The New Frontier in Tacoma is good place to start, although it won’t bring the dead back to life, despite what the rumors say. On the bill were two bands I hadn’t heard before, and one I’ve know for a long time.

The décor in the New Frontier is like many others in Tacoma except for one thing: they have windows and they actually open them. Other clubs that shall remain nameless (Hell’s Kitchen) have no windows, and do not care if it is 400 degrees Celsius inside the club. If it’s hot you drink more, and if you don’t drink more then you die; and I’m not using my T-Mobil minutes to call 911, because they’re not in my 10.

Fig 77. I keep seeing this guy everywhere I look, but he’s not in my Audobon Guide to the Birds of the North America.

The first band to play was The Brotherhood of the Black Squirrel. They were loud – like prolapsed eardrum loud – but once I became acclimated to the partial deafness, it was pretty catchy. Jon Walker got on stage sporting dark sunglasses and a baseball to do some guest vocals on one of their songs. What that fuck does a baseball have to do with a song about everything being black? Maybe if I’d read Foucault’s Pendulum like Doc Staley told me to, I’d understand.

Next up was Ghostwriter, who – unlike the PBS kids’ mystery show of the same name – is very good and has nothing to do with spelling. Rather, Ghostwriter is a one-man band, featuring a guitar, two mics, a harmonica, and a tambourine petal. Imagine Beck in the early years, but with a dark cowboy feel rather than nonsense on top of blues riffs, so I guess nothing like Beck at all – the same way that mayotard sounds like a stupid name for something tasty that everyone can enjoy¹.

To top off the night was John Walker and the Hitchhikers. Composed of John Walker on vocals and keyboard, Lori Darling on sax, Bobby Galaxy on trumpet and guitar, and Russ Dahler and the delicious Jimmy Hughs switching off on bass and drums, the band members tear sheets of music to the floor as the crowd yells out the chorus, pulled along by the fury of the tempo.

Always addictively entertaining and lively, the band at times reminded me of what I imagined a hangover from Mardi Gras might be like. Being an acquaintance of Mr. Walker, and knowing his all-consuming love of music, I wonder if there is anything at that keyboard but a black-lacquered suck-hole, spewing out lyrics calculated to sound heartfelt. Is he just playing with notions of what he imagines it must be like to be a human being?

But then again, you can’t make a crowd sing along like that unless you’re a hell of a musician.

Or you’re Kiss.

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1. I have no idea what that means either. -Ed