Words by Adam Symington//Illustration by Cailan Burns
Live at The Great American Music Hall, Nov. 4, 2006
It was ten in the morning in the dusty, desolate pristine of Mammoth Lakes when I set foot to accelerator and began the drive down to San Francisco. Hopes and excitement grew high as I wove my truck through the turns and narrows of Yosemite National Park. In four short hours, my altitude would plummet from 10,000 feet to just hovering above sea-level, at which point I would reach my destination. Having never been to Frisco before, my mind frantically drew broad pictures of a metropolis stylized by the earnest and seemingly effortless artisan, liberal-minded culture that the 1960’s and popular media had created for the City by the Bay. After four days, I would come to the realization that San Francisco is the antithesis of this vision. San Francisco (or at least the parts I went to) is a predominately white-washed and pretentious city polarized by the imperfect cohabitation of the well-to-do areas of the Theatre and Financial Districts and the impoverished, crime and drug-ridden Tenderloin District that lies mere blocks away. Similar to this almost universal letdown was Voxtrot, with fellow Austin compatriots Yellow Fever.

For me, the best part of going to see Voxtrot was mistakenly going to the venue the day before the show. The Great American Music Hall is located smack-dab in the middle of the before-mentioned Tenderloin District. Walking up to the venue, I noticed the beginnings of a brawl forming outside. In the red corner was an old black man in a long, weathered jacket armed with a thick, wooden cane. In the blue corner was a short and stocky junky in a ripped blue and white windbreaker with a semi-functional umbrella awkwardly clutched in his hands. Lucky for me, I got rink-side seats to the brawl. The old man relentlessly beat the shit out of the junky, landing 20-30 blows of his unforgiving wooden cane of justice to the legs, back and head of the down-and-outer as he lay on the ground, frozen in the fetal position (or as I like to call it, “The Ass-Ball”). After the decidedly one-sided fight, the old man returned to the door of the venue to rejoice and celebrate with the bouncers. My kind of venue. But anyways, to the concert.

Voxtrot came on at 11:30 p.m. and played for only an hour. After an eight-song set and a three-song encore, I left the concert with shock and disappointment at how such a promising band could put on such a mediocre concert. The biggest problem, and to no fault of Voxtrot, was the sound. The band’s sound was reduced to deafening fuzz driven along by the drum kick and bass riff. This wouldn’t be so bad for most other bands but in this case, most of the songs sounded the same. Particularly, the up-tempo hi-hat driven songs “Fast Asleep” and “Raised by Wolves” suffered the most. But aside from these details, there were plenty of highlights.

I was especially impressed with Voxtrot’s congenial and well-natured sense of energy and personality. At one point when lead singer/guitarist/keyboardist Ramesh Srivastava threw his guitar out of tune, the band rebounded by playing a ho-down to pass the time. Ramesh spent most of the concert either jumping up and down or spastically throwing his hands in the air (think Michael Stipe meets Satomi Matsuzaki of Deerhoof). Although these actions were awkwardly timed and strange, it heightened the amount of energy onstage and made them interesting to watch. The highlight of the show came when the drummer of Yellow Fever, who I gather is Jennifer Moore, came onstage to sing vocals on “Long Haul.” The chemistry of the band with Moore and the musical aesthetics of the song combined to make this the centerpiece of the show. But just after the concert had started, it had concluded and I walked out with a lingering bad taste in my mouth and it wasn’t the pint of PBR I had had during the show. If Voxtrot had played for a while longer and the sound quality didn’t remind me of Charlie Brown’s schoolteacher, I would have been more than pleased with the concert. The boys from Austin definitely have the right idea on how to put on a good show, unfortunately they only hinted at this idea at the Great American Music Hall.