So I saw Discount play at Bill's Bar on April 1, desperately scrambling to see them on their final tour before they part ways for good.
Discount has been around for over six very productive years, since most of the band members were in junior high, and the stress of making good art, good poetry, and most of all good music finally came to a head. Over three albums, and countless splits and 7"s, they have established themselves as the only example I know of what I like to call art-punk (a sub-class of post-punk, I suppose), and they will be missed.
Yeah, it was a great show, highlighted by the Dillinger 4 and their big, (orca) fat, bass-playing nudity and Scared of Chaka's AZ punk, or something-core or whatever. The Explosion was also pretty good, though pretty unimaginative. I think that we were on Chaka's list, so this is the part of the column where I plug them. Plug plug. They were actually very good. Glug glug. Drinking OE in Allston the night before.
It was a 2 p.m. (!?) show in the gracious, sultry shadow of Fenway Park, packed with hi-skool kids and punks who shop at Claire's or something, and a punk chick with bangs who sang along to every D4 song and left, along with most of the other punks and scenesters, before Discount came on.
So that brings me to my main observation. ("I'm only lucid when I'm riding the bus" back from Boston) Alison Mosshart, prolific lead singer and songwriter of Discount's crazy, arty punk, while more than qualified to bear my progeny, is nuttier than a squirrel. Instead of Discount, she should be fronting the Arkham Vocal Jazz and Cat-Killing Chorale. She should be chilling in Bellevue with Chazz Mingus's ghost. She's seriously into her music and seriously out of her mind.
Thanks to this, a great voice, and a sexy, emotional stage presence, Alison put on an incredible live show. She was writhing, jumping, clawing and crying her way through 45 minutes of choice music, mostly culled from their newest, lastest [sic] album, "Crash Diagnostic" (New American Dream Records), while almost whispering her gratitude to the crowd during tuning breaks.
She cheerfully ignored shouted calls for their cover of "It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," sticking to a well-planned set list. Each song flowed into the next with Alison leaping or falling from fear to insanity as the distortion from the previous tune faded out.
I'm really glad I got to see them live before the end. It's too bad to see another band go the way of the Parka Kings. Despite my initial angst over the break-up, though, I'm now convinced it's for the best. Discount is a great band, but it ceased to do anything really new after "Half-Fiction" (by far their best album).
Alison and two of her band-mates are continuing to write songs together, and I'm sure their next project will be well worth the wait, and hopefully as fresh as Discount was when it first hit the scene in Gainesville.
Also, the Dillinger Four is one of the finer punk bands out there today and definitely worth checking out. I'm just glad the fat guy with the pompadour played a nice big, strategically placed bass. It's the in sound from way out, yo.
So, yeah, D4 was rockin', and Discount was phenomenal. Taking advantage of "the streets of Boston," the misnomered Cheese-Steak Mike and I also hit some record stores and played a lot of Tony Hawk on our gracious host's Playstation, and fun was had by all. Until that guy threatened to "f---in' kill" me on the bus on the way back as I was finishing this review. I'm sorry I stepped on your bag, you greasy SOB. Thong th-thong thong thong.
