Best Show to See After You Just Played an 8-Hour Show qith a Shamanic Korean Performance Artist
January 18, 2014
Surplus 1980 and Vacuum Tree Head
The Night Light, Oakland
It’s true. I hired (at that moment not evil, just expensive and incredibly utilitarian) Uber SUV to bring me, my electronics, a classroom phonograph, my cymbals, several flowerpots, all my mallets, a craptastic student violin bow, an accordion, a flea-market electric guitar, an amp, an ample hand truck and, I think, a 6×9 area rug from a transcendent, durational performance at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to the Night Light where I loaded it all in to another car in broad nightlight in front of the Night Light, climbed the stairs and heard the dulcet tones of these two god damn bands in the warm embrace of a hundred god damn friends, many of whom I had not seen since the last Vacuum Tree Head show which I want to say was in the former E.G.Y.P.T. Theater on Foothill Boulevard (or the first Oakland Metro within spitting distance, or the last Heinz Afterworld edition at Merchants within… hurling distance) one hundred million years ago. More than a night of nostalgia, math and fellowship, it was a moment where an eclectic group of dare I say thinking fellers startled the management again by turning out en masse to hop and sing along to the beehive of notes.
Who are these people? the door guy shouted at me.
