Last night we went to Bottom of the Hill to see Xiu Xiu. They've been touring with some pretty strange characters: Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone, Prurient, and Evangelista.

We missed Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone, an experimental viola and guitar duo, but made it in time to see Prurient, a noise "artist" who faces the back of the stage armed with a pair of microphones and a very small amp. He seemed to be trying to achieve the most ear-splitting and gut-rumbling sounds possible, which is fine, I suppose. Some people are more about getting you to feel the music rather than hear it, but it certainly thinned the crowd. I find it personally sort of annoying that in order to fully experience such a set, you have to sacrifice being able to really hear any of the following sets. I compromised. I stuck some napkins in my ears and waited for something interesting to happen. Nothing did. The set, however was blessedly short.

Evangelista was next, and they easily took up the remainder of Prurient's set just by standing around on the stage and talking. I've never seen a band take so long to set up. Evangelista's lead singer is the Geraldine Fibber's Carla Bozulich, and she clearly felt constrained by her role as a supporting act. She's gone from industrial rock to alt-country, and now she's doing gothic stuff, but it's like she jumped on the gothic train going backwards. The whole set filled me with a sort of uncomfortable nostalgia. Some of things I heard last night were "Thank you, Beezlebub!" and "There is one word which has not yet dried completely upon our parched lips. The word is...love! Can you say it with me? Love!" I was looking around to see what decade it was when, to my horror, I saw Miss Bozulich come down off the stage.

Now, this is something you may not know about me, but I am something of a magnet for performers who leave the confines of the stage. I was pretty far back in the crowd, though, and I thought, "There's no way her microphone will reach all the way back here." As it turns out, however, with help from the audience, it reached exactly far enough for her to grab me around the shoulders and press the microphone into my boobs (she's significantly shorter than me) and sing her next verse into my chest while the crowd parted around us. She smelled god-awful (hey, last day of touring--I've been there) and I wanted to punt her back on to the stage, but she had a lot of really obnoxious, heckling fans in the audience so I just bore it out.

Another thing you might not know about me: I am something of a magnet for six foot+ fans who come late and need someone to stand in front of. This is especially true if said fan has a big-ass messenger bag slung behind him, and even truer if they have a really long ponytail and/or are amateur flash photographers. I battled with two of these last night. Always a good time.

At last, Xiu Xiu took the stage, looking a little worse for the wear. A whiny Evangelista fan shouted up at them, "You're quiet!" "You're not," retorted Jamie Stewart. A snappy and appropriate comeback, to be sure, but not as good (according to the Aristocrat) as last time, when he told the opening heckler, "Stop being an asshole, right now."

The set was not as good (or as long) as the last show they played at BOTH. It featured heavily from the new album and was generally more rhythmically consistent and accessible than usual. Nevertheless, it is always great to see Xiu Xiu live. Each one of them is a virtuoso in their own right: Jamie, as a lyricist and performer of true passion and energy; Caralee as a musician who rarely plays fewer than two instruments at a time, and Ches as a percussionist who seems to play every piece in his six-foot-tall, 40-piece kit (half of them gongs) at the same time. Once I could have sworn he was playing with a whisk and a basting brush.

All in all, definitely worth it, but it was a lot to go through to see a fairly short Xiu Xiu set. I will seriously consider the number (and members, and fans) of the opening bands before going again.

"There's something very satisfying about "Squeeze It" being played on NPR." - Ted Dancing

Pacific Noise interviewed us after our recent show at Bottom of the Hill.  You can revel in our awkwardness here.

So then the otter played jenga with abraham lincoln

I went to go see pants pants pants again tonight with tasty. tasty and I go to see pants pants pants so often that this time they put us on the list and we got in for free. Seriously, I think being on the list is the high point of my life so far. Later if I ever get married, my future wife will cry as i talk about being on the list as the best thing that ever happened to me.

Anway, pants pants pants was the opener and they went on stage and tore through their set. And about halfway through the first song, abraham lincoln came up onto the stage and sat in an inflatable leopard print chair. Then in the middle of the third song, a guy wearing a stuffed otter on his head also went up on stage and abraham lincoln and the otter started to play jenga.

They were playing jenga for almost the rest of the set after that. In the second to last song, finally the jenga blocks fell and the otter had a mild tantrum since he was the one that caused the fall. What really amused me, though, was the interest that the crowd had in the jenga match. Some people were completely ignoring pantspantspants and were closely following the jenga. I was dancing in front of the stage, so I could keep an eye on the jenga too.

-Jiggs Casey

When my housemates proposed that I join them for a trip into the city to see a band called Pants, Pants, Pants, my only expectations of the evening were that I would see a bit of the city and enjoy some liquid refreshment. It is fair to say that my expectations were exceeded.

Let me tell you about this band. They have three people: a female lead singer, a guy on bass, and another guy on drums. They all dress in the color gold, apparently at every show. When the music started, my excitement was increased: I generally assign a higher point value to bands fronted by women. The first song was just funky, with a little bit of a hard edge, and Lauren Lauren’s vocals were smooth and kind of jazzy.

At some point during the first number, a man in a tuxedo and a top hat—whose name, I would learn later, is Brian the Aristocrat—took a seat onstage in a giant inflatable leopard-print armchair. For the rest of the song, he just sat there sipping a Heineken. Also, during this song, Lauren started playing some instrument that is like a miniature keyboard with a tube that you blow into. My curiosity was definitely piqued.

So when, in the next song, (”Squeeze It”), a man wearing a giant sea otter puppet as a mask climbed on stage, I will say that I was at that point I was in the thrall of the events unfolding before me. The otter man and the aristrocrat proceeded to play Jenga as the drummer began tinkering with a laptop and a keyboard, softly reciting risque lyrics involving the cast of Full House:

I squeezed it like John Stamos because he was on TV /
He squeezed with Kimmy Gibbler (just between you and me) /

We squeezed like Danny Tanner, of this there is no doubt /
We squeezed with Uncle Joey, but he said ‘cut-it-out.’

Naturally, the requisite hand gestures were made during that last line. This is San Francisco, after all. This show is deeply ingrained in the city’s cultural lexicon.

The band is on hiatus now for a few months whilst the drummer, who goes by the name SysOp, marries one of the back-up singers (well, she just kind of jumped on stage and started singing) with the unlikely name of Rock n’ Roll Christmas Store. But rest assured I will seek them out again at the appropriate hour.

Until then, we can all entertain ourselves by visiting their website, and viewing their hilarious music video, which is a shot-for-shot remake of the opening sequence from Full House. Actually, both sequences (they changed it in the later seasons to include fan-fave Kimmy Gibbler in the opening). You can also listen to “Squeeze It” on the site, and make your own music with their nifty interface.