Jim James of My Morning Jacket
Performing the set before Wilco was My Morning Jacket, which seemed to impress or blow away almost the entire crowd, Val included, with me being one of the very few exceptions. Yes, the band shows a lot of energy and enthusiasm playing its loud, hard-edged jam rock, but it just did nothing for me. The band came to me pretty well recommended, and I had heard some of My Morning Jacket’s studio music before, but songs such as “One Big Holiday” from “It Still Moves” sounded better in their studio versions than live, not a good sign for a jam style band to me. My Morning Jacket opened with a jangly rock cover of Prince’s “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” which was way too long, and after a while, our friend Kate and I took turns noting what band we thought was being “honored,” including what we thought were tributes to Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, Paul Simon, John Cougar and Pure Prairie League, as well as what I thought was a poor early Joe Jackson effort on a song I thought was called “Off the Record,” which I could not later identify.
Several Buffalo bands also performed to open the musical portion of the event, with the best set turned in by The Last Conservative, which has released a CD on Good Charamel Records (Takac’s label; it was also recorded at Chameleon West Studios, run by Takac and Marc Hunt) and had recently returned from about six weeks on the road.
TJ Zindle and Josh Mullin of The Last Conservative
You couldn’t tell that The Last Conservative had just returned from the road, because the band, led by singer/songwriter/guitarist T.J. Zindle, packed as much power in its set, emo in a good way plus tough, emotional rock with touches of punk at times, as usual. In fact, it is hard to find someone in Buffalo who puts as much into his or her performances and performs as good songs as Zindle and the Last Conservative. He dedicated one song, “The Answer,” to his friend Keith, who committed suicide two years ago, noting, “I wish he had called me that day,” before leading the band through a stinging performance. “Pretty New Things” was sent out to media outlets and people who pay more attention to Brad Pitt than local, national or world events. Zindle asked the people standing near the main stage several times to come over to the side stage to listen; few responded. “Come on, people, don’t make me start to fucking swear more; come over here.” He ended the last song by climbing off the stage and up onto the museum ledge before leaping to the ground below the stage.
Robby Takac and Brian Schulmeister of Amungus
Charamel Records label mate The Juliet Dagger performed, and also had just returned from a month or so on the road, but they seemed to show the effects of the road; the songs and performances weren’t bad, but they seemed tired and lacking some kind of punch; I have heard the band play better. The band is led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Erin Roberts and plays often-chunky power pop/punk, but people new to the almost all-female band may have instead taken from that performance that there is a uniform of black t-shirts/tank tops and denim skirts, except for drummer Josh Heatley. Also performing outside was Alison Pipitone and her band, delivering another fine, tough set of rough, sometimes bluesy rock and roll.
Performing inside the sculpture lounge was Takac and Brian Schulmeister with their techno/ambient/industrial project Amungus, accompanied by dancers. The music, spare at times, fuller at others, worked very well in this setting. This portion of Rockin’ at the Knox ended with a surprise, as Goo Goo Dolls bandmate John Rzeznik strolled through the crowd to say hello to Takac.
One performance outside which made an impression in the wrong way was the Rabies. My lord, it’s 2005, do we really need more third-rate dark goth rock with not so much gothic and less quality? Yep, they had the uniform down, with a lot of black clothing, nail polish, makeup and leather; I would like to have had a good reason not to notice all this, but the music was really bad and unoriginal. Among the scary talk and lyrics were spiders, cutting heads off of little girls and so on, as well as one song called “Formaldehydie,” “Formalde Heidi” or whatever, which I can’t tell for sure is awful or brilliant. I had no such problem with the rest of this crap.