PoMophobia

People will put up with just about anything. Apparently so will an audience. Noise rock duo People teamed up with Williamsburg faves These Are Powers for a monthly Adolescent Sessions show this past weekend at Uniondocs, sponsored by Viva Radio, the official in-store music and audio network of American Apparel. We can imagine the programmers geeking out about the Situationist sizzle of a rock show "by proxy", but watching your favorite noise rockers on a movie screen when you know they’re right downstairs, and stomping the floor for applause in some sort of Williamsburg nod to the Beat snap just makes you feel like a pretentious fuck. And the blown speaker didn’t help matters. To be honest we probably would’ve been just as bored if People were muddling through their set right in front of us. But These Are Powers have been one of our favorites since they played Heeb‘s Diamond Days in July, and they fucking rock so it was especially depressing to be so removed from the action. Lead singer Anna Barie was screaming and throwing jump kicks downstairs while we all sat sedately on cushioned otomans upstairs and strained to hear her. I tried to sneak down to the basement but was stopped and had the "live by proxy" thing explained again. Turns out this was not a one-off; the whole point of Adolescent Sessions is to produce an experimental, voyeuristic music experience that stands as a sort of study of band-audience interaction and how we all experience music. Sounds good on paper, but in reality not so much. The one positive I overheard about the set up: "It is sort of nice sometimes to go to a rock show and still be able to have a conversation." How rock ‘n roll is that?

What do you think?

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