Following the strangeness and punk fury that was Friday night, Saturday offered a far different experience for the listening public. This wasn’t my first go ’round with The Blow. I’d seen her when I lived in Ohio…twice. The first time, it was an apartment party. She was getting into the crowd, dancing and having fun while performing her laptop-based pop music. It was an exciting show for sure, especially because Khaela Maricich a/k/a The Blow is an excellent dancer. The second time I saw her, it wasn’t quite as electric as she seemed to restrict herself to the confines of the stage she was performing on. This just created a very different watching experience in my mind. The music was still good, but the vibe was different. I only mention all of this to note that I had an idea of what would be coming to me when I went to the show. I couldn’t have been any more wrong.

I ran into Body outside, and he told me that The Blow had spent hours setting up lights for the performance. Obviously, being of a psychedelic lifestyle bent without the communalism and/or hippieness, I always love a light show. I got there as the first band He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister were finishing up. I’m not really sure how they got paired up, but I imagine that it has something to do with the idea of spectacle. The drummer tapped while playing. The lead singer hit the bass drum while also playing guitar. Adding further to the spectacle was their troubadour-esque appearance in addition to the presence of a busted up stand-up bass and a lap steel player. It was a crazy scene. But, the important question to ask is if the music is actually any good? I saw a fair number of people dancing to them, but I’m not necessarily sure that is indicative of it actually being good though. I wasn’t particularly interested in what they were doing because I thought it was sort of boring. They were playing sort of average pop songs to me, nothing that made it stand out from the haze of all the other pop music I listen to on a day-to-day basis. Honestly, right now, I’m struggling to remember what they sounded like because they were inevitably so nondescript to me. Inevitably, I found them to be too gimmicky for my taste. Some people like gimmicks. I’m not really one of them. I’d rather you just make good music and dress like you just came off the street (because you, most likely, just did).

Speaking of the relationship between gimmicks and good music, The Blow came up after HMBSMS. The show started off sort of strangely with Maricich tapping out her own beat on the microphone as she sang a song. This was an indicator in my mind that the pop star that I knew and really liked was not going to be at this show. Nope. Instead, we’re getting some intense, old-fashioned performance art. As anyone who has seen a performance art piece knows, its effectiveness is dependent upon a couple of different things. The first is that the artist him/herself really carries it. You have to be sold on the fact that this is normal and not a performance art piece, especially considering the location of the performance. If you are in an art gallery, a performance art piece is easy to spot…because you’re in a fucking art gallery. If you are sitting at a booth in The Mill, the concert should function as a concert and not as a clearly orchestrated performance. Same goes for any non-gallery location. Secondly, a performance artist should walk a fine line between challenging the audience and creating pure, awkward discomfort in the pit of their souls. Unfortunately for The Blow, she failed at both of these things.

At this show, she told a rather long, involved narrative about how she was grooming an “unnamed celebrity” (it was Lindsay Lohan as anyone who’s read “U.S. Magazine”, as said by Maricich, knows) into a pop star. From the jump, I knew that this was a rouse because, let’s be honest, why would Lindsay Lohan talk to The Blow about making pop songs? She is a pop artist, but she’s also pretty underground with a future of being like Katy Perry way off in the distance. Moving on, there were a bevy of purely uncomfortable moments throughout the show. These usually came with the multi-minute narratives that she made during the course of the performance as well as a number of times where she said nothing at all and just moved around the stage. There was a moment when Maricich tried to put on heels and fell over. Aside from looking dangerous, it was just really awkward. I found myself trying to figure out how I should react to such a situation. In the end, I just stared in open-mouthed horror at it all. She didn’t have any more moments like this, but there were just times of pure silence which were really uncomfortable on a number of levels. I think the last time I had been that uncomfortable while watching something happen was when I saw Built to Spill. I didn’t know what to do. The show wasn’t crazy enough to yell “less talk, more rock” or to do anything that would spur the show forwards. All I could do was stare at the back of my hands and think about the cornbread recipe I had written there. These moments of poor performance art were redeemed by the music.

The pop star that I knew hadn’t disappeared; she was still very much there. Instead, the pop star had been augmented by a rather involved light show involving a number of LED panels, spotlights, and a remote-controlled fog machine. She danced just as hard as she could and stood in the breeze. These moments in the show were actually very good. I enjoyed seeing her perform songs and explore the realms of the stage (she was walking on the ledge in front of me during one of her songs). The Blow can still kill it. She loves bass and handclaps, two things that will always go over well with me. Her voice still has the fragility it needs and she can totally still get the crowd moving. In the end, I just wished that she could have spared me the narrative and killed it more. By the end of the show, I didn’t really know how to feel about it. I did like the music, but as you can probably sense, the performance art aspects caused me a considerable amount of consternation. If I knew then what I know now, would I do it again? I don’t know. I just didn’t enjoy what I saw that much. It was cool, but it wasn’t awesome. I wanted more from someone who I know is capable of giving it to me.