Shonen Knife and Visqueen at Black Cat
(DCist continues its series of music reviews with a post by Colleen Clark about Monday night's Shonen Knife concert.)
We had a hard time starting our review of Monday's Shonen Knife show without a barrage of Japanese clichés. Though we had the good sense to avoid all mention of karaoke, Hello Kitty and Tamagotchis, we couldn't resist trying the following:
-- When Shonen Knife took to the stage, the universal flash of digital cameras must have made them feel right at home. But the high percentage of fat balding audience members must have made them realize they're not in manga land anymore.
-- Shonen Knife konnichiwa-ed into an anime-ted show in support of the U.S. "rererease" of their first four records.
But we opted to avoid such offenses and stick with a quote from opening band Visqueen's Rachel Flotard: "I wanna put them in little wrappers and eat them every day."
And how can you not? Shonen Knife has been churning out sugar sweet punk pop for more than 20 years. They gained fans like Kurt Cobain, who said their show "transformed [him] into a hysterical nine-year-old girl at a Beatles concert." (This would explain the behavior of the mustachioed gentleman in the front who could barely contain his glee ... and nearly dropped the large bag of stuffed animals he'd brought as gifts).
Yeah, the songs were catchy. Yeah, we loved Naoko's shimmery harmonies. But toward the end of their set, the songs started to bleed together and even cult-favorite "Tomato Head" failed to deliver.
The girls must have sensed the ennui. So they came to the rescue with an all Ramones encore rocking the crowd straight from sugar shock to, well, "Sedated."
Still, after the show we found ourselves questioning just what it was we liked. We couldn't really understand many of the lyrics -- but we were taken with the cute accents. Could it be that half the fun of a Shonen Knife show is the how it plays into our fascination with Japanese cute? How can you not smile at pint-sized punksters with matching mod dresses, sparkly eye shadow and glittery instruments?
For all the fun of our little power puff girls though, we have to say the evening's real treat was opener Visqueen. The Seattle trio used sweet to better effect thanks largely to singer/guitarist Flotard (whose lion mane officially wins best rock and roll hair of all time). Flotard's show-no-mercy attack on her duct-taped Gibson was the perfect counterpoint to their blissfully poppy melodies. Drummer Ben Hooker and bassist Ronnie Barnett never let Rachel's coos, screams and squeals float away to saccharine land. Lesson learned: You can have your sweets and eat 'em too.