The Blind Shake, Vox Humana & The Americas

Of course the show wasn’t going to start at “7 PM Sharp” as the flyer claimed, but it sadly could not predict anything about an ill-timed baseball accident or car problems en route to Chico from Santa Cruz, California. To the dismay of many, the Chico-famed Dik-Diks and Redding, Califorina, rockers, The Red Robot, were not able to perform last Wednesday. The upsetting news did not turn the bummed-out crowd loose elsewhere, however. Still planning to rock ‘n’ roll and out of control were The Americas, Madison, Wisconsin’s Vox Humana and Minneapolis natives, The Blind Shake. Packing 1422 Warner Street full of local and out-of-town show-goers, The Americas took the stage (or should I say the dining room). It seems like the umpteenth time within the past few months. Don’t get me wrong — The Americas don’t get old, and with Wednesday’s set chock-full of punk rock energy, few people were outside prancing because most were inside dancing. And rhyming only seems appropriate when dealing with Casey Deitz’s poetically complex drumming, and Travis Wuerthner’s erratic and emotionally charged vocals; all the while being so loud you can feel your internal (maybe external as well) organs vibrating. A powerful performance from The Americas — not that you should ever expect less.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, Vox Humana is by definition, “an organ reed stop that produces tones imitative of the human voice.” Who cares — they can make a house of underagers’ legs shake, right? Although it may be straying from the point, we all know we only need one Get Up Kids and one Modest Mouse; we can do without the 400 copycat bands that inevitably follow. At first listen, Vox Humana sadly seemed to be mirroring a large number of other bands, leaving them as a product of a raped genre. Wow, harsh, I know. Fortunately, they soon proved to not be wasting anyone’s time based on the crowd’s reactions alone. Many beverages were spilled, but you’ll have to blame that on Vox Humana for making us rock out so hard.
As people congregated outside, praising the performances of the night so far, tour mates The Blind Shake set up, and 20 minutes later, laid down choppy riffs and beats destined to make your head shake mechanically. The Blind Shake is a straightforward, no-nonsense rock band, not letting one instrument or person fall by the wayside. Pulling in a bit of post-punk influence, and leaving plenty of places to stop and scream, the energy level never dropped once, even during the encore. After talking to a few of the band members after the show, the consensus would have to be that they were “hella stoked” to be in Northern California, and I don’t think it would be wrong to say that Northern California, or Chico at least, was jazzed to have them as well.
– Jourdan Ladley
– Photo by Ben Kerney

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