by Brian Clarey
A Monday-night rock show is by nature an exclusive event. People with kids can’t go to Monday-night rock shows. People with day jobs can’t go to Monday-night rock shows. Even hardcore football fans must pass on the Monday-night rock show during regular-season play, lest they miss a crucial development in the playoff picture.
And even though I am all of those things, still I felt drawn to the Crown above the Carolina Theatre on Monday night. For the rock show.
I wanted to be there because of Pinche Gringo, aka Josh Johnson, whose gritty and authentic chops I haven’t tasted in years, and because of Hawke Kelly of the Old One-Two. I see these guys every week behind the grill at Fincastle’s when I make my newspaper drop, but I wanted to catch them onstage, in their element, to get a glimpse of who they really are. And it didn’t hurt that Lindsey Sprague, the drummer in their new project Wahya’s, also plays lead guitar for Daddy Issues in a wonderfully incestuous turn.
And then there was T0W3RS, the Band of the Moment, which is really just one dude named Derek Torres whose lush electronic performance art has caused so much fervor that even I have heard of him.
So even though I’m old and overworked, and I go to bed at 9:30 p.m., and my Monday-night-rock-show days have been gone longer than the wild mane of hair I used to whip around on the dance floor, I found myself up in the Crown the night before deadline surrounded by a few dozen members of the city’s creative underclass.
That’s who goes to rock shows on Monday nights.
Because when you work in restaurants and coffeeshops and bars while chasing your dreams, Monday is the weekend, when you take the wadded up tips you’ve pulled over the last few days and blow the whole thing on loud music and strong drink and dry goods with your boho friends, none of whom will have to work in the morning, and you laugh at the people who do.
I remember it well.
After a quick Wahya’s set — crunchy guitar laden with reverb and distortion over metronome drumming and thundering bass — T0W3RS did his stream-of-consciousness electronica dirges and then pulled out his guitar and played a stripped-down encore set.
It was a genuine musical moment in the city of Greensboro, something special for the people who cared to show up on a Monday night.
I wish I could have stayed until the end. But I had to work in the morning.
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Great as always, but you’re making me regret skipping a show last night because I did have to work this morning, just as I do every soul-crushing weekday morning.