WRITTEN BY RACHEL TAYLOR
Canned music is like audible wallpaper. –Alistair Cooke
Canned music always has a nice, clean, studio quality to it. No distortion. No scrappy notes. No unfamiliar and wild instrumentals. It leaves no listener mumbling through the lines silently thinking, “I have no idea what this guy is saying.” It is, in a word, safe. It can make sense on a business and even social level, but personally I prefer something a little messier. A little more creative. A little more ‘outside the box.’
It all started years ago, crammed shoulder to shoulder, just one element in a grooving sea of bodies at the base of the Gruene Hall stage, watching Matt Martindale back when he fronted for Cooder Graw. He would pull out the washboard and the crowd would draw closer and just seem to lose its collective mind. He would scrape and slap at the board to the near auditory intoxication of anyone within earshot.
Though Cooder Graw is gone, the desire of some artists to offer something different is not.
Just days ago, I found my way to the regular haunt, Floore’s in Helotes, thinking I’d be catching a show I’d seen many times before. It started easily enough with Bob Schneider taking the stage and opening the set. In what I like to refer to as my signature stream of consciousness speech, I caught myself mid-conversation asking, “Do you hear accordion?” Sure enough, standing stage right was an unfamiliar guy wailing on an accordion. His eyes were sharply focused somewhere off behind the crowd, his face serious, and his fingers ferociously pounding that small range of keys.
With a more upbeat song, and squeeze-box still strapped to his chest, one hand soon held a trumpet. Later, the trumpet was replaced by a baritone. Seriously, a baritone. Once in a while, the guy would give over to the crowd’s energy and with the accordion still securely against him, he would march back and forth on the stage like a boxer ready to take the ring. Suddenly, he would drop from sight, disappearing below the heads and shoulders of the crowd over which he stood. I stepped up on my toes once in search of a better view only to have him bolt up from the floor with a bit of a kick, and then he was marching again.
From accordions and baritones to bagpipes…
Another artist who changes from the boring routine is
Last week, my friends called me up wanting to go to a show where the front man is in my mind best known for routinely taking the stage looking bored and uninterested in exchange for a $25 cover charge. True, the well-known guy is dong pretty well by industry standards and his albums have a good sound, but his live performances remind me of the color taupe.
My own humble advice is this: save quite a bit of money and check out someone willing to leave your senses buzzing as opposed to lingering thoughts of neutral colors and bathroom walls.