Rock Report 2: The Evil Beavering

Went to see Evil Beaver Saturday night at MnMs. By far the weirdest, testosterone-iest EB show I’ve ever seen. I got there right as Evil Beaver was setting up, missing the first band entirely. On heading upstairs, I noticed there were a number of people there—a good thing—but that they weren’t the people I would have expected to be there: a guy in an orange and blue ROTC shirt, another guy in a drinking Illini Tshirt, girls in the kind of wispy swirly tanktops you expect to see at DJ night at the highdive. The one and only person I recognized in the room was Bob the Soundguy.

The new guy drummer took the stage, and a contingent of very large, square-shouldered, tall boys formed a man-wall at the front of the stage. Evie came out and picked up her bass, and the show started rocking. But…so odd. These front-row guys were all over the drummer, giving him mad hand signals and egging him on. They all started head-banging in that stand up, bend at the waist, stand up, bend at the waist way, so that it looked like a long row of those drinking birds. When the drummer took off his shirt at the second song, they toasted him with their beers in a completely non-homoerotic way, definitely. Rock fingers ran rampant. Maybe they originally intended them to be ironic, I don’t know, but they went way past the point of irony and right back around to full-on, no holds barred, unself-conscious sincere usage, like when you start saying—I don’t know—“what up, dawg!” because you think it’s funny, but then two weeks later it’s totally your standard greeting.

There were a few women up there (although the highdive hanky top ladies left at the first song). One turned out to be the drummer’s girlfriend. The others were some very nice, very canoodling, very enthusiastic fans of metal. Of course, all of them were stuck behind the retaining wall of virulent manhood, and they were all fairly short, so they got to hear a lot more than they got to see.

By mid show The Guys were nearly out of control. Stomping around, patting the drummer—they all went and sort of stood around the drummer, patting his head when the danger of decapitation by drumstick was low—leaning all over the speakers in their head-nodding frenzy. The speakers, as you might recall, are shoulder-height, fairly large, and are on fairly lightweight stands. Everytime drunken Head Bobber leaned against them, they’d sway a little bit wider. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went over to Bob and told him about the leaning, figuring he could decide if the stands were stable enough or not. He went over and told the guy to knock it off, which he did, for approximately 90 seconds. But first of all, why was the guy so close to the damn speaker anyway? How do these people NOT know that the monitors are sort of the stage edge, and that crossing that barrier to stand by the band is not really done, unless you’re 17 and the band is in somebody’s basement?

Shelly and Amanda came upstairs after a while and helped me make fun of the boys. Shelly pronounced the drummer to be “cut.” She said some of the front row guys had come by cab at about 4:00 that afternoon, and had been drinking hard ever since.

It was a weird show. I’m glad there were more than five people there, but…weird.

After their set I went downstairs. Once again, I didn’t know pretty much anybody there, except for my best work buddy, Peela. I went to the other end of the bar and got another coke. Evie came up to get a drink, and I leaned over all "nice show." She said thanks, I said I had worked with grrrlfest and was a friend of the violents, she asked if that was still going on, and I said no, you had moved to NY (the shortest possible explanation). She said to tell you hi, and that they're going to be playing in NY in a couple of months, if you watch their website, you should come. I said I'd pass that along.


She took off and this Mohawk beefy boy from upstairs, with Evil Beaver bumper stickers stuck all over his leather jacket, came over next to me to get his drinks (red bull and lemon vodka). Turns out they came down from Orland Park to see EB, got a hotel room, and took a cab from there. “So no worries! We can get as trashed as we want!” He was going on and on about how the drummer was so rawk, he’s almost TOO good, you know, it’s like bum-da-dum-dum-da-dum-dumDA-DUUUUM!!!! Whoa. It’s like, whoa. It's like, almost too much drum for one band! I asked if he ever saw them when it was two women, and he said yeah, the show in Vegas was their last one together, but that chick just didn’t have it like this new guy. Oh, and Evie—was that Evie I was talking to earlier? She’s good too. You know, he plays a little bass, and it would be SO AWESOME to play with them. Yea, it would. Whatevs, hawk.

I went back upstairs to escape the weirdness and isolation and mohawkiness of the downstairs. I sat in one of the chairs while Scott and Don set up for their set. This woman (one of the aforementioned metal fans) came and sat down in the chair next to me. She was wildly, unabashedly, crazily outgoing, and very very nice. Her name is Shimmie and she’s originally from Bangladesh (which made me immediately want to ask about cyclones and massive flooding, but I figured that was poor form; I did find out that her first winter in the Midwest was pretty shocking). Her husband came and sat down in the chair with her (very canoodling). They love metal! She's probably going to cut her hair tomorrow (waist length and very good hair) because you can't throw it around anymore. She's not a student right now, but maybe soon, she hopes! Maybe in art. Or inerior design. She may be my new best friend. I’m not entirely sure.

TV was very rocking. The new stuff sounds really good, Don still looks like the nicest crazy man, Scott still looks like he would kill you as soon as look at you (though he sounds like a sincere and good man). His parents were there, which was nice—his dad came up and stood behind the front row of men and nodded his head along with them, and when Scott pointed out his pop the guy-pod turned and gave him the rock fingers too. His mom sat on the couches and watched mommily. The Man Wall enjoyed the band, though not as much as they enjoyed the shirtless rawk drummer of EB, I guess. I don’t think that should be viewed as a problem. Throughout TV’s set there was a group of collegey guys at the back—backwards Cubs hats, I shirts, all that—carrying on. By the end of the set they were pouring pitchers of beer into each others’ open mouths, which of course soaked their shirts, so they took their shirts off and tied them around their heads in Lawrence of Arabia-style headdresses. When I left they had removed the headgear and were snapping each other with the wet t-shirts. Hot! Boys are so weird.

Anyway. Good rock, weird, weird atmosphere. It kind of skeeved me out to see this band that I associate with grrrlfest and the violents in this total guy-dominated atmosphere. And, once again…where the hell were the people? There were maybe 25 people up there most of the time, MAYBE. And at least three of them came from Orland f-ing Park. It's four bucks, for crying out loud. Next time I go to a show and there are only 11 people there, I'm totally buying a round for the people. The upstairs, show-going, non-lame people.