indie,
larkin,
Poindexter,
punk,
Son of the Sun,
summer concert series,
tins,
tometu
—
Tonight, the folks in charge of the Larkin Square concert series will be harnessing the power of alternative indie rock through champion title holders Son of the Sun, The Tins, and Poindexter. This combination promises cause 'good feels,' and possibly inspire attendees to get sloshed and dance like no one is looking.
Son of the Sun is just as likely to fit in here as they are at a Blue Oyster Cult concert. Which has happened. The band crafts detailed walls of sound with many layers, but keeps a simple 3 chord writing style which allows them elements of both punk, and psychedelia. The sounds they produce are all too fitting for the end of a summer concert series, and I'm not just saying that because of their name.
It's not easy to completely categorize The Tins' music, but you can be
sure they know how to write a damn good song. Their range flies from the
anxiety ridden yet danceable "Please Be Kind" to the almost tropical
party-ballad "Vicki," to the nostalgia soaked "Midnight Crowd." These guys have new songs floating about in the ether too, so be sure to catch their set and preview what is to come.
Representing the heavier, punk end of the music spectrum is Poindexter. Warm melodies soar over punchy guitars in Poindexter's alternative punk sounds. With a fast tempo and heavy sound, be sure to hold on tight to your drink during this performance.
The show starts at 5 in Larkin Square, and it's FREE!
gay issues,
josh gordon,
Poindexter,
queercore
—
Queercore is a 30-some-year-old hodgepodge of bands, zines, artists, films, and what-have-you that uses DIY and punk ethics to explore issues affecting non-hetero folks.
Poindexter is not that. Poindexter is a local three-piece for whom I play bass when their usual guy is out of town. Poindexter is power-pop, closer to Weezer with a cat fetish than Cheap Trick (I know, Weezer isn't all power-pop. Keep it to yourselves, nerds).
But there's some debate among band members: are we a "gay band"? Some of the lyrics are about dude-plus-dude love; the frontman is gay; wey've played Buffalo Pride Festival. Does that make Poindexter gay?
As it happens, I'm the only member with a column on a music blog, so my two cents are going public.
It's true that Jeff, the lead singer, is a proud gay man, and his lyrics, when they're about love or relationships or bad sex, generally sport two or three boners. Otherwise we play songs about things you might expect from a pop-rock act: the ennui of growing up, the weird hypocrisies that worm their way into our lives, entirely clinical, true-story butt spelunking, et cetera. Any gay-centric message is pretty much accidental.
Jeff likes dudes, which should be as eyebrow-raising and as none-of-your-fucking-business as the fact that I'm a righty, but I can switch-hit if the need arises. (If you think I'm talking about baseball, we'll just leave it at that. If you catch my actual meaning and things have suddenly become weird between us, I'm sorry. If you thought I was talking about baseball until that last sentence and things have suddenly become weird between us, I'm sorry.) But since Poindexter are making music in a part of a world and a stretch of history where some folks, for whatever reason, find homosexuality disturbing, we stand out as a "gay band."
Some bands make it their mission to explore gay issues up front. Pansy Division come to mind. As do Gayrilla Biscuits, whose schtick is repurposing hardcore songs to promote a gay message. To wit:
Gay til death!
We're gay and should be taken seriously!
You say we should change our ways and go for nasty women
You said that you can't be queer because of your lame wife
Well, we'll be gay for life!
Has your ass gone straight?
Poindexter is...not that.
Then there are bands like Propagandhi, who identify themselves as gay-positive, and who sing about and stand for a lot of things, for better or worse, including anti-homophobia and anti-racism. Also, the suckiness of ska.
I wouldn't say we're a gay-positive act. Jeff does sing about relationships - good and bad - between men, which creates a safe space to explore gay issues. But it's also a space for exploring human issues: things like love, sex, and regret, which most of us will deal with at some point. If not every goddamn day.
On some level, declaring Poindexter a gay band is akin to calling the Foo Fighters a straight band. Both groups sing about hookups and breakups, so why not? And anyway, breakup songs aren't positive toward any kind of love: they're about how much love sucks, whether it's between two men, two women, one of each, or a man and an underage Japanese body pillow.
Poindexter is gay-positive in the way that, at this point in our culture's history, not being ashamed of gayness equals a positive act. It's hard to believe it was only 15 years ago that Matthew Shephard was tortured and beaten to death by two confused, broken homophobes. And it'll be two years ago this September that our own Jamey Rodemeyer committed suicide after being bullied with gay slurs. Just ten years ago it became legal in all 50 United States to exercise our God-given right to slip our God-given body parts into whatever consenting holes we goddamn-well please (we also just got around to telling a deep-fried, diabetes-racked pharmaceuticals shill that a slave-themed wedding isn't cool either, so cheers to that).
If Poindexter is a "gay band," it's by default. When anyone has anything non-negative to say about the gay experience, it is, in a way, a positive. I look forward to the day when that's not the case. Poindexter's real message, as far as I can tell, is nothing new or controversial: growing up sucks; growing old is weird; people ought to fuck each other more and fuck with each other less.
And that's just rock and roll.
