Awnthay closes the opening of The 4th Wall at Capitol Theatre on Saturday, 11 November 2023.

G.O.L.E.M. and The Snorts teed up the triple stack bill.

Digital Awareness in the house.

Were you there? Hump Day News was.

It was the inaugural edition of The 4th Wall Presents. The first show at the new DIY venue operating somewhere within the hollows of the Capitol Theatre. The beginning of a series of gigs that leads to who knows where.

Like every Bene Gesserit witch from Dune knows: “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Enough butter on the popcorn? Should Digital Awareness dial the 80s-nostalgia meter up or down? Is the PA melting too many faces, or too few?

So many questions. Not just anyone has all the answers. That’s how event planners make a living. Figuring out how all the pieces fit together for boutique affairs is an art and a science. It will be fascinating to watch the Tetris blocks fall into place at the Capitol Theatre late late shows.

Next up? Friday (11/17) catch Today Junior headlining a three-stack bill with a pair of chiptuners, Portlandia-based Exciting!! Excellent!! and locals Battlemode.

The Snorts

Straight outta Albany! It’s The Snorts. A four-piece with a rootin’, tootin’ Aughts-era rawk vibe. Tight hooks, licks, and fills designed to blow your mind in a minute or two and never overstay its welcome.

The band just released their Dork Factor EP in August.

But the real show-stopper on Saturday night was the Chumbawamba cover “On The Day The Nazi Died.”

You know Chumbawamba. They’re the one with the longest album title of all time: The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether from Lack of Ideas or from Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to 'Guard' Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won.

G.O.L.E.M.

The hard-rocking three-piece G.O.L.E.M. cooks like an egg frying atop a Camaro hood in the summer sun. Blues-based, heavy rawk with postpunk and hardcore instincts. It took the drummer about 1.5 songs before he ripped off his shirt. The bassist gets into such a wild groove that he needed a little sticky strip of spare picks within arm’s reach to grab a quick replacement when the latest pick went flying. Extra points for insane, high tempo psych jammery from the guitarist.

No one knows what G.O.L.E.M. stands for. Gold otters lack electric mice?

Awnthay

The five-piece Awnthay started the set with the amps aimed at the theatre seats, but tilted them pitwards once the crowd moved on stage.

It was that kind of night with the crowd sort of feeling out where, when, and how it should be. Theatres are already places for entertainment. A concert isn’t quite the same experience, though, as a passive movie screening vibe. A minimal quotient of crowd participation is required.

Awnthay pulled the crowd up to the lip of the stage with a mix of alt rock, emo, and pop punk jammery. Shades of psych with the colors and hues culled from three layers of guitar. Shades of Post Malone, if that makes sense, in the commitment to pure pop ethos, without committing to what that pop needs to sound or look like.

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