| |
Why Donna the Buffalo Sucks
By
Dustin Wells
Show:
January 27, Slims, 9pm.
I was really excited to see this band because their quarter page ad
mentioned Zydeco and the Village Voice. I couldn’t wait. I thought it
would be like CBGB’s meets Louisiana. The ad also had a Bob Marley shout
out, but I decided to overlook it. I got nothing against Bob Marley, but I
recently had an eye opener when Bob Marley was being playing in a coffee
shop and all these geezers were bopping and swaying while waiting in line
for their six dollar mochas. I got nothing against geezers rocking out,
but from experience I knew these fuckers in the financial district were
not all peace and love and jah -man. These fuckers would cut you down if
given the slightest provocation or a slot in the commuter lane.
Likewise with the Donna Buffalo show. The first band was great, the Po’
Girls, from Canada. I really felt sorry for them because the audience was
a bunch of grey haired senior citizens. It looked like an old folks home
outing. And the audience wouldn’t shut up. It was hard to hear the band
over the geezers shouting about being alive in the sixties in Berkeley.
This should have been a tip off right there: anyone bragging about the
sixties and the whole Haight Asbury scene ain’t got much going on now in
days. Nevertheless, the Po’ Girls were versatile and smart and
poignant in a political way. Usually I shy away from all the political
shit, because, after six years of marching and shouting, Bush is stronger
than ever, and might even run for a third term. But the Po’ Girls made
me mourn for the world’s predicament in a decent, honorable, nice way.
Between the bands is when the trouble started. Immediately after the Po’
Girls, a herd pushed towards the front and kept inquiring if I was part of
the “Herd.” Being Neithcezet well versed, I said no, and they just
scoffed at me and pushed me aside. These, being defined as forty-something
skinny white women with dreadlocks who were suffering from anorexia and
lack of dates. My journey into the Donna the Buffalo fandom was just
beginning. Next came the men with no sideburns whatsoever to speak
of and rectangle glasses. I’ve been to lots of punk shows with asshole
meatheads but never have I experienced so many elbows in my life. Yuppies
were staking out the
front of the stage as if it were Noe Valley itself. I was just standing
there and this tall skinny white lady kept elbowing me with a Jackie Chan
like velocity and saying My Husband is Coming Back! Shit. I never even
tried to encroach on this woman nor her four square yards of acreage
–way too much for her and hubby-- and yet she kept stomping on my foot
and elbowing me, trying to get more territory. I felt like I was getting
evicted.
When the band started, they looked bored. I could see why. There audience
was a bunch of dot.com fucks in Hawaiian shirts with their anorexic wives,
all doing the chicken dance, which if you don’t know is how hippies
ruined bluegrass with interpretive dance. And as soon as the band went on,
all the bald, quirky eye-glassed men’s arms shot up and started
cell-phone video taping and i-pod casting and digital whatever. It
was as if a Hitler youth rally had merged with an Apple convention. The
band looked bored as hell and I felt sorry for them, until half-an-hour
into their set, I couldn’t distinguish a single song from the next or
the last. Why are jam bands monotone? Is it because white folks who make
over sixty grand a year and pot smokers can only find that one up and down
and up and down beat? All I know is that you could go home and play a
continuous g-chord on a synthesizer,
smoke a bowl, and have as much fun. For the real experience, you should be
getting evicted too.
Copyright © 2006 Dustin Wells
|
