thanks to susie tang

support from ganger

photos

http://bantha-fodder.com/shows/mogwai1999-09-19

review, by susie tang

i had few expectations for this show. Prior to last night, I had only heard "Punk Rock" and thought it to be very intriguing. A friend of mine, who is an avid Mogwai fan, suggested I see them, so I decided to go.
Ganger were interesting. For lack of a better word -- I fear I may be using this word a lot in this review. They played a nice, noisy, 50-minute jam. For the last song, Stuart came on stage as a second drummer. Mutliple drummers and bassists are always a welcome change of pace. Towards the end of the set, the guitarist threw down his guitar, breaking its neck, yet he managed to squeeze some beautiful squeals and distortions from its remains. The lead singer didn't realize the guitar was even broken, until the set was over and he saw the heap of wood and wires on the floor.
The person who plays guitar and keyboards came on stage to start a loop on the sampler, letting it play for about two minutes before Mogwai actually took the stage. They played "B.M.X." and I listened intently, not quite sure of what I might hear.
I was greatly impressed by Stuart's versatility. He murmured some vocals for one song and played bass on another song. He played drums during Ganger's set, and of course, he plays guitar the rest of the time. Possibly taking cues from the Thurston Moore school of guitar (I was fortunately to have been eyewitness to this phenomenon last time Sonic Youth was in town), Stuart plucked off a battered pair of drum sticks and grated them along his strings.
My favorite aspect of Mogwai's music is the diversity in instrumentation. Whoever started out on loops was now playing the flute (I think it was "X-Mas Steps?" correct me if I'm wrong). And Mogwai also had multiple drummers at some point during the set. Their overall sound is very atmospheric. A tranquilizing lull of distortion gets chopped in half by a wall of guitars -- unsuspecting listeners like me get an abrupt wake-up call.
The finale consisted of two members of Ganger coming onstage to play drums. The kits were all facing each other, with only Mogwai's drummer completely facing the audience. They would have looked like a military corps, sticking in perfect synchronicity, if it weren't for the deviations of cymbal playing -- they were playing on one anothers' crashes and hi-hats. It was also at this point when Stuart was grating his strings with the sticks, causing one or two of his strings to snap.

Overall, I was very impressed, and left the show feeling awestruck, confused and disoriented.

thanks, susie!

review, by mike

i saw mogwai and ganger again tonight.

anyway, mogwai did a different set, whereas Ganger did the same set. Ganger's set ended with the triple drummers, and then Mogwai played quite well. Still, they did Gangerize their set by having some songs lasting five minutes too long. Anyway, when Mogwai ended with the double drumming, Stuart did not come on stage to drum, instead he took the mic and sang and then did jump-rope with it. One of the Mogwai boys wore a Mogwai tshirt. The second drummer during Mogwai's set was still the Ganger drummer, so now I have visions of the two drummers playing with each other's drumsticks.

I had this fantasy, because of the second drum set, that the band would come back on stage to do an encore, where they would do "You Stole the Sun From Applause" and they would use the second drum set to play the beats that the drum machine makes. I thought it would be really cool if they could do that. I was thinking how the crowd could start to leave, and then Mogwai come back on stage, and the guitarist/drummer could play the beats on the second drum set, and the regular drummer could be Sean, and Stuart could be James (esp. since he already has the James features except for the visually-violating hair), the keyboardist/guitarist could be Nick Naysmith, and the bassist could be the Manics bassist (Nicky Taylor or whatever his real name is), and then they could do "You Stole the Sun from Applause" - it would have been really really cool. It also would have been cool to have on tape. But they didn't do it.

Also, this night two of the Mogwai boys were smoking on stage. Last night, they didn't smoke.

It was a really great show, I'm glad I went.

BTW, I will say that Mogwai have the same sound style/vein as a lot of other bands, and no matter how great of a band they are, it can get difficult to distinguish them from Low, BArdo Pond, Magic Hour, Sea and the Shite, and a plethora of other bands. Not that this is a bad thing, but it's just something I've been thinking about and that I forgot to mention the other night.

thanks, mike!