Big Business

Troubadour - June 1, 2009

Live Review by Sean P. Lambert

In the hours preceding this concert I had to drive a box truck over half of creation, ending up in El Segundo arguing with a guy at a FedEx loading dock over whom exactly I should speak to about shipping some palate materials to Atlanta and beyond. My girl was the one that really wanted to see Big Business, a band with a storied history that intertwines itself with outfits like The Melvins, Karp, Murder City Devils, and The Tight Bros From Way Back When. Even though it was a school night, I acquiesced. Hell, we got put on the list and got to hang at the even more storied Troubadour, a venue I ashamedly had never been to. Of course, my comely lass of virtue true also had wanted me to join her on the roof of the Paley Center a few hours beforehand at a shindig honoring one Norman Lear, which I turned down due to general fatigue coupled with an acute bout of tedium in the face of conversing with beautiful people well above my tax bracket. When we met up later at the show, she told me Jimmy (TNT) Walker was in attendance, liberally scarfing the free pastry-wrapped wieners and top shelf cocktails. I guess I missed out.

After taking a couple bumps to get me out the door and into my Hyundai Accent hatchback, I fired up the South Korean stereo and rolled onto the 101 heading west. The ride was curiously uneventful for a LA freeway excursion, but was capped with excellent parking karma as I located a vacant spot right across the street from the club. I thought that only happened in the movies. After securing my ticket, the guy at the door went through a monologue of what wasn’t allowed at the Troubadour. Apparently, gum chewing is verboten. Go figure. My girl eventually joined me in the barroom just as the opening band, Tweak Bird, had finished. Yep, I missed Norman Lear, Jimmy Walker and Tweak Bird all in one night. She gave me a quick rundown of the general history of Big Business so I wouldn’t walk in the showroom reeking of my own ignorance. Among other things, she insisted that the drummer Coady Willis was more like the Muppet drummer Animal than Keith Moon ever could have been. She also had the presence of mind to stop BB’s burly and bearded bassist Jared Warren as he made his way through the barroom. You see, we’re tight with the filthy members of Rye Coalition, a New Jersey band that toured with Jared’s Murder City Devils awhile back when lion still had intentions of sleeping with the lamb. Jared remembered her and was all smiles before he took the stage. Good dude that Jared.

As we made our way to the stage in the adjoining room, Big Business opened their show by methodically chanting Let’s go baseball…Let’s go baseball…over and over again like a deep-throated Japanese malapropism. The rest of the night was marked by their distinctive low-end sludge rock, driven by the heavy drum and bass interplay. Offset by Toshi Kasai’s guitar work, the third member of the band spliced the audio weight of his comrades with noticeable ease, bending notes and accenting rhythms throughout, in addition to contributing weird whispers and moans during muted drum solos. My girl insisted they covered two different Melvins songs, which they might have even had a hand in creating. The whole thing ran about an hour at an absolutely blistering volume. The vocals were heavily echoed and the subsequent lyrics were near impossible to discern. Regardless, the power of the presentation rang true and the accomplished musicianship of the band was in full effect from stern to bow. Two long-haired stoner looking guys joined Kasai on the mic and created truly gorgeous harmonies, singing Have you been to Africa? It’s beautiful. Like I have (or something like this) for a meditative ending to an otherwise frantically executed set. We left with ears ringing, brows sweaty, bodies spent, thankful and wowed.