Where The Hell Are We? - Part 2
I made a decision that night to test the limits of my own sanity, four 2,000mg THC gummies and a tab of acid like I was gunning for some kind of psychedelic Darwin Award. My girlfriend at the time, Klara, a 5 foot 4 alt girl with the most beautiful green eyes and stereotypical alt-girl bangs, was the real MVP. She drove us to 1810 Ojeman, a venue that looks like a pink antique shop from the outside, while looking and smelling like a renovated strip club on the inside. The lineup: The Kiddos, Strawberry Milk Cult, and Orion 224.
At the time I was barely familiar with any of these bands, who they were, what they stood for, why they even existed in the first place. I knew I had to get to the bottom of it before I even listened to their music.
"Klara, who the hell are we seeing tonight?" I asked nervously.
"For the millionth time, The Kiddos, Strawberry Milk Cult, and Orion 224."
Images of two hundred and twenty four kindergarten children made of stardust drinking strawberry milk in a satanic circle started forming in the barely starlit smog filled sky as we rolled down what I assumed was the 610 Loop. All the beltways in Houston look the same on that high of a dosage of chemicals.
"Do they worship satan?" I barked at her, and she erupted into laughter as we flew down the freeway. Maybe she's part of the milk cult too, I thought to myself.
What felt like forever passed, when all of a sudden she turned on the radio to this slow song that reminded me of The 1975.
"Who's this?" I asked as my tongue flopped to the right side of my mouth uncontrollably. "This is Strawberry Milk Cult silly!" This statement shook my universe at that moment, literally. The one thing I remember about this whole plan from earlier in the day was that she told me it was Neo grunge. I was expecting vocals like Layne Staley, or Kurt Cobain, or even Andy Wood! And a lot more distortion. I felt lied to, cheated, cuckolded out of this whole grunge experience I was about to have.
The Houston heat was still licking at the broken pavement and gravel of the parking lot as we pulled up and gotten out of the car, even though the sun had gone down 3 hours prior. I could see the heat waves permeating from the crushed granules of stone to the beat of bass drum from inside the venue. I looked up at the club and noticed writing on a blackboard outside the venue. Thank Christ I am a huge Star Wars fan, as the writing on the blackboard wasn't English, Russian, or Japanese, but what George Lucas refers to as Aurebesh. Aurebesh is my actual second language. Because of my otherworldly knowledge, I informed Klara of who we were about to see, as I knew she couldn't read the local dialect. The night already felt like something strange, something awkward, something different was about to happen, but maybe it was just the chemical cocktail in my cerebellum.
There was no bouncer at the door, even though it was a 21+ show. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Kiko from The Kiddos was already mid-set, looking like he wandered off a ski lift in Aspen and landed in a heatwave hardcore show. The music hit me like a caffeine overdose in a baptist church, tight, emotional, and filled with a bit too much soul for someone of my mental condition. Every Kiddo looked weirdly clean-cut. This was no grunge. The crowd didn’t care. We were all melting in the same sauna of distortion and bliss. The music was kinetic, nervy, punk bones wrapped in a glam-pop skin, like if Mac DeMarco got mugged by a bunch of art school dropouts.
Klara and I sat down in one of the many only slightly cracked booths lining the wall, and it only confirmed my growing suspicion that this place used to be a strip club back in 1974. The faux leather was too moist—not sweaty, but moist, like it had its own pulse. On top of that, it was bleeding in sync with The Kiddos' kick drum, and I started to wonder if the booth was trying to tell me something.
Then came Strawberry Milk Cult. It felt like the air changed when they plugged in, grungy, yeah, but washed in reverb and laced with a kind of shoegaze sorrow. It was like watching someone sing, laying down in their bed while a dream-pop storm hovered behind them. Their sound filled the room without begging for attention, it just was. Atmospheric and aching, the kind of band that makes you want to lie on the floor and float upward into your own memories. They weren’t trying to win over the crowd, they were just telling their story, letting their voices be heard, and everyone leaned in.
And then… Orion 224.
I don’t know what magic trick they pulled, but every girl in that room fell in love by the second chorus. It wasn’t just the sound, which was tight, sharp, irresistibly charismatic, it was the presence. They played like they were already famous and didn’t care if you knew it yet. Confident but not smug, sexy without trying, loud but perfectly controlled. By the time their set ended, it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room and replaced with a collective crush. I walked up and tried to introduce myself to the lead singer, trying to understand how they were able to be so controlled with so many women and men both throwing themselves at them as if it was the second coming of The Beatles. When I finally made my way up to him, all I was able to stammer out was "You ever been bit by a raccoon in a dream and woke up with rabies in your heart man?”
He blinked once, maybe twice. Looked at me like I was the rabid one. And maybe I was. Maybe that’s why the set was so good. Maybe I’ve had rabies this whole time and just didn’t know it ‘til I heard it echo through a fuzz pedal. This part of the Houston scene truly reminds me of a dog kennel for the masses. Barking and biting. Beautiful in the way wolves are beautiful when they’re circling something they don’t understand. The shoegaze, pop, and rock bands in Houston don’t purr, they snarl and lure you in with velvet and glitter and then sink their teeth in. And if you get bit? That’s it. You’re one of them now.
To be continued...
