Even though living in a politically correct society is supposed to cleanse all stereotypical references, I thought Ivy-League Cornell was going to be as active as a placid lake while OK Go and AAR would be shredding out new-wave alternative/bubble-gum rock at the Cornell Concert Commission’s year-end show. However, after the show, I left the stadium looking like an AOL icon sucking on my foot.
The venue was a relatively large indoor track stadium with a respectable mustiness as the sun barely shined through the overlooking windows about 100 feet up. The Whigs opened up the show respectively as soon as Nate (SV Editor-in-Chief) and I rolled in 10 minutes late because of stellar navigation and duct-tape ingenuity to fix the right-side rear-view mirror. As it is with any show, mainstream or indie, big or small, the opening band has to endure crowd enthusiasm equal to playing in front of crickets and other small insects. The Whigs took it like men, and played anyway.
The Whigs may have played with daylight peering in and averted crowd attention, but the band wasn’t going to be ignored. The Whigs, a trio, was made up of a mundane drummer, a switch playing bassist and guitarist/vocalist. Every song or so, the bassist and guitarist would switch instruments to incorporate electric keys, but the keys didn’t dazzle enough to revitalize a pulse in the stadium. As the Pre-Med majors and four-eyed yuppies scurried around to grab free water and pass-along joints and flasks, The Whigs fought off the crowd’s apathy by just playing like a bunch of kids who love to play music. The guitarist/vocalist, Parker Gispert, was a standout alone with his high strapped guitar hugging his heart. With that and his jerked up head toward the mic, he looked like some kind of bird begging to be fed – strangely effective.
There was a familiar energy in this band. You could hear the raw but tasteful distortion like it was coming right out of a garage – the most genuine studio. Obviously, every band has roots and influences, but with the body language and gripping emotion, Grunge music and Nirvana came to mind. It may seem easy to associate power-cord rock bands to cliché rock-gods, but there was something classy about the way The Whigs handled their bottled rage. It was a classy-go-fuck-yourself. The Strokes is a better comparison, but The Strokes never played around with piano riffs ripped off from the Beatles. I’m not going to pull a William Miller and use “Incendiary,” but to be fair, a good show is about intimacy between the artist and the audience. Unfortunately, the band can only come half way.
Continue reading “In case you missed it: OK Go and AAR at Cornell 4/22″…
by Jett Wells
(More pictures and a past interview with AAR’s Tyson and Chris after the jump)
