I needn’t have worried. I ended up actually getting most of the inside jokes, anyway.

I went with an old friend who introduced me to the Teenbeat scene in the first place, ages and ages ago. We missed openers Bossanova but saw the rest. A Teenbeat spokesman named Patrick acted as MC, doing little pieces of shtick between bands like acting as a corporate executive for the Teenbeat Corporation. Oddball Jonny Cohen did a capella songs from time to time. All of that stuff was quirkily entertaining.

The first band we saw was The Rondelles. I had never listened to them before, and they were a bit of a revelation. I remember them being around, and I was maybe even hanging out at the same parties as them a decade ago, but somehow I never got around to checking out their music. It was pretty kick-ass. They were sloppy and charming, not having performed in ten years, and at least the hott bassist Yukiko Moynihan seemingly not having played music at all in the meantime. I thought they were rad. I don’t remember ever seeing the standing-drumming-and-mashing-a-keyboard-with-a-drumstick technique before.

Here’s a video via kickbright:

The day after the show I got a copy of the Rondelles’ Fiction Romance, Fast Machines (also good!) and will gradually work my way through their discography.

I didn’t need any introduction to the discography of Versus, though. This was my second time seeing the newly-reunited version of the band, all violin-ed up. They are really an amazing band, and sounded really good on the old songs. They were in some ways the best band of the night — they can turn on a dime from soft/pretty to noisy/chaotic as well as any band. But I think the new stuff lacks the power of the old; it is more in keeping with the last “old” Versus album, Hurrah.

Sasha Frere-Jones recently wrote the following about Pavement: “In later albums, the beauty remained but the tension did not.” That would be a good description of Versus, too. Their brand-new album, On the Ones and Threes, was not yet released at the time of this show, but it turned out to be pretty yet not gripping. I will write a full review of it sometime.

I still really love Versus and will gladly go see them again whenever I get the chance, but more out of nostalgia than as an active, going concern. Though hopefully they will prove my (minor) doubts wrong. They can certainly put on a good show, still!

Here they are doing “Circle”:

And a new song, “Into Blue”:

Finally, after more offbeat interludes, we got to Unrest. They certainly made things interesting. I don’t know how many people in the crowd were aware that Unrest was doing a multiple-reunion deal, reuniting several different line-ups (details and setlists are here). Early Unrest is a lot different from later Unrest. I had never heard any of it before, and I don’t think too much of the crowd had either. There was no explanation of what was going on, unless you were savvy enough to follow along with Mark Robinson’s change-up introductions: for the first version he said, “Hi, we’re Unrest from Wakefield High School,” followed later by “we’re Unrest from Arlington, Virginia” and ultimately “we’re Unrest from Washington, DC.”

So yeah, the concert was a little complicated and slow-starting.

When the earliest incarnation of the band played odd experimental tracks and Bertolt Brecht, I overheard some younger attendees behind me talking about “indie rock.” They clearly didn’t know Unrest, but they were confused by the weird spectacle, noting that the high-school-era Unrest didn’t sound much like Modest Mouse or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Ah, indie rock. So baffling!

I was a little thrown off, too, by that earliest version of the band. They were sort of amusing. But when they switched over to the second incarnation I started to honestly enjoy the show. I had never listened to this version either, sort-of “mid-career” Unrest. I was intrigued by it and since then have started buying some of those albums, like Malcolm X Park (still looking for a cheap copy of Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation). They are good. In hindsight, this era of Unrest (from around 1988-1990) was promising and making interesting music.

Finally the crowd gave a cheer of excitement and/or relief when Bridget Cross hit the stage to take over on bass and play the semi-popular Unrest songs from their classic period that almost everybody was there to see. It was fantastic. We were close to the stage and they sounded really impressive; the songs from Perfect Teeth and Imperial hold up great, the fans were loving it, and the members of the band seemed to be having a good time. I hadn’t really listened to those albums in a long time, and I kind of forgot how many excellent songs there are.

Words don’t really do justice so we are lucky to be in the youtube era:

“Angel I Will Walk You Home”:

And “Make Out Club”:

It was one of my favorite performances in a really long time. My personal favorite was “I Do Believe You Are Blushing” and when I got home later that night I figured out how to play it on guitar. Not too hard! But then I tried to do “Cath Carroll” and about wore out my wrist. How does he strum so fast?!

This was a super memorable show, and even writing it up so much later is great. Here is a more contemporaneous review from dcist. This one is ending up on a lot of year-end best-ofs, I bet. Maybe mine too.

So I have been complaining about going to too many reunion shows, but then, Versus never was exactly broken up, so it’s ok that I went, right? They really are probably my all-time favorite band (the only other contender is Sonic Youth); I saw them play a lot of times back in the late ’90s and beginning of the ’00s; I have basically everything they’ve ever recorded and know the bulk of their lyrics by heart. Versus have played some occasional gigs in the time since they went on hiatus, including at least once or twice here in DC (Teenbeat anniversaries, for example), but I haven’t been able to go to any of them. Now, though, it seems like they are really “together,” playing a fair amount, recording a new album (!).

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this show, though. I checked out a few recent performances on youtube and they left me uncertain and even a little nervous. The line-up has shifted a bit, as they now feature Richard and Fontaine with Ed on drums and a woman named Margaret on violin. It was a little strange, but I found that I could accept this line-up as Versus once I started watching them play live. It helped that the two frontpersons of the band seemed loose and comfortable, chatting and joking around with the audience. It was like, oh yeah, this is Versus alright.

I ended up totally enjoying it (also, it was the first night I went out after getting swine flu, and I had a couple of beers and seemed to be healthy). They played a fair amount of new stuff and mostly earlier old material. It sounded good. The violin (and occasional keyboard) fit in better than I feared. Off the top of my head, I wouldn’t have remembered that Versus ever had any songs in the past with strings, but they played “Deep Red” and it sounded a lot better live than the old EP version, it actually was quite pretty. Versus were always pretty good at pulling off pretty songs amidst the harder indie rock. They did some other old songs like “Be-9,” “Circle,” and “Crazy” (by request). When somebody shouted out for “Morning Glory,” Fontaine commented that, since Ed didn’t play on those later records, he didn’t know them, but then they went ahead and did a pretty decent version of it for the encore.

I couldn’t entirely make up my mind about the new line-up and the new material… it will take me a while to decide what I think. It was totally good, but I kind of missed the latter-era line-up with Patrick and James. Richard is a brilliant guitarist but I think having James on guitar added a lot of depth… I have clear memories of the first time I saw Versus (this was the 3-brother line-up) and watching James play the lead riff on “Glitter of Love.” On the other hand it was interesting to hear how the violin integrated with the band; also the last Versus album, Hurrah, was not that great. Basically, I’m willing to let this new form of Versus grow on me if they stick around long enough. I would absolutely go see them again (contemplating whether they are worth trips to New York for) and I’m looking forward to the album.

At a certain point the quartet on stage was joined by a young chap on guitar (I believe they called him “Chris” but this was almost a month ago so I’m not certain) and Fontaine asked how many of us in the audience had a copy of The Stars Are Insane and proceeded to explain that Chris was the little kid in the album art. Crazy! So then my friends asked me whether or not that was Richard and Fontaine’s kid and I was like “I don’t even think they are a couple! he is maybe a nephew or something?” But it made me think. All those years of listening to this band, I never really even thought about their personal lives and relationships. Their lyrics are full of relationship sagas, but I never got the sense those stories were about each other. I honestly have no idea if they ever were/are a couple. How indie rock — boys and girls singing together and I barely ever even thought about them doing anything more than music with each other… though maybe this is due to my long-standing crush on Fontaine Toups.

Speaking of indie rock, Fontaine and Richard told an amusing story about the first time they played in DC, that Jenny Toomey got them to play a show at dc space with a bunch of “indie rock” bands, and that they didn’t know what indie rock was, or that they themselves might be indie rock. They said the indie rock kids terrified them. And that before they knew about indie rock, they thought they were “post-punk.” Ha.

Anyway I am glad that Versus is back in some form. As I get old and cranky, I’m falling into the typical old-person pattern of liking music from when I was 19 way more than I like the music of 19-year-olds today. Whatever.

Opening up for Versus was Soft Power, Mary Timony’s new band. I was pretty interested in seeing them; they’ve played a number of times in town over the past year or so but I had never made it to any of their shows. I was really impressed by the last iteration of the Mary Timony Band (with Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter from Medications/Faraquet) and their album The Shapes We Make. Also I’d seen Mary Timony play several times before and always like her performances.

But I wasn’t totally sold by Soft Power. I liked it, but something seemed off. Partly it was something about the sound and the stage presence: Mary’s vocals didn’t sound right, and she and the other singer (I don’t know his name) were constantly trading guitars and basses. Something just wasn’t quite right. But I’m interested in hearing more: musically it sounded like it had pretty good potential, a continuing progression for an interesting musician. There aren’t a whole lot of woman guitarists/singers like Mary Timony — disappointingly few — and the world definitely needs more girls who can rock out on guitar and who listen to prog. (Again, this was a while back, but Mary asked the crowd something like, “would you rather go on tour with the Scorpions or with Yes?” and despite my definite shout-out in favor of the Scorpions she was like, “I would totally choose Yes.” Man, I love the Scorpions…)

I’ll give Soft Power another chance, too. This was a fun show, gratifyingly filling up the backstage, and a good way to end the year. Though I still wish I had known about that Grant Hart show.