Let me preface this with: I would not trade in my experience at The Blow for any other alternative Friday-night plan. That being said, there are certain people who should not attend a Blow show: those who don’t like performance art, those who aren’t into monologues, those who aren’t into meta-narrative, those who grow uneasy around loud breathing. Steer clear.
The show opened with Love Inks, an adorable band out of Austin, TX who introduced themselves as “a band, who, you know, plays music.” The group humbly compared themselves to the Washington Generals, the foil team who always lost to the Harlem Globetrotters (in this case, The Blow), but they cheerfully rocked out on stage despite the rather pessimistic metaphoric role. They closed by whipping out an old school Polaroid camera and taking a picture of the cheering crowd. Such a pleasant alternative to the standard mic-dropping.
The Blow (Khaela Maricich, frontwoman; Melissa Dyne, tech woman extraordinaire) came on next, emerging subtly on two mini-stages set up in the middle of the venue and in front of the main, permanent stage. Lights went down, blue background screen went up… and the talking began.
I’m not against monologueing, I’m not against exploring the creative process, but I must admit I got more than my fair share of insight into the artistic psyche of the duo. Silent Melissa (who looked fabulous in an all-white, bell bottomed get-up) provided Khaela backup beats as the singer talked about finding ‘space in the universe for their album and music’ (they decided that pocket of space was somewhere in the ether of cable-TV-land), adapting the role of long-haired sexy woman rocker (conforming to the norms of popular culture), and navigating the silence of the environment with their own audible creations. When she wasn’t talking, Khaela was doing all sorts of things, including, but not limited to, climbing the speakers, silhouette-dancing against the blue screen, and crowd surfing while lamazze-breathing.
In between and around all the antics were The Blows’ tracks, all of which I love. True Affection drew loud cheers, and their Like Girls also drew considerable enthusiasm. Overall, a super interesting and mind-stretching show… if a bit light on music