The Many Faces of Greydon Clark

Okay, maybe once or twice I’ve felt I was in over my head, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt it was too weird. Pretty subjective and arbitrary, and more than likely it means I’m not out there pushing it and inserting myself into new situations.

Thursday, July 28th, Erase Errata performed at the Eagle Tavern, one of San Francisco’s more popular leather bars. Being alone in a night club that caters to bearded and burly gay men was definitely a new experience. I kind of felt like I was in the Blue Flame, the “gay bar” in Police Academy, except the Eagle has hand drawn posters of freakishly over-sized muscle men performing fellatio other members of the Ursus arctos horribilis family and the guys wearing sleeveless cop uniforms and tool-belts with handcuffs are serious. Despite the cop sex imagery, the crowd was pretty tame, 50% of the paid attendees were anemic indie rockers and the other half were bears in their mid-fifties.

After one beer I spot a fellow ex-pat from the 26th and we retreat to the well heated deck (I assume to accommodate shirtlessness) and drink Budweiser while hiding from the opening acts. Mercifully, Erase Errata is set-up and playing by 11:30. The set is good. The band is now a three piece, having jettisoned the dude they hired to do vocals. Not sure when this happened or why, but I’m glad. He was crap. They didn’t play a lot of material from the two LPs, but they snuck in some hits and I enjoyed the songs that were new to me. Basically, with the reduced line-up, they are a bass-drums-vocals band with some noise/slop guitar. And, strangely, it isn’t unmusical trash, but enjoyable and catchy.

Still, with the line-up changes and somewhat abrupt and unceremonious end to their set at the Eagle, one senses that the band’s time has passed. Hopefully I’m wrong and in the near future the EE drops a solid LP on the masses, but I doubt it.