BOREDOMS!!!!!!! (?)

Confession time: I never really understood the insane love affair that the indie world at large has had with Boredoms. Sure, Super AE and Vision Creation Newsun are pretty great records. Incredibly original, often fun, very cerebral, but… it just doesn’t stick with you after the record finishes spinning. Trying to decode their variety of releases is even more confusing than the ideas contained in them, there’s the Super Roots series (which doesn’t seem to really have a central idea, as far as I can tell), various side projects, the Rebore series, and God knows what else. So I’ve definitely committed the “crime” of being perplexed and wary of Boredoms but following on the advice of the entire independent music world, I decided that the live setting was a much better path for approach. And slap me if everybody and their super-hip mother wasn’t right! GOD DAMN! This is a live show and a half!
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A little while ago there was some debate on our forums about whether Melt-Banana’s live show was completely amazing or just plain confusing. I can see how the band’s live show would be off-putting if you weren’t intimately familiar with the band’s records or if their brand of noise-punk-grind-experimentalism is simply not your bag. It might not even be all that great if you’re standing more than 15 feet away from the stage.

But hooooo-boy! If you love this kind of music, there is simply nothing more exhilarating and jaw-dropping than a Melt-Banana live performance. I’d seen them do a show with Fantômas way back in my high-school days but the one last night was far superior for one reason: the audience was completely in love with them! Back at the first show, it was at a larger venue and sure people were into it and all but it was nothing like the moshing, screaming masses that greeted them on the Fourth of July at Dante’s. Almost made me feel proud that my fellow countrymen could show them the love they deserve!
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So on March 27th, Yoshimi P-We of Boredoms fame returned to LA to play a show in the all-female band OOIOO (pronounced oh-oh-eye-oh-oh). But before I headed to the concert, I stopped by Little Tokyo to get some ramen. It seemed like that wasn’t a smart choice, as my stomach somehow ended up being in pain throughout the opening act, Neung Phak.

Neung Phak consisted of a bunch of weirdos aspiring to be performance artists. I can’t say that it wasn’t entertaining (at one point they pulled American flags out of their pants while yelling in pain), but towards the end of their set I started to get pretty sick of them. It didn’t help that my stomach was getting more upset the more they played. But I knew that a delicious serving of OOIOO was coming up soon, and I was aware of their magical revitalizing power since I’ve seen them play live before. I figured this show would be the true test to see whether or not they really had this power or if it was just something in my head.

They started their set with the tribal beats and chants of “UMA,” the opener for TAIGA, their latest album. Although I don’t have the album, I’ve seen the music video for the song multiple times (it’s easily found on YouTube) and enjoyed it. The song seemed to also please my stomach, so I was happy. Since I don’t know too many songs out of OOIOO’s discography, it seemed like a lot of their songs blended into one another over the course of their set. This was actually happening though, as I soon realized they were meshing and merging tunes once they played only 2 minutes of my favorite song of theirs, “mountain book” (which is a usually a seven minute song).

That taste of pure awesome really made my stomach feel better, and for the rest of the show my stomach was completely fine. It was somewhere in the middle of “On Mani,” the final song before the obligatory encore, that I accepted as fact that OOIOO really do have some kind of magical revitalizing power. It’s hard to explain, but there’s just something that happens in their presence that makes the audience as a whole feel really good. OOIOO cured me, and for that I thank them.