Notes from the underground

This is a part of my notes from one of a few shows by The Ponys that I went to while researching an article I was writing about them that eventually got published in Love, Chicago. I didn't end up using this, but it was a fun drunken evening and so I faithfully submit it.

K



Subterranean has all the charm of a frat house that has been converted into a two-story darkroom. A place where outlaw pornographers develop still images of snuff films and huff gasoline fumes. Where it isn't dark, it glows with a queer red light. Rough, plywood edges feel like they jut out from just about everywhere. And the couches upstairs have probably come from the estate sale of some long-dead Hispanic pimp that lived in the neighborhood before the housing boom bathed it in fair-trade coffee and upscale boutiques.
But when the tickets are free, you don't ask questions about the atmosphere. Especially when the destination promises loud music on a Saturday night -- the kind of thing you bite your lip and pray for during Wednesday morning meetings when the office is too cold, and you're ready to fill the coffee maker with urine and smear your letter of resignation onto the worn carpeting in yellow mustard. Yes, The Ponys are a welcome diversion from this sort of feeling. Loud and frayed at the edges, their sound is developing into a very tight and cohesive force.
Like a jet-propelled phallus, rocketing off across the night sky and leaving everyone who stands watching it secretly wishing they could climb aboard - these people are about to go for a ride. What's strange is that I've met the band, and they are all very nice - almost shy in some respects. They can still walk through the din of bad light and drunken revelry of the Subterranean unrecognized, though this probably wont last for long. When their blades are sharp enough, they will need to cut down the tall trees, like other seminal bands that have come before them, letting new light in to the virgin forest. For now, we can only congregate in whatever backwater red-light hole they show up at and hope that if we keep arriving, we might be there when the big trees fall, and that light comes shining in.