact, my girlfriend at that time hadn't yet turned twenty. We weren't even sure she'd get in, but it was announced that those under eighteen would be allowed in for an additional surcharge. Nineteen was fine.

Archers of Loaf were unknown to me just a couple of months earlier. I had only learned of them through a random track on the My So-called Life soundtrack that my brother and sister gave me the year before as a joke for my birthday. The song "South Carolina" was constantly played in my dorm room. It wasn't until about a year later that I had heard anyone even mention the band Archers of Loaf. This guy Brad was letting me in on the latest in upcoming shows. I was intrigued as soon as he mentioned Loaf playing Stache's.

The local free paper, The Other Paper, was pushing the Loaf show in the week leading up to the gig. The first local band I followed was the band Earwig. They were opening along with this band called Helium. Helium was getting a lot of attention since signing to the indie-rock label du jour Matador and featuring a member of math rock auteurs Polvo. It was going to be the indie rock happening of the spring.

Being the uncool hipster wannabe that I was, I wore my bright orange Weezer t-shirt and high school ball cap. It was the spring of 1995. My indie rock obsession was about to begin.

Earwig put on one of their more memorable shows that night. It's as if they knew that this was the show that could propel them to greater things...it ultimately wouldn't, but it felt like it could. They rocked through their set and finished with their typical closer, "Wounded Knee". This was one of those three part songs that was made to be a finale. It opened with a sparse guitar riff with plenty of space before rocking with an urgency that riled the crowd into a frenzy. The song finished off in similar fashion to the opening chords before breaking down into a punk rock deconstruction. My heart was pumping. Those around me had these wide-eyed looks of amazement on their faces. This was only the first band.

Our friend (another guy named) Brad who now plays for The Sun was raving about the next band Helium. He was a Loaf fan but was really looking forward to Helium's set. The buzz in the club was definitely about Helium.

Helium was fronted by Mary Timony who has had a solid career of her own over the last decade. The band's video which showed Timony dragging a hoe through a field had been displayed on Beavis and Butthead. The "animated" adolescent twosome of course made some comment about a "ho" as the video played.

My girlfriend bumped into Timony in the restroom. She warned my girlfriend that the stalls were a little scary. Timony later autographed a Helium t-shirt for her while Archers of Loaf played their set.

Helium's set wasn't all that energetic, but it rocked anyway. I still remember the old toy keyboard that Timony duct-taped popsicle sticks to in order to hold a note through one of their songs. I could barely make out her voice, but the band played a loud, raucous art rock. The set was able to live up to the buzz.

Archers of Loaf was up next. I had been anticipating this show for the past month when (the first) Brad had first mentioned it. He had loaned me their two full-length discs which I promptly copied. Icky Mettle and Vee Vee are still two of my favorite records to this day.

I had a spot right in front of the stage, leaning on the monitors. I was so close that bassist Matt Gentling nearly hit me several times over the bridge of my nose with the end of his instrument when he wasn't yelling a drunken "thanks" into the mic after every song. Eric Bachman, an imposing presence with his 6'5"+ frame and throaty growl yelled into the mic 24 inches to my left. Dana Carvey look-alike Eric Johnson was maybe five feet away, shredding the hell out of his guitar and distortion pedals. Mark Price was the most ordinary-looking of a band of ordinary-looking guys, but he could beat the skins into oblivion.

Archers of Loaf played a set that included their hits "Web in Front", "Harnessed in Slums", and "Wrong". During the set, Loaf played "You and Me" which led right into "Might" with a bang of the drums exactly like they had on Icky Mettle. I could see at least two other guys in the audience mouth "just like on the record" as I was thinking the same thing. They played "Audio Whore" and shook the ground beneath my feet as everyone screamed along. The band virtually played every song from their young catalog sans "South Carolina".

I saw Archers of Loaf play three more times after that and have seen Eric Bachman several times as his next incarnation, Crooked Fingers. Never did the band sound as good or rock as hard as they did that night. That show changed the way I looked at live music. There was an entire community of people who lived passionately for these regular guys playing guitars in crap dive bars. I think that I have been searching for a show like that Archers of Loaf gig for the past thirteen years. I want that high again.

So, when the kid at the Pavement show asked what he missed, I didn't have the heart to tell him what that show meant to me. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was the greatest, most human experience of my life. So, I said it was "alright."

Beating Them with a Yardstick

I saw Archers of Loaf a couple of times at Stache's in Columbus. The second time was a letdown.

My friend's band, Monster Zero, opened the show. These jerks in front of me kept screaming for MZ to play a cool cover. MZ had played "Gold Star for Robot Boy" once while opening for Mercury Rev and Hum, but chose not to play any covers on this night.

The second band, Tuscadero, was an all-grrrl group from DC on Teen Beat. They were peppy, punky, and fresh. However, the band soon became very agitated with the same group of jerks up front. This time, instead of hollering for "cool covers", these mooks were smoking up a storm and blowing it right at the band. Normally, this is not a big deal, except for the fact that the band asked the audience before their set to hold off on smoking until they were done. The band even stopped at one point until the cigarettes were put out.

Finally, Archers of Loaf hopped on stage. I figured that there was no way that this crew of jackasses could ruin their set. I was wrong.

Loaf started off with a band, rocking through their first few songs. The crowd was rocking. I found myself in almost the same post I held a year before, right in front, just behind front man Eric Bachman's monitor.

Then it began.

The same guys who heckled my friend and blew smoke at Tuscadero were actually moshing. Sure, moshing was a regular feature of rock shows in the 1990's, but this was 1996 and it was a small, indie rock show. It wasn't the Warped Tour and that wasn't Rancid on stage.

The pushing and shoving got so bad that Bachman started cutting off songs to yell at the audience to quit. They didn't quit and the band became more and more agitated. Finally, they walked off with Bachman saying, "That's it. We're done." There was no encore.

I saw Archers of Loaf again about a year later in Cleveland at the Euclid. I was able to talk to Loaf bassist Matt Gentling about the Stache's show. He replied, "Yeah, that was bad. We needed yardsticks to beat them down."

Since that Loaf show at Stache's, I have bumped into the heckling-smoking-moshing idiots' leader at several shows. He's obnoxious. He's that guy who yells for the same song throughout a band's set and never stops. (Wait, I've done that.) The worst was the time his band opened for Guided by Voices.

Ben Folds Noticed My T-Shirt

I took my sister to see Ben Folds Five at Bogart's in Cincinnati. We ate at the Mediteranean restaurant a few doors down. Ben Folds and a friend walked in to eat just on the other side of the restaurant. My sister was frozen with anxiety.

I decided to go to the restroom to get a better look. As I walked past, Ben said to his dinner-mate, "Hey, that guy is wearing an Archers of Loaf t-shirt." And I was.

This Guy, Lee Ranaldo, and Archers of Loaf

The night after the lady licked my ear clean at the Guided By Voices show in Dayton, I decided to brave yet another GBV show, only this time in Columbus.

I was driving with my friend John and a couple of his buddies.

One of John's friends - let's call him "Steve" since I don't remember his real name - heard me mention Archers of Loaf and had a story to tell.

Steve went to school somewhere in North Carolina. He drove over to Chapel Hill one night to catch Archers of Loaf in their hometown. As an added bonus, Steve met Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth outside of the venue.

Steve and Lee struck up a somewhat friendly conversation. Then, Lee wanted to go in before Archers of Loaf began their set, so he went around to the back entrance, as rock stars tend to do, and said he'd meet Steve inside.

Steve started to walk up to the front entrance when he noticed two concert-goers being turned away because they were not 21. Steve, who was 20 at the time, didn't know what to do. He really wanted to see Archers of Loaf and wanted to continue his conversation with Lee, but now he was unable to enter the venue.

A few minutes later, Ranaldo comes out looking for Steve. Steve tells him the situation. Lee offers Steve his ID and says he'll meet him inside.

Steve promptly walked up to the doorman and handed him his ticket and Lee's ID. The doorman looked skeptically at the ID, at Steve, and then back at the ID. He asked Steve what year he was born.

Who really knows how old Lee Ranaldo is? Steve apparently did not. He guessed something like 1962 (Lee was born in 1956) and was turned away as the doorman kept Lee's ID.

Steve eventually got in the back door with Lee's help, but the only thing he could remember from that Archers of Loaf show was his encounter with Lee Ranaldo.