by LE Francis
A lot has happened since I last wrote one of these columns. I’m in a new band, I am writing prolifically under another pen name, & somehow I became editor-in-chief here at Sage Cigarettes Magazine & this is really the last thing I have time for right now, but perhaps that’s why I wanted to come back to it.
The official reason why I left off writing this column is that I couldn’t remember much of the Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties show because I found a gluten-free chicken restaurant & a barcade adjacent to Neumos & went a little apeshit on the hot wings & Titos I completely missed the openers because time became a non-concept when I was playing Mortal Kombat.
Once I finally got into Neumos, I remember swaying in the crowd next to this tall, blonde guy that kept aggressively yelling the lyrics into his girlfriend’s face & being pushed & elbowed by a business-casual dude who smelled like leather shoes. Ultimately, I came in late & I just didn’t have a great time at the show proper. It wasn’t the band, it wasn’t even the venue (though ya’ll could have opened the mezzanine) — ultimately, I was distracted by the rest of it. The neighborhood was new (to me), I got to browse a bookstore with resident cats, walk in a park with ducks & bunnies, & then found out that the restaurant on the side of the venue just happened to fit my unfortunately strict dietary guidelines. That hardly makes for a concert review, hell, it’d barely suffice for a travel blog post.
But as I look back over my records, I realize that Starset came first anyway. & I had been looking forward to writing something about the absurdity of fans taking to the band’s subreddit to share a photo of a discarded cup on the sidewalk in front of Showbox Sodo to call the venue/neighborhood dirty when El Corazon/The Funhouse exists. All I’m saying is you can’t have gone to many, if any, local shows if you think Showbox Sodo is even close to the grossest venue in town & you definitely weren’t around in the Studio Seven days. I’m critical of venues & can admit that Sodo is a flat box of a room that isn’t ideal for shorter concertgoers & occasionally results in inconsistent sound, but it’s far from the grossest venue in town. I personally love to see a fave scheduled at Sodo because the I-90 access is ace & Ghostfish, Silver Platters, & Shawn Kemp’s are some of my favorite places in town. & of course, I’m old & I enjoy sitting on the platform in the back of the bar until I’m ready to go out on the floor. Some of the tours I’ve been to lately have been stacked with openers — Hot Mully, goddamn — & having that place to sit for a while puts it above even The Croc in my preference.
Obviously, my perception was off on the whole ‘I have nothing to write about’ front. But ultimately, I haven’t been feeling it. I compulsively seem to make creative work out of every possible facet of my life, even when I don’t have the time or the passion to follow through long term. & while I know I have the ability to write this column — I’m an award-nominated poet, a working musician, a former newspaper arts journalist, & now the editor-in-chief of a literary magazine — I don’t really have the time or energy for a monthly column.
Admittedly, I came to this project the same way I come to a lot of things — spite. Back in 2022, I went to a couple of shows on Thank You Scientist’s headlining tour with Strawberry Girls & Art Thief. All three bands killed it, both shows. Both of the venues were small rooms, but they were in interesting parts of Portland & Seattle & there was a lot to see & do on that trip. & yeah, I am very partial to TYS for a few reasons, one being that I have a friend in Portland that has goes out to every one of their PDX tour stops w/ me & the first time we went (2019) was the first time I went to Portland to visit her. So, it’s kind of our thing.
About six months after the 2022 show, another friend sent me a review written about the Portland stop on that tour & the author was absolutely panning TYS & not in a way that just kicked at the band — but in a way that called all of the TYS fans a bunch of ear-gaged Portland hipsters. & being a hillbilly from Eastern Washington, I was flattered but also so annoyed. I hate the stereotypical boiling down of an audience, especially based on the perceived inaccessibility of the genre — the this is nerd music/this is musician’s music/this is a sausage fest typa shit people get on. It’s been irritating since I got into power metal in my early 20s & people always acted like there weren’t women in the audience of those shows or in the fanbases of those bands. It’s an essentialism that gives legs to potentially harmful stereotypes that diminish women & other folks in the scene & can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So many of the bands I loved never got the shot they deserved (I will always be mad about Echoes of Eternity, they should have been huge — Francine Bouchier had one of the best voices in metal & I hope she’s still singing). Whenever people write that type of shit, they’re always wrong & should be ashamed of writing something so stupid.
& because I go to shows all the time & have a background in writing, I thought I should start writing about my experiences because I could do my best to be fair & offer entry points for music that people assume is less accessible. & yeah, I suppose the spite served me because I did what I set out to do. & for a time, I really enjoyed my process of ruminating over my night to write a column.
But along the way I found so many ways to struggle with this seemingly simple task. I’d spend fruitless hours trying to figure out what to say besides “dude, that was awesome” when even well-examined remained more ethereal than concrete — as it sometimes goes with art. Sometimes, the experience was just okay & I felt like there was nothing to report back on. Sometimes, I wanted to throw my phone out the window because it takes very bad pictures in low light & I was embarrassed to post them. Sometimes, I wasn’t in the mood to stop what I was doing & snap a passable photo in the first place.
& so I made the decision to shelf the column over the summer because I was in a crush of too many shows & too many projects & had a total lack of feeling for arts writing in general. & while some time has passed, I think I’m still in that place — just not feeling it.
& with that, I think I’ll leave this column again for a while. Maybe I’ll write something quarterly. Maybe next time, I’ll run down the shows I’ve been to, or write about writing about art, or explain how I somehow got the journalist dream job I thought I always wanted only to realize it was actually not for me. The possibilities are countless.
Until then, maybe you’ll catch me in the crowd…
Verses on Verses is a biweekly music column from the perspective of a poet. Inquiries can be directed to LE Francis, lefrancis@sagecigarettes.com.
LE Francis (she/her) is a recovering arts writer living in the rainshadow of the Washington Cascades. She is the EIC of Sage Cigarettes Magazine. She is a Pushcart-nominated poet & her debut chapbook THIS SPELL OF SONG & STAR is available through Bottlecap Press. She plays bass in the indie/prog band Hands Above Stars. Find her online at nocturnical.com.
