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the San Diego music scene
Tuesday, May 11 1999
None other than the queen of vapid America, Mrs. Elizabeth Dole herself, will be delivering a live cybercast in connection with the website for which I work. It's disgusting how certain in my workplace are falling all over themselves to prepare for this cynical once-in-a-lifetime marketing non-event. An internal email came around today instructing us employees to, of all things, clean up our work areas, as well be sure to shower and shave in preparation for a camera crew that will be coming around to capture workplace footage prior to the event. It's that sort of energy that makes me want to spend as little time as possible in my workplace. I try especially hard to avoid all the extra-curricular work-related diversions, no matter how hard my arm is twisted by colleagues hoping to get me to participate. I feel thoroughly isolated, like I have nothing in common with these people and no common language with which to describe to them what exactly the problem is. Today I again skipped out early (5:00 pm, that is) to avoid being dragged into an after hours margarita-drinking celebration.
In the evening, mostly to fulfill yet other social obligations, Kim and I smoked a lot of pot and drove up to Pacific Beach to see Harmony 24, the band that had played at Rocky's barbecue party on Sunday. The venue was a typical little Pacific Beach bar, unimaginatively festooned with plenty of tacky beer advertisements to the exclusion of all other decor. The audience consisted of a couple dozen tattooed and pierced alternafolks, respectfully confined to their seats sipping beer throughout the performance. The San Diego music scene, such that it is. When Kim and I arrived, the band was rocking hard on some sort of acceptably brutal metal song, but from there most of their stuff was whiteboy rap ontop of a layer of funky instrumentation. The bassist struck me as the best musician of the group. Occasionally the songs were good in a Beastie Boys kind of way, but overall it didn't especially grab me. Rocky, on the other hand, clearly views Harmony 24 as the best band in the history of music, and for his charismatic endorsement the band seems delighted with gratitude. As Kim has pointed out, it's too bad Rocky isn't a musician. He'd make a great rock and roll front man, much like that long-haired guy you see dancing front and center in Blues Traveler videos (while the fat genius behind the band is mostly ignored by the camera).
The most comic moment in the hour we were there came when the band launched into a brief sardonic cover of an old Bon Jovi tune. When the guitar solo came, the big scary-looking guitarist launched into it with gusto but unceremoniously stopped a few seconds later, as though he was suddenly embarrassed to be demonstrating fluency with such a forgettable slice of the American musical pie.
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