Swingin’ Steaks
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We got over to UMass/Boston tonight for another member's concert. Arlene wasn't clear on the way over what the group was -- something with two words, she said, a verb form ending in "ing" and a plural noun. The grammatical form would match, for instance, the Rambling Roses. It turned out to be the Swinging Steaks. We didn't know what they were about.
We got there a few minutes late. The concert was in the basement level of the library building, on a level with the lower parking garage that goes under most of the campus. There's no public entrance to that level of the library from the parking lot, though; you have to go up to the second level, walk through the catwalk that's the main artery of the campus, and take the elevator down or walk down three flights of stairs. The auditorium down there is about a third the size of the auditorium where the Eddie from Ohio concert was last month, and even so it was only two thirds full. The people who didn't come tonight missed a good show.
When we got there we stood behind a pillar until the first song was over -- since it's being taped for radio broadcast you have to be reasonably quiet -- and then easily found seats. The first song had a vocal, guitar, keyboard, and drums when we came in, and after another stanza a rich bass line filled the room. There was a whole double bass behind the pillar where we hadn't seen it! What a difference it made in the overall sound!
The band has a sound we haven't heard much of, somewhere between folk, rock, and country. They were playing acoustic instruments with pickups. They talked a lot about how you have to be more conscious of lyrics and harmony when doing acoustic music than hard rock. It's there in the music -- lyrics you can hear and think a little about, with a good underlying bluegrass sound, excellent bass lines, and terrific boogie-woogie piano riffs from the keyboardist.
The song they did that I liked best turns out not to be one of theirs, but (here I show my ignorance) a Townes(?) Van Zandt song, White Freightliner Blues. The CD of theirs that we came back with is The Steaks Bare. It's Thrust 0075, from Thrust Records, PO Box 212, Needham Heights MA 02194. I'll bet nobody minds my copying this from the liner booklet:
The biggest test to anyone who writes songs for a band is whether or not those songs can stand up to being done without electricity, where things like melody, harmony and lyrics have to stand on their own. The Steaks have always had great songs as Bare proves. Here's a collection for their fans. Some old songs, some new ones, all done in a semi-acoustic way before a live audience. Each song glows with a deep inner fire that proves the Steaks to be one of the great country rock bands of the 1990's. -- Jim Caligiuri (Austin, Texas)
You know, in all that, I forgot to mention (because I'm writing this a week later and predating it!) that we picked up our new car at Natick Subaru. It's a white “99 Impreza Sport hatchback. We deliberately got a car that's a lot like our Forester. This way if we ever learn to work the radio in one we know how to work it in both; the gears shift the same and the windshield wipers work the same in both; the keys turn the same direction to unlock both sets of doors; and in general, the first one out in the morning can take whichever car is at the top of the driveway. "Top" is why they're Subarus, too. The driveway slopes steeply enough down that four wheel drive is really helpful for getting out on lots of winter days. I used to be careful to put the Tercel at the top of the driveway, where it's less steep, and then I'd have to go out early to move it out of Arlene's way before she left for school in the Forester. Now, whichever. The down side is that the cars are so similar that the new car doesn't feel like anything different. The thrill of having a new car was gone before we got it.
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