Like most people who were teenagers once, I desperately wanted to live in the basement. My read on the situation was that I could tack up posters on every conceivable surface and play my Bad Religion records loud* and that, due to some goofy aesthetic theory, everything would sound better underground. Instead, I stayed in my room, ruined about 100 square feet of paint with masking tape and drove my sister up the wall by listening to music so fast that it has since been scientifically proven to end the lives of small animals.
Still, we all have places that attract us as music venues, even if our attraction is a very literal one. My buddy Tom—neither this Tom nor that Tom—recently photographed former Talking Head David Byrne’s "Playing the Building" exhibit, in which the musician connected a keyboard to play parts of the Battery Maritime Building in Manhattan. And in town, Kate Daughdrill plans to open a garage on First Street NW as a music and arts venue in September. I have more in next week’s paper, but you can see photos of The Garage here.
The place has rock personality; as David Duchovny would put it in "Californication," it "looks like Keith Richards vomited on it." (And that’s high praise.) So much so that it raises a question…
Starting in September, local music fans may be able to listen to music in The Garage. Where they belong. (Props to Weezer.)
If you could play any venue in town—I mean plug into it and play the sound of the venue, just like Byrne did with the Maritime Building—which would you choose? What do you think it’d sound like? I’d bet you could get some interesting sounds out of Kegler’s Lanes, or the Downtown Transit Center; additionally, I’ll bet the Coca-Cola Bottling Works building on 10th Street would sound like a Bowie tune.
So, which venue would you play? Leave it below.
*Trivia: I wrote my college entrance essay on the song "I Want to Conquer the World" by Bad Religion. In retrospect, it was an idiotic choice; still, it worked. Wahoowa, punk rockers.
