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By Max Conroy
There are several definitions of the word scrummage. It is synonymous to a rugby play called a ’scrum’, but also means ‘a general row or confused fight or struggle’. A scrum can also, according to the Brits, mean ‘a place or situation of confusion and racket; hubbub’, which seems like the closest definition to the venue in Detroit. Here is their mission statement from their site (do not click on this link if you have or might possibly have epilepsy): A psychedelic loft in Detroit’s Eastern Market district. We achieve maximum fun. We have giant parties with totally rad music encompassing all generas. We teach you here at our university that no one is too stuffy to party. This is the place where all your wildest dreams can come true. There is apparently a market in Detroit’s Eastern Market district, but there’s no evidence of it at night; in fact, there doesn’t seem to be anything besides a graveyard, bombed out buildings, and the occasional liquor store and gas station…and this place.
Scrummage University is a huge warehouse that must have been a toy factory at one time, based on the painted signage on the front of the building. I drove by it a few times before coming to the conclusion that this must be the place. There were several flyers that mentioned that it’s the large building that has ‘Toys’ painted on the front of it, but not the flyer that I had. The flyers also stated that the event was to begin at 9PM, which is when I arrived, but there was no one there, except for a few people running the show and the performers. Also, there is no mention of the Silver Apples playing at Scrummage on the venue’s site, so I’d seek other verification that a band will be there before driving through post-apocalyptic Detroit to get there.
The Scrummage gate is barely wide enough for a car to fit through and is situated next to an operational junk yard; I deduced that it was operational based on the five rabid dogs hurling themselves at the fence, attempting to kill hipsters. The parking lot is huge with weeds thriving in the cracks of the asphalt, an active train line in back, and several huge bonfire pits. I walked around for a bit, soaking up the scenery, snapping photos, as other guests arrived. After awhile, I noticed that everyone had 40s of beer, and asked the door guy Ian if it was cool to bring beer here: ‘Sure, man. You should pick me up something.’ He gave me some shoddy directions to a liquor store, but I ended up finding a different one that had all the choice malt liquor and grabbed a 40 of Olde English and Ian a 24oz of Cammo XXX High Gravity for the shitty directions; he was thrilled.
By this time they were throwing huge pieces of furniture into the fire pit and igniting them. When the fire would get low, they, presumably ‘official’ events organizers, would politely ask some people to get off of the wardrobe they were sitting on and then drag it into the fire. This place is the ultimate in blind pigs, anything goes.
You enter the warehouse through a defunct loading dock and enter into a wide open concrete room, piles of debris in the corners and outsider art everywhere. There is a working bathroom that isn’t the worst that I’ve ever seen. From what I gather, people live at Scrummage, so they probably rent the space, or maybe even squat there. The electric hair trimmer in the bathroom also made me think that people live there.
The opening act Benny Stoofy is kind of Scrummage’s house band. They are some talented musicians that blend the low fi aesthetic with competence, much like Dr. Dog. I dug a few songs and then went back to the bonfire with my 40 to chat up some people and enjoy the evening.
The Lotto Ball Show went on next. They’re a synth-driven postpunk outfit from Chicago. They seemed good, but the vocals were noexistent in the mix, so I again headed out to the fire after about two songs.
I went back inside after the music stopped to look at the unattended merch table and to watch people climb dangerously onto makeshift trapezes hanging from the ceiling. Simeon, a perfectly normal looking fellow in his mid-to-late 60s, dressed in a bright green turtleneck, strolled across the floor to his rig and began calibrating or whatever one has to do to a pile of oscillators and beat machines to prepare them for a performance.
The Silver Apples are Simeon now. He manipulates bass and melody sound oscillators over drum tracks, and sings: that’s the sound of The Silver Apples in 2008. After listening to some of their records recently, I’ve come to really appreciate the late Danny Taylor’s drumming. He lays down a hardcore breakbeat jazz style that really propels the monotonous vocals and bleeps and bloops. But the music is essentially electronic music and the last thirty years of music has proven that a drummer isn’t absolutely necessary. The lack of a drummer has actually transformed the Silver Apples sound into what it inspired: electronic dance music. It’s fitting to see one of the pioneers of electronic music performing this way to the city that basically took what he was doing eons ago and went crazy with it.
Simeon played for exactly an hour and politely declined an encore; this isn’t exactly encore-type music. He performed a lot of the ‘hits’ like Oscillations and I Don’t Care What the People Say and did a handful of new compositions. In the middle of the set, about twenty people got on stage a danced their freaky, uninhibited dances. I went back to the merch table and bought the only Apples vinyl available: a limited press of 1000 called Selections from the Early Sessions. I then went up to Simeon’s rig and snapped a picture of it just before he went up to it to tear it down. I said, “Thanks, man.” “It’s a pleasure,” said Simeon.
Click Below for information about the Selections record, some audio of the show, and pictures.
By Max Conroy
The enigmatic and visionary electronic ‘band’ The Silver Apples will perform tomorrow night at Scrummage University. I don’t know anything about the venue and was handed a flyer for the show, which is a photocopy of a primitive pen and ink drawing, by a group of teenagers that I befriended at the Jandek performance in Ann Arbor.
The Silver Apples formed in New York in 1967, consisting of Simeon Coxe III (Simeon) and Danny Taylor, drums. The duo were in a band called The Overland Stage Electric Band prior to the Apples, where band members rapidly left the group as a result of Simeon’s incorporation of a 1940s vintage audio oscillator, leaving the two. Simeon developed a homemade instrument, the Simeon, consisting of “nine audio oscillators piled on top of each other and eighty-six manual controls to control lead, rhythm, and bass pulses with hands, feet, and elbows”(from the liner notes of their first album). They recorded a self-titled album, released in 1968 on Kapp Records that barely cracked the top 100 and the follow up, Contact, in ‘69. They toured to support Contact and recorded another album in 1970, but it was shelved when Kapp was devoured by MCA. This third record would eventually be released as Garden in 1998. The band dissolved as a result of Kapp folding and lay dormant for the next twenty-five years.
The Apples were brought back to life in 1994 when a German label TRC began issuing bootlegs of their first two records, causing a long-awaited rebirth of interest in their music. The original records eventually were officially reissued, they toured (Coxe and a multi-instrumentalist named Xian Hawkins), and released several singles and albums in the late 90s that received favorable press. In 1999 their tour van was involved in an accident that broke Simeon’s neck. He’s been recovering since, but will probably never fully recover the movement of his hands, so apparently his performance is a bit more direct now. Danny Taylor died of a heart attack in Kingston, New York in 2005. Simeon went back on the road as a solo version of the Silver Apples in 2007 and is supposed to still put on a good show.
This music must have been totally unpalatable in the late 60s, but it absolutely presaged the future of music and the advent of electronic music, from bands like Suicide and Kraftwork in the 70s to Detroit to Radiohead.
Oscillations:
I Don’t Care What the People Say:
From Pitchfork: Better bring some extra cash to these shows, as Mr. Silver Apples will be peddling both a tour-only ChickenCoop Recordings LP of remastered tunes entitled Selections and a new Gifted Children Records EP called Gremlins at the merch table.
By Max Conroy
The Raconteurs played Saturday night at the Fillmore Detroit with the Atlanta-based garage punk revivalists the Black Lips. All 2900 seats were accounted for, but the place didn’t seem overly packed at all. This would probably have been a concert that I wouldn’t have thought twice about, seeing the ad in the paper or hearing about it on the radio, but a friend called me before getting tickets the day they went on sale. What the hell, I’ll go; I like the rock and roll; I consider myself a fan of J. White even though at times I want to dislike the White Stripes. I really like the Black Lips, particularly their 2005 record Let It Bloom, but didn’t know that they were opening until after I’d committed to the event. No matter what you think about White’s music or his opinions regarding his music, he’s done a lot for rock and roll. I can’t blame him for leaving Detroit either. That said, I can pretty much take or leave the Raconteurs.
When I first heard that White was forming a band, I thought that it was a great idea: breaking away from the mold of a two-person ‘band’ where he most definitely calls the shots to working with three to four other extremely talented people, writing songs and collaborating in a super group, like they did back in the late sixties through the seventies. I could really give two shits about Brendan Benson, based purely on ignorance, but drafting the rhythm section of the Greenhornes, bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler, made me have to take this band seriously. I have seen these two play live probably more than any other group of musicians.
I’ve seen several incarnations of the Greenhornes, as a four-piece and a trio, and have seen them play with Holly Golightly several times. One of my most profound dipshit, foot-in-mouth, moments was making some boneheaded comment about how the Greenhornes weren’t all that great to Holly Golightly while smoking cigarettes outside of Kraftbrau Brewery in Kalamazoo, and she basically said, “There are a lot worse bands out there.” About ten minutes later, the Greenhornes tore the place apart. I’d seen them open for Golightly a few nights prior at the Magic Stick and they didn’t exactly put their best foot forward, but every time that I’ve seen them since, they have been absolutely amazing; one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. And so much of what made them so good was their impossibly tight rhythm section; Keeler, the definition of the jazz-influenced rock drummer, killing the skins, sweat flying everywhere, drinking whiskey; and Lawrence the silent rock carrying the rhythm, his expression is comparable to Elijah Wood’s character in Sin City: blank, verging on scary.
I got the Raconteurs first record when it came out, but never really listened to it seriously. I also had the chance to see them a Lollapalooza a few years back, but chose to see some other band that was playing there at the same time; it might have been Sleater-Kinney playing their last non-Olympia show. The music seems fine, and I’m not sure why I haven’t taken the time to listen to their records, maybe there just hasn’t been enough time, who knows? So this show was a good opportunity for me to really give their music a chance.
Upon entering the Fillmore Detroit, if you are a guy, you have to empty your pockets, hold all your shit for security to go through while they frisk you. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do this and was somewhat freaked out by it as I did have something that would be considered contraband, which I held under my wallet, hoping they wouldn’t notice. They were some huge fellows and seemed very good at their job. I made the mistake of wearing a green shirt that said ‘Boston’ on it with a clover. The guy who was about to frisk me mumbled something, and it sounded to me like, “If I find anything in your pockets, I’m going to fuck you up.” My stomach sank as I was holding onto my wallet and contraband, hands shaking. I quickly ripped out anything else that I had in my pockets and explained rapidly what it was. He could tell that I misunderstood what he’d said and repeated it: “I should fuck you up for wearing that shirt.” That I could handle. The Pistons were just knocked out by the Boston Celtics in the conference finals. “Oh, sorry, man. I totally didn’t think about it.” “You should go home and burn that shirt.” “Oh, I will.” My hands were still shaking when I bought a round of beer five minutes later.
