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Maxwell's, Hoboken, N.J. December 8, 2000 By C. Bottomley Talk about power games. Having made their audience listen to a few White Panthers argue the finer points of revolutionary theory as a warmup, the nine-member Montreal music "collective" Godspeed You Black Emperor! crowd onstage and ask everyone to sit down on the club's hard floor so those standing in the back can see. "Ordinarily we do not condone any form of passivity," says one of Godspeed's two percussionists. "But I think we have to do this." So it's impossible to divorce GYBE!'s requiem for the postmodern dream from the feeling of aching joints and general stiffness. It would be nice to say that sitting buttock-to-buttock with humanity led to a spontaneous love-in, but anguish is GYBE!'s real stock-in-flogging. Their music even emulates the throb and blinding flashes of something slowly (very slowly) bleeding to death - preferably white capitalist Amerikkka over the period of a few centuries. The typical GYBE! "movement" starts with a soft violin melody, embellished with a cello, followed by the other seven crashing in with their guitars and drums ad infinitum. It's an awesome sound, and on record, intermingled with doomy-sounding Indians and supermarket PA announcements, it's possible to imagine GYBE!'s cinematic sweep as the aural equivalent of an Oliver Stone film, atonally fiddling while Washington burns and Tommy Lee Jones weeps. However, the on-the-road version of the mysterious group leaves the field recordings at home and settles instead for fiddling quite softly then VERY LOUDLY and then getting oh so quiet again. Ten times. No one even announces, "Here's a rave from the grave we like to call 'Cancer Towers on the Holy Road Hi-Way.'" The repetition was beginning to make our stoned Panther pals sound downright articulate. "Tenth Emperor" Jem Cohen tried to fatten up the starving ideas with filmstrips projected on a sheet behind the band - which admittedly looked as uncomfortable on the boxcar-size stage as we did in the crowd. But after a few too many fluttering black-and-white American flags, my head was starting to feel like Kevin Costner. Were GYBE! out to get me? My feet, alas, felt nothing at all and could not answer. |
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