The Smell of Rock
Great. Just as I begin to write this post my nose begins to bleed. What timing! Some folks have spring allergies, I get spring bloody noses. I guess it could be worse, I could be in a meeting or something bleeding all over my notes and presentations.
Went and checked out the prowess of Discords latest rock offering – the Medications last night at The Entry. They were angular, melodic and thundering. A fine way to get over hump day. Back in olden times when smoking used to be legal in bars, every bar smelt pretty much the same, like a dirty ashtray. Now, with the old nicotine and tar smell absent from bars and clubs, you really get the full individual aroma of a place. At the 7th Street Entry your olfactory system gets hit hard with a wonderful bouquet of scented spices that is 100% dirty-socks-inside-your-gym locker circa junior high. Which on the face of it doesn’t really strike me as an improvement. But I read somewhere that our sense of smell is the number one trigger of nostalgia, so if all bars and clubs now cultivate their own special balmy incense, the public will be better for it in that they will have different scents associated to individual places, something that just wasn’t possible when every place smelt like a pack of Camel Lights. Not that the smells will be all that different mind you, human sweat and beer usually combine to give similar effects, but there will surely be some nuance, like being able to tell the difference between a Sonoma Red and a Willamette Valley Pinot. Discerning noses will have the advantage.
Is it obvious that my bloody nose has inadvertently focused the content of this post towards one particular body part?
Yes. Well I don’t want to spend this whole post writing about noses in general or my nose in particular, fascinating as they both may be. So let’s travel just a little bit up the face and branch out now in both directions and land squarely on those two little things we use for seeing. Welcome to your eyes, folks.
Still at the rock show. Set break. Relegated to the sidewalk to smoke your cigarette in the rain. Outside you really get the opportunity to see just how abominable and repellent Block E has become. It’s by far the most hideously looking building in the history of urban architecture. And yet there it sits in the middle of our great metropolis? How on earth did we let this happen?
You should take a short walk while you smoke that cigarette. Walking around the square block of Block E at night on a Wednesday could be an interesting adventure. You begin by walking North along First Avenue. First you pass the nearly empty Hard Rock Cafe and all your thoughts are drowned out by the outside PA system blaring an 80’s Aerosmith tune. You can still hear the sickie treble from Steven Tyler’s voice as you walk past the nouveau rich sliding out of their Hummers and and snaking their way up to the Le Meridian Hotel (you’ve never seen that red colored one before). A man from a low slung silver Mercedes calls you over to his car, you think ‘better not’ but you do anyway. He asks you for directions to ‘The Meridian Hotel’. You point to the big ‘Le Meridian’ sign, “you’re there buddy.”
Keep walking. Turn the corner and go East on 6th Street. Three large gentleman in expensive suits are standing outside the Fine Italian Restaurant smoking cigars. They talk basketball and pay you no attention. Now here is where it gets interesting friends. A true riches to rags story in 17 paces. About halfway down 6th Street, still within shouting distance of the three fat cats, you now come upon a wheel chair convention of three. You are flummoxed for a moment by this triad yin-yang parallelism but are taken back out of your head when one of the wheelchairs asks for a cigarette. You comply. Another asks for change. You fumble for some change as you note how poorly lit this side of Block E is. After a awhile you break from the wheelchairs and turn the corner now going South on Hennepin. Immediately, someone steps from the shadows and asks for a cigarette. You should have put yours out while you were still on 6th Street. As you gaze at the volume of people hanging out, milling about, and otherwise just waiting for a sucker like you, you contemplate what will surely be an empty box of cigarettes before you finish walking this block. The lie begins and repeats, “sorry last one”, “I’m all out of change”, “just gave away my last one”, “last one”, “I’m out”. You’ve just finished walking the ‘hand out gauntlet’ and are walking past the smoking pen (complete with bars!) outside of Gameworks when two cop cars going the wrong way up 7th Street roll up on yet another posse of three, this one of the 7XL football jersey variety. The cops move fast out of their cars and run down the three. Two more cop cars appear from out of nowhere. And that ends it. You cross 7th Street, toss your cigarette butt into a puddle and duck back inside the venue, hoping that the Rock will somehow help make sense of your brief walking tour.
Also, in other music related stuff, most of the Dischord catalog is now available through iTunes. Ian MacKaye’s latest band, The Evens are profiled on NPR. A great Flickr set of NoMeansNo from their recent Minneapolis show.
And some really kick-ass photos of menacing clouds.