Hipster Hell or: Kid Congo Powers and the Dedicated Followers of Fashion

I gave ten dollars to a long thin girl sitting on a long thin stool just inside the door. She asked me if I would be drinking, and I told her no. I’ve been trying not to drink on Mondays. She had a long thin cigarette tucked behind her long thin ear. Her clothes were boring – long thin black jeans and a long thin black turtle neck over a puddle-brown shirt with shoes and hair to match. Her hair was short. Her nose was too big.
A big, loud girl with a scruffy, orange plaid button-up and matching hair was dancing with her beer right in front of the stage. She had one of those wide “fuck me” faces. She also had a wide “fuck me” ass.
The opening band ended like a garage band usually does, and Kid Congo started setting up. Most everyone was outside, disinterestedly smoking cigarettes. I wondered if they would come back in for the main event, and almost hoped they wouldn’t: sometimes these old guys need to be reminded that rock and roll is dead. It died with the legends who were greater than they are. I sat at the back, too exhausted to feign interest any more, and played my new favorite game – pretending to be from Rolling Stone. A friend and I developed this while we were working for a promotional company that sold hair-salon packages to unsuspecting college freshmen. The premise of the job was simple: go to college campuses and hit up everyone you see with your pitch. Make it sound like the best deal in the world. Make them buy the $100 hair promotion they really don’t need. Force them to if you have to. The trouble was, try as we might, we just couldn’t take the job seriously; and the scathing looks we got from most of the college girls – sensibly dressed (or at least socially dressed) students who sneered at our outlandish Hollywood fashion – only reminded us that we should have been there studying, not soliciting. So one day, at a campus in the middle of GodKnowsWhere, we decided to use our bright clothes and sarcastic demeanors to a better purpose. We scouted classrooms until we found the cutest-looking male teacher on campus, and when his class got out, we cornered him. I had my phone out like a recording device; she had a notebook and pencil.
“We’re doing a special report for Rolling Stone on the disenfranchised youth of America. What are your thoughts? Do you think kids are coming here because they want to learn? Or are they just following the rules society has laid out for them?”
It has since become one of my favorite pass-times, and as I usually carry a notebook and pen on me, I am always prepared to play it. Usually, I don’t interview strangers, I just sit in a corner and observe. It’s a great way to avoid being picked up in bars. Chloe. Chole Sparks. Yes, I am a writer. No, I do not want to talk to you.
The place smelled like vomit, and not in a good way. It smelled like vomit the way my seat on the plane back from Pennsylvania smelled like vomit. Like bad Caesar salad. Which is, I’m pretty sure, what it was. There was no way this place had enough street cred to smell like real old-fashioned vomit. The ceiling was too beveled. The drinks were too expensive. The zombie posters on the walls were too framed. The kids were too trendy.
Before they started, Kid Congo apologized to the crowd. “Sorry for the delay,” he said, “I had to update my Twitter account.”
The sound was terrible. Evidently the accoutrements of the place did not extend as far as the sound board. Vocals basically inaudible. Guitar too tinny (I know it’s his thing, but there’s a difference between a gimmick and a spinal tap.) The drummer was decent – held a solid beat and came up with some relatively creative stuff – but completely lacking in subtlety. Why don’t rock drummers seem to understand that it is possible to play dynamically? There is such a thing as “not hitting the drums as hard as you can.” Even I know that, and I played for Jade Banger… I had seen the bass player outside earlier and written him off as the worst kind of hipster – the kind that sports a jew fro and bountiful sideburns and wears a polyester suit like he’s just waiting for someone to light him on fire. I realized now that he was not a seventies throwback – he was the real deal. I wished someone would light him on fire. A guy who looked like my best friend’s dad stood behind a small effects board, doing GodKnowsWhat, and occasionally playing guitar. And when I say “guitar” I mean “bar chords.”
Kid Congo himself, like a limit approaching zero, never quite made it to “campy." His huge white eyes, peering at us over thick black emo glasses, never quite achieved that maniacal glint that lets the audience know it is in for something truly special. He did have a very charming, European way about him, and his small stature, dark skin and quaffed hair gave him a childishly Speedy Gonzales quality. But, an actor not quite sure of his lines, he played Spanish Dracula with the wrong sort of restraint – restraint that comes from discomfort, not from strong choices. An audience can tell when a choice is a choice and when something is merely a stroke of luck.
A stroke of luck is different from a stroke of genius: while both may occur spontaneously and within a matter of milliseconds, one is a completely controlled moment of clarity from a performer totally in charge of his (and the audience’s) faculties; whereas a stroke of luck is simply a happy accident. A great performer will usually pick up on a stroke of luck and use it to his advantage – claim it as his own, turn it into a stroke of genius. A mediocre performer, if he is lucky, will be able to play it off. Unfortunately, no happy accident occurred to push Kid Congo past zero and into that stratosphere of greatness. The jokes were okay. The stories were just stories. The band was solid. The kids bobbed their heads. A drunk guy stood on a bar stool to get a better look, and got his head stuck in a ceiling fan. Another idiot fell off his stool. The lead singer from the opening band crowdsurfed for about three seconds. Perhaps he suddenly remembered that it was Monday night, and that there was really no need for that sort of behavior.
One of the problems I have with the world of late - apart from its tendency to bleed every possible dollar out of anything remotely artistic - is its enormous market for mediocrity. As long as people are willing to pay twenty dollars for the privilege of not sitting at home on a Monday night, mediocre performances will continue to draw crowds. They will never draw big crowds, but they don’t really need to. Nothing ground-breaking is happening; we are just maintaining the status-quo. People in the audience know what is going on. I refuse to believe that anybody there was really having a great time, or that anyone thought this was some kind of “event.” I admit that, not subscribing to The Scene, and not being a huge Cramps fan myself (I like Bad Music), I cannot possibly understand what it must mean for a true fan. However, I’m pretty sure that the hipsters and bros around me didn’t understand what that meant either. Perhaps Kid Congo knew this too. On another night, in front of a crowd of rabid fans, he might have achieved greatness. It must be sad for him to realize that he is now playing music for the carbon copies of his fans – kids who wear the shirt without knowing where it came from (I once ran into a girl who thought The Misfits was a Santa Cruz based clothing company.) Diehard fans are few and far between. But if you can’t find them in Santa Cruz, where can you find them?
Oh, and the opening band, The Groggs, were so overwhelmingly average I completely forgot to mention them until just now.