the rapture

Ten years later, the kids are dancing again.

I can remember being 17 years old and going down to DC with the Quinn twins, Steve and Joe, to see yet another post-punk band at the Black Cat or the 9:30 on a weekday night. Their parents were getting divorced, mine had been for some time, so we got away with staying out until 1am. Black Xs on our hands, enjoying a Moons Over My Hammy on a Tuesday night. Sipping piss water beer at the undeveloped cul-de-sac in their neighborhood and strolling into second period with a hangover.

Those days we watched the same bands over and over again, listening to 7"s in the basement after school of Cars Get Crushed, Chisel or any other one of the scores of mid-90s forgettable DC acts. The highlight of any three month period was the tour swing-through of Fairfax, VA's favorite native sons, and our flagship band, The Dismemberment Plan.

We would bring along new converts (Andrea, Dean, Mario), all from different walks of life within the hallways of Atholton High. In the blurring clique lines of senior year at your high school it was sometimes possible to stop making fun of each other long enough to share common interests.

What we didn't know about The Plan was that our favorite band would explode, inasmuch as you can explode in the indie-rock scene, and become a favorite band of the Mid-Atlantic region. That instead of playing Phantasmagoria in Wheaton, MD on a Monday night, that two years from now it'd be the Knitting Factory on a Friday night. Even more surprising would be the transformation in their sound and thus mood of their shows. The first album, which was stereotypically angry DC post-punk, would develop into a much more R&B/melodic, rhythm-oriented thing that an early twenty-something would only want to nod in agreement to.

Then, the burgeoningly popular and overwhelmingly popmous pitchforkmedia website stepped in and reviewed their 1999 album as such :

"Hometown fans have staged elaborate costumed breakdancing during Dismemberment Plan sets, and these songs are the hormonal fuel. The Plan rule during schizophrenic dance-punk explosions, somehow finding middle ground between Brainiac and Prince. As a testament to the Plan's power, these songs have turned D.C.'s traditionally head-bobbing concert crowds into cathartic bacchanals. Can I get an 'Amen?'"

The wave was slow to build and then a scant four years later, suddenly everyone had heard The Killers too many times. Indie-rock bands weren't indie anymore unless they had a synthesizer in their road cases. All of this building too a momentous breaking point with the arrival of The Postal Service's Give-Up. The genre blending continuous to this day with the folk-country tinged pop of Rilo Kiley and the hip-hop blend of the Gorillaz. I'm not saying The Plan was The Catalyst, merely an example closest to my heart.


So last night my sweetheart and I went to see The Rapture play Sonar at a little after midnight. The kids like to dance now. The girl-kids wear bandanas and interesting boots with anything thrown on between their knees and their necks and the guy-kids need only an old sweater, thick rimmed glasses and the kind of ragged facial hair that was obviously well thought out. They make you wonder why you're not in it with them, enjoying the escape, prodding you with shoulders as you stand in awe of how much things have changed. And somehow I couldn't help but feel that these are the art school punks who judge my book purchases at Barnes and Noble, who blankly stare at my CDs on the counter at Soundgarden, and here I am in the inner sanctum where they shrug off their presuming nature and get-the-fuck-DOWN.

But hey, they've got the dancing back, and that's good to see.

(I also fall in love with my girlfriend all over again everytime I see her dance, dancing with joy and that million-dollar smile on her face. But I digress...) 

:doug @ 10:49 PM