This past weekend, a new Wham City location opened up a block east of the old one in a two story brick building that offered shaking wooden floorboards, porous entrance ways for those about to sneak in, and, behind the corner where bands played, a polystyrene sort of goop that resembled gold-gilded Buddhist temples by way of Fraggle Rock (maybe if Dan Deacon were Buddha?).
Speaking of ROCK, two of Impose’s (and my) favorite rock ‘n’ roll bands played cruelly short, back to back sets for the venue’s opening. Health (yeah, we just covered them) and Ponytail (yeah, we like to cover them), were the night’s temporary prophets to a room of initiates prostrate before something bigger than either band: a virgin party space. Eventually, this building at 1539 North Calvert will lose some of that elusive aura but on Saturday, the murals were fresh and faces were glowing. Allen Roizman was in attendance in order to take pictures, but he ended up rendering his own music in all its grainy, gusty expansiveness into images. What can you do. The party itself was cheery and relatively tame, despite the aforementioned shaking wooden floorboards, which proved their elasticity best during Ponytail’s set, a period of thirty-odd minutes in which multiple audience members claimed to have “lost time“, unable to remember what they were doing while their home team heroes batted away at their songs against the ceaseless current of mind-melded Baltimorians crushing against their guitars and surrounding their singer.
