Seattle Subsonic

So Grudge Rock Was Pretty Awesome

January 18th, 2010

I wouldn’t really consider myself much of a game show fan these days, but I’ve certainly seen my share throughout my 30 years. I’ve always liked Jeopardy! and The Price is Right and will still catch those on occasion. I’ll admit to getting swept up in the initial Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? craze a few years back in its “halcyon” days with Regis Philbin. My brain is cluttered with childhood memories watching Let’s Make A Deal starring Monty Hall (where did those all costumed idiots come from, anyway?), $25,000 Pyramid with the ageless Dick Clark, or the Chuck Woolery vehicles of The Love Connection and Scrabble. I never really liked Wheel of Fortune, and I’ll pugnaciously avoid most of the short-life quiz show wannabes that now or did litter the airwaves (hello, Deal or No Deal).

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I do have a special place in my heart for Family Feud, though. I can even give you the lineage of hosts, from memory: Richard Dawson begat Ray Combs, who begat Louie Anderson, who begat Richard Karn (a.k.a. “Al Borland”), who begat today’s host John O’Hurley (a.k.a. “J. Peterman”). God, that’s embarrassing. It came as no surprise, then, that Seattle’s rock show version—Grudge Rock—completely entertained me. What was surprising was that I’d never been to one prior to Saturday (it recently migrated from the Re-Bar to the Crocodile to accommodate a growing fan base). It goes like this: two local bands face off within the typical Family Feud format, only all the questions are music related (Prince and Sting were two very popular answers this night). There are 10 rounds and halfway through, the leading band can either choose to play their set right then, or wait to play at the end of the night, as de factor “headliner”. Whoever ends up winning at the end gets all the door money. At ten bucks a pop, that’s no small shakes. Must’ve been at least a 150 people there.

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It was almost as fun as Seattle Semi-Pro Wrestling at the Re-Bar, which host Jake Stratton also pioneered. He also announces at Rat City Roller Girl matches (HIGHLY recommended, btw) and monstrously growls in local deathmetal band BloodHag. He’s your local go-to contact sport and game show announcer for hire. As for the match, everyman pop-rockers BOAT took on dapper electro-rockers Head Like A Kite. BOAT wore black tees, each with a single letter to spell out their name, and HLAK…well, they wore a lot of flair. Feathery boas, wigs galore, a gas mask, a Darth Vader mask, a sheik headdress, and one full-on panda bear suit. In BOAT’s defense—or offense, if you prefer—they also had a big fat guy cheerleading without his pants. His name was Chicken Parm. HLAK, in addition to the panda, had Tilson of the Saturday Knights. The biggest travesty of the night came when U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was NOT one of seven (!) answers to the question, “Name a song with a day of the week in the title”. Blasphemy! I also thought Eddie Vedder was a pretty good pick for a musician-cum-movie soundtrack writer. But the survey didn’t say.

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BOAT was winning at halftime, and they chose to play their set. I hadn’t seen them in a couple years, and it seems as though they’ve turned it up a notch, Weezer/Pavement/Ted Leo-style. Their songs were much quicker and slicker than I remembered. Much of the indie-boy goofiness is still in tact, but with three guitars and two keyboards chugging away, I found myself focusing solely on the instruments. They were good. In the second half, both teams ended up passing off to their opponent quite a bit, but in the end HLAK took home the prize. I do think a couple improvements could be made to Grudge Rock: pare down the rounds from 10 to maybe 7 or 8 (it dragged on a little bit), and utilize the game’s honky-tonk fiddler theme music way more. That shit is funny.

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The crowd had dwindled by the time HLAK’s set started, but those who stuck around—like me—were treated to an excellent outing by Dave Einmo and Trent Moorman. Tilson came on stage for “Director’s Cut” (video below), which can be found on the philanthropic GIVE Seattle compilation, plus one other song. Einmo played telephone captain and jostled ably between his guitar and his console, and Moorman was possessed and robotic on drums. The show-goers seemed a bit tepid, but Einmo did his best to spur them on, jumping onto the floor at one point and pumping out steady, salacious beats to match his taut guitar. Lots more pics here. One more game video here.

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