Deep Time @ Farm 255, Athens Georgia, 22.08.12
By Scott Creney
Yeah, I know this website frowns on live reviews that aren’t based in fucking AUSTRALIA. But when was the last time we ran one of those? Seriously, can’t you people go to a show and string three fucking sentences together? All you have to do is write down the thoughts you have when you go to a show. It’s not like this website is fucking bursting with material.
Don’t you think Everett would rather be spending time with his beautiful children than churning out copy to give the illusion that Collapse Board has actual, you know, WRITERS? He has a wife who is (I’m assuming) beautiful, blessed with infinite patience, and who would much rather see some clean & neatly folded towels in the fucking linen closet than listening to her husband champion some fucking fifth-rate Babes In Toyland Glaswegian no-hopers on his goddamned music website. So GET CRACKING. Don’t you care about music? Does anyone? To paraphrase Marilyn Monroe, everybody talks about the music but nobody ever DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. You think music writers aren’t powerful, but oh we are. When was the last time you heard anything about that Washed Out album? That was me. Yeah, you’re welcome.
I’m not sure if Deep Time cares about music either. Don’t get me wrong. Their new album, called um… Deep Time is pretty good. It’s definitely one of the 10 best albums that sound like albums I already own only not quite as good in the whole content department list that I’ve been working on (there are more contenders this year than you might think). This next song is the best one on the album. The band knows it is too; that’s why they made a video for it.
I’ve been streaming their album for a month, and I still can’t tell the rest of the songs apart. And hey David Lowery, I’m sorry for streaming the records and not going out and buying them, but y’know I can only buy so many records. And come to think of it, I’m not sorry at all. Tell you what, buddy, I’ll apologize for listening to Deep Time on Rdio when you apologize for me paying $15.99 for the CD of Kerosene Hat at fucking Tower Records back in ’93. You KNEW that album didn’t have a single song as good as ANYTHING off Key Lime Pie, you fucking gypsy, and you still put it out there anyway. But Key Lime Pie is a work of genius. In fact, this next song has nothing to do with Deep Time, or The Farm, or the band Shade I’m going to talk about later, but it’s better than any of those things. It may not get the attention it deserves until after we’re dead, because god knows it doesn’t get enough attention now.
In spite of David Lowery, and his obsession with the financial injustices of new media, coupled with his complete obliviousness to the screw jobs of the old one, I would still write a great motherfucking 33 1/3 book on Key Lime Pie. Give me a call, Dave. Or maybe we can talk next time you’re ordering a latte.
Back to Deep Time. So Deep Time was fine. I’m about a week away from finishing the final edit on this BOOK I’ve been working on for the past two years (that book’s style & content bear little resemblance, for better or worse, to this review), but I take time out of my BUSY fucking schedule to go see Deep Time — because their music is pretty good and I’ve been listening to it, plus I promised someone I’d drop off an advance copy of the new Tunabunny CD, and also one of my favorite guitarists, Jeff Chasteen, was playing at Flicker, but still I LIKE DEEP TIME, and not many bands I like ever play in Athens, Georgia who don’t already fucking live here, so I should like not discourage that. So Deep Time plays and they’re fine. The singer has a total Heather Lewis haircut, which I love. There’s only two people in the band, which is definitely a plus. The drummer plays these bass parts on a synth and then loops them all before he goes into the next song, which I appreciate because why pay some drooling moron to play the same simple parts over and over again when you can just do it yourself? If our nation is going to pull itself out of our sluggish economy, it will be resourceful motherfuckers like the Deep Time drummer who will make it possible.
Fun fact: Deep Time used to be called Yellow Fever. They had to change it b/c someone else already had that name. Do yourself a favor prospective musician who is reading this — do a little research before you name your band. Their new name is definitely better, though neither name is all that accurate. If I named the band, I would have gone for Nostalgia Bounce, or maybe Leather Clown if I were feeling weird (I am, at the moment, feeling a little weird), but Deep Time’s cool too. A couple of four-letter words strung together, though I can’t think of a band less likely to curse. Do you know what Deep Time did during their show, CB reader, when they messed up the ending to one of their songs? Did they get pissed? Did they curse? Did they throw down the guitar? Did they yell at each other?
They apologized to us (or to ME, if I’m feeling slightly egocentric — which, all evidence to the contrary, I am not). And then they played the ending again. It was like watching a third-grade youth group recital. And let the police records show that I AM NOT A FAN OF WATCHING THIRD GRADERS DO STUFF. I’m going to share a secret with you, and hopefully a secret with Deep Time, who I’m sure Google themselves daily and sift through thousands of entries that have NOTHING to do with their band (do a little research, kids, seriously). Here’s the secret:
Nobody gives a fuck if you played the song right.
There’s the performance, and then there’s the document. The poem and the reading. The album and the show. Yes, you should try to make the document something that will last for 20 years, as good as you can make it. But performances are temporal— they are not beholden to the same modernist standards, the analysis and observances, that dominate our daily lives, when even our social media profiles will live forever. NO, we go to shows, we attend performances BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT LAST FOREVER. There will only be this moment, and this moment only exists for those who are lucky enough to see it, so for CHRIST’S SAKES DEEP TIME DON’T JUST PLAY YOUR FUCKING SONGS. I left. I left towards the end of your set, before you had finished, because I had already seen everything you had to offer. Competent songs played competently by people who seemed perfectly pleasant. I delayed my novel for this? My time is valuable. If I formed a band, it would be called VALUABLE TIME because that’s what my time is. People like myself go to shows to be inspired, to see something unexpected, to be reminded than anything can happen in the world of music. We do not go to see competent songs competently performed. Who do you think you are, LIONEL RICHIE?
You’re fine, Deep Time. I’ll listen to you tomorrow while I make coffee drinks in the basement of the law school. I’ll be listening to you, but I’ll be dreaming of Shade.
Shade played right before Deep Time. They may have been horrible, they may have been wonderful — I’m still not sure. The bass player sat down the whole time and had his dreads tied back (I heard a rumor around town he once bounced a check to Van Dyke Parks). The drummer was a blur; I never got a good look at him. And the guitarist was a young lady who either played her guitar in these hypnotic, circular patterns or dropped to her knees and throttled it like Lydia Lunch. She dedicated one song to gravity, the “thing that makes music possible”. I asked around, and this was either their second or third show — I think someone might have missed the one that took place under a house on Atlanta Ave. where someone dug out a bunch of dirt and made a performance space which you had to slide down in order to access. Shade was sloppy, barely formed, and at times pretty much a fucking mess. They were also having the time of their lives. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. They may never make an album as good as Deep Time’s, but I don’t care about that. There are albums and then there are performances. I only wish more bands knew the difference.
Also, I came there looking to buy a Deep Time t-shirt, assuming that the (stunningly beautiful) cover of their album would be on the shirt.
It wasn’t. Just one more disappointment.
Seriously people, write something and send it to Everett. Have an opinion. Change the world, or at least a small part of it. Otherwise you deserve to listen to OK Computer for the rest of your miserable lives. Don’t do it for the kids. Do it for HIS kids. It’s easy. All you have to do is have some thoughts.
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