review by: Roberto Martinelli
The Hemlock Tavern is a small, run-of-the-mill bar in the area of Polk Street famous for its male and transgender prostitution. It turns out I’ve walked past the Hemlock many times, but have never noticed it. More remarkable still was that a show would be held here, but up a few stairs is an area with a small stage. The whole place may be able to hold at most 50 people.
I was keen on checking out Subarachnoid Space, as one of the band’s members, Mason Jones, is in the band 355, which we reviewed this issue.
I don’t know if Subarachnoid Space is on the Neurot Recordings label, but it would fit in well. Instrumentally, the four-piece seems like it would be a rock or metal band, with two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer with two bass pedals. But Subarachnoid Space is much more about instrumental ambient sleepiness, but one that just happens to have double bass in it sometimes. As warm displays of sun-like projections were reflected on the wall behind them, the quartet lulled the audience into a pleasant state of lethargy. I for one fell asleep in my front row chair a number of times. I couldn’t shake the cobwebs even after the set was over, and only the arrival of The Lord Weird Slough Feg’s Mike Scalzi prevented me from sleeping all the way through the intermission.
Those were all the winks anyone would get this evening. What was to follow would be the most intense display I had ever seen at a musical event. Oxbow is a Bay Area band that has been around a surprisingly long time. Since 1989, the group has only had one lineup change and has released several albums, the latest of which is An Evil Heat, which was one of the best albums last year.
Perhaps what has made Oxbow so loved by so few and largely disregarded by so many is the inability to classify it. We’ve called it voodoo possessed technical rock, but the official description of the music being like "stumbling into the midst of a sex crime against humanity" is an apt description.
So there was a good deal of nervous anticipation leading into my first Oxbow experience. Feral tales of nude performances and on-stage choking of witless audience members by front man Eugene Robinson made me anxious and scared - and impatient. Suffice to say I was very, very awake from the moment Oxbow started its set.
There are four men in this group, and they all contribute to the torrent of energy. At the forefront of this is Robinson, the erudite-cum-shoot fighter front man who’s as famous for his gradual removal of clothing on stage as he is for his trademark duct-taped ears and Bacchanal performances. (Why does he do all this stuff? Find out next issue in our interview with Oxbow.)
Robinson is like an actor who loses himself in a part. It’s very clear that while on stage, something has snapped within him. Reaching deep inside some fearsome well, he displayed such looks of desperate psychosis as he humped the mic stand and howled his vicious prose. When the clothes gradually came off, displaying Robinson’s impressive physique and myriad of tattoos, it occurred to us that he was a whole lot like the black version of Robert DeNiro’s character in "Cape Fear." Robinson would slowly seethe, only to break out in violent fits of thrashing about to the dynamic music.
Meanwhile, drummer Greg Davis was going mad behind the kit. The stocky, powerful man was smashing his equipment, which made the level of precision with which he played all the more impressive. There was an unscheduled intermission as Davis actually tore a hole into the head of his bass drum; luckily Subarachnoid Space’s drummer was good enough to lend his. Maybe a better term would be "smart enough."
Niko Wenner, the most unassuming member of Oxbow off stage, was in his own private freak out zone as well. Alternating between three gorgeous guitars, Wenner became one with the flow of the musical torrent, culminating in a total loss of sanity to end the set as he turned his back to the audience and ravaged the strings of one of his prizes in a way that would even frighten Caspar Brötzmann.
In any other band, bassist Dan Adams would be something to watch. But in Oxbow, it’s easy to overlook his presence on stage, which is a mistake. Adams’ fine performance was as integral to the show as any other.
Oxbow will be playing again next month, to a much bigger crowd. Who knows what might happen.
