It had been a little while since Ethan had been out to a show, and he felt a little awkward being by himself, as always. There was a new band in the area he had been hearing good things about and they were playing the monthly locals only night at the Skeleton Key, his favorite tiny club. He had found a lot of flash-in-the-pan favorites there, even if he didn't make it out as much as he would like anymore.
He had gotten there at doors, even though there wouldn't be much competition for a good spot up front at that kind of show, it was just routine. He staked out a spot just left of center and awkwardly waited while people had conversations around him. He could never quite seem to shake the self consciousness of being by himself at a show when no one was playing, but fortunately as a scruffy dark haired guy around six feet tall in jeans in a band shirt, it was easy enough to at least go unnoticed. Most of the people he would have gone to shows with in the past had been slipping out of touch like happens in your 20s, and with the alternative being to bring someone who would just want to drink or talk over the music, he didn't mind going it alone.
Some time had passed already, and the opener was on their way out. The house lights dimmed and two girls who looked close to Ethan's age stepped up on stage. One was a white girl dressed in tight jeans and a plain black tanktop with hot pink bra straps hanging out of it. She had long, straight blonde hair and enough eyeliner to start her own cosmetics company. She headed behind the drumkit, a simple four-piece setup with just one crash/ride combo cymbal other than the hihats. The other was Asian, wearing a skirt over ripped stockings and a thin buttondown shirt, with a tangle of black hair like she just stepped out of a wind tunnel. She casually grabbed a bass and slung it over her shoulder, stepping up to the microphone and tapping her foot on a couple of pedals.
"Alright, so yeah," the bass player said and started playing a fast but simple riff like it was the rest of the sentence she had started. After a couple bars the drummer came in with a mostly straightforward beat that had enough quirks to catch your attention. From the first song they had a strong 90s alt vibe, but, you know, no guitars.
The bass player sang with a sort of resignation, like she was a little annoyed that it was necessary, but had a good voice, and it worked perfectly for the music. Ethan nodded his head along and cracked a grin at a tricky lick that led into the chorus. This wasn't the band he was here to see, and he didn't even know their name, but he was in love. The second verse switched out the hihat for the floor tom and the bass notes got more sparse, with a lot of space for just the rhythm. The vocals built to a scream as the bass player leaned away from the microphone, her voice still clear over everything, and the bridge was instrumental and thrashy. The final chorus led into a weird, dissonant outro like the whole song was being taken apart by a salvage team, and then it was done.
Ethan was the first one to start clapping, and about ten times more enthusiastically than anyone else. He looked around and realized that while there was a crowd around him at the front of the stage, behind them the room was still nearly empty. It was always a little sad to see a great band playing to just a few people, but also cool to get to be part of a small crowd. It felt special.
"Hey, yeah, thanks," the bass player said while he was still clapping, like she wanted him to stop. "But anyway," she started and this time the drummer finished her sentence with a beat before she came in with a descending riff across all four strings and launched into a chord progression, or at least the suggestion of one with root notes.
Their set went on like this, a few inconsequential words slipped between grungy songs that somehow almost benefited from the absence of a guitarist, like negative space that guides the eye around a painting. It was a locals night, and they were the first band to play, so it didn't go on for long, but they played about a half a dozen songs. It felt like it all went by way too fast to Ethan.
"Cool, thanks," the bass player said during the applause after their last song, the "-nks" with her face already away from the mic as she swung the bass off and they started to break down. Their setup was so minimalist it was over quickly, and Ethan realized he was more excited to watch them pack up than to see the band he had come for. While they both had an extremely detached stage presence, they were careful with their gear. Ethan watched the bass player tenderly wrap her instrument cable, letting it fall to the natural curl of the wire inside. You could always tell the good ones by how they treated their cables.
They cleared out and the next band got set up. It was the one he had come to see, Dog's Birthday. They had a bigger lineup and a lot more gear, so even though it was all already backlined it took a while. With ample time to think, Ethan realized he really should've gotten his phone out and taken, like, one fucking picture of the awesome band he just saw so he could tell people about them. Then he realized they never actually said the name of their band the whole time they were onstage. He laughed and half rolled his eyes, even though he was still kicking himself. They were definitely playing it about five hundred percent too cool, but it worked like a charm on him.
He didn't quite admit even inside his own head that he would've liked to have had a few pictures of them playing because they were super hot and their set turned him the fuck on, though it got more difficult to ignore as he squinted his eyes and shifted his weight to one foot, realizing there was a slight wetness situation that had developed in his pants. During the band's last song the bass player had made eye contact with him from what was only a couple feet away while she was holding a note singing, and the corner of her mouth had risen with the pitch as the melody continued. It had been a jolt he felt in about ten places.
The next band took the stage as he tried to calm himself down and wished he could have gotten a drink of water without giving up his spot. He shook himself just a bit as the singer got up to the microphone. The band was dressed all in black. Super original, guys--but sure, yeah, whatever.
"Hey, how's everybody doing?" he asked. The crowd cheered in what was a pretty good display for a local show. Ethan turned around and saw it had filled in a lot since the end of the last set. They didn't know what they missed. "Good, good. Thanks for coming out. Great to see lots of friends out here tonight. We are Dog's Birthday." A few errant cheers from what sounded like their girlfriends and a couple drunk guys who just liked to hear their own voices. "Thank you, thank you. We have some shirts and download cards there in the back for the EP we recorded last summer. We're actually working on a full length right now we think you'll be very excited about. This song'll be on it--"
"Probably," one of the guitarists said with a smirk.
"Probably," the singer said with playful annoyance. It all felt very rehearsed. "It's called 'Trending Topic.'"
The drummer counted off and they started playing. It was...fine. It sounded like the kinds of songs that got played in soundtracks for TV shows that wanted to sell themselves as edgy. They seemed like a perfectly serviceable band who were really trying to get people to like them, which, hey, yeah, sure, nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't Ethan's deal. The singer definitely came from the "moving around is stage presence" school of frontmanship.
Some of the guitar riffs were solid, but they tended to languish in super predictable chord progressions. The bass was...there. The drumbeats went back and forth between being too plain and being overplayed. Even with that the song had no sense of dynamics, and moved like a duck flying, just pounding its wings until it got where it was headed.
Okay, so they sucked. Ethan was kind of shocked that he had been hearing anything good about them. As their first song ended the crowd seemed to be all about it, so it seemed like maybe just one of those things that Ethan was on the other side of from everyone else, which would hardly be the first time. Halfway through the second song he bailed, shamefully ducking out even though he thought it was a shitty thing to leave during a band's set when you were right in front and they could see you. Fortunately it seemed like they were all really focused on themselves, and not even necessarily paying all that much attention to each other.
In the back of the room were a cluster of merch tables. At local shows here bands usually worked their own tables to connect with potential fans, so he scanned them for girls from the opener, but they weren't there. There wasn't even a space for their band, as Ethan recognized all the other names on shirts and stickers and occasionally even still the ancient historical artifacts of CDs.
He thought about asking the other bands, but going up to someone selling stuff for one band to try and get stuff from someone else felt like kind of a dick move, so, bummed but still psyched he got to see them, he headed out. He knew he wasn't into any of the other bands on the bill and he had more than gotten his money's worth for his cheap ticket from just the first set. He pulled up the browser on his phone as he hit the doors to check the venue site and get the name of the band, when he almost knocked into the drummer on the sidewalk outside.
"Shit," he said as he stopped short but before he realized who she was. "Sorry, I was just--" At this point he did realize, and ran out of words in his brain.
Silence hung for a moment while he blinked a few times and rebooted from his critical failure, and the bass player, who was leaning against the outside wall of the venue by the door, said, "You're not coming out here to smoke, are you?"
"Um, no?" He was pretty sure he sounded ridiculous in record-settingly few words.
"Do you...know what you're coming out here to do?" she asked.
He started to get a hold of himself, barely. "Ah, yeah, I just had to get out of there. That--" Here he realized maybe he shouldn't shit on the band they were sharing a stage with. "Um, in there, it was, I mean--"
"Yeah, we don't like them either," the drummer said, leaning in a bit conspiratorially. Her long hair moved like grain in the wind. "It's cool."
