Before head­ing over to Babylon for the Dwarves con­cert, Iain and I stopped into Record Runner to see if there were any albums worth buy­ing. I found the Dreamtheater con­cert DVD for $26 and was about to pur­chase it before real­iz­ing that I’d have no place to put it dur­ing the con­cert. I also found out that The Dears have a new album out which I must con­sid­er pur­chas­ing. I lat­er dis­cov­ered that they will be per­form­ing in two days at the same place, anoth­er thing need­ing con­sid­er­a­tion.

The con­cert was great. I did­n’t know any of the open­ing acts (Sack Lunch, Maximum R&R, and the Riptides), but they weren’t very good any­way. I nev­er knew how tiny Babylon is and was sur­prised to find air­plane seats and couch­es scat­tered around the large room. The size made for an inti­mate atmos­phere and com­fort­able view­ing, even for ver­ti­cal­ly chal­lenged peo­ple such as myself.

While Iain and I wait­ed for things to get set up, we pon­dered the things that would look odd at a punk show. Being Asian was the first thing that we came up with, although I did see one Asian girl and one per­son of African decent there in a crush of Caucasian faces. We agreed that some­one with an iPod or record­able MiniDisc play­er would stand out from super­fluity alone. One thing we could­n’t fig­ure out was the poplu­ta­tion of gay punks com­pared to gay non-punks. I joked about whether the more dom­i­nant male punk would make fun of his effem­i­nate, emo lis­ten­ing boyfriend.

There were some Dwarves shirts and CDs avail­able for pur­chase, but noth­ing I would con­sid­er wear­ing. Two thongs with the skull and cross bon­ers logo were spread out on the table in a rather embar­rass­ing way. Even a Blood Guts & Pussy shirt was there, and we were sur­prised to find that it lacked a sin­gle shirt pock­et.

When the Dwarves came on, there was no sign of HEWHOCANNOTBENAMED, much to our dis­ap­point­ment, although I sup­pose it was bet­ter for the crowd of all-ages. The drum­mer and two gui­tarists we did­n’t rec­og­nize, although one of them came on with sun­glass­es and a stock­ing over his head while the oth­er went skins. Blag entered with a sleeve­less “Slut.” shirt sans gloves or wig (come to think of it, I haven’t seen him ever wear­ing a shirt with sleeves).

Then there was Tazzie.

She came on wear­ing a dark pur­ple-blue dress shirt with a sequined nurs­es mask. Her dark brown hair cov­ered her entire face and at times she seemed like Cousin It play­ing bass. Partially through the set she took off her mask, unbut­toned her shirt half-way to reveal a lacy black demi, and flood­ed her hair behind her right ear when she got too hot.

It’s obvi­ous that every mem­ber of the band has a good time on stage. Blag body surfs and is gen­er­al­ly charged enough to keep the pit ener­gized, just as the leg­ends go. The gui­tarists all scream at the top of their lungs while hit­ting out the fast paced Dwarves tunes. Even the drum­mer is lost in a furi­ous fren­zy of adren­a­line. But Tazzy rocks the fuck out. She gets so into the music that she rarely looks up from her gui­tar, her eyes half-closed most of the time. She spas­mod­i­cal­ly bangs her head at each beat and each aggres­sive bass line. It’s almost as if she’s expe­ri­enc­ing an implo­sive surge of ener­gy while she has a look of qui­et con­cen­tra­tion on her face as the rest of the band wax­es chaot­ic around her. I’ve nev­er seen a more attrac­tive instru­men­tal­ist.

Plenty of great hair­styles were in the crowd, although some were rather shab­bi­ly done. The best one was some­one sport­ing a pink mohawk with a razor thin cen­ter strip extend­ing more than a foot out­wards.

The entire set last­ed more than thir­ty min­utes, which must be a Dwarves record, and sur­prised us since we were expect­ing any­thing from three to fif­teen min­utes. Now I’ll be look­ing for­ward to the upcom­ing AFI con­cert, and pos­si­ble Dears con­cert. Walking home on the bare city streets was nice and peace­ful, away from the con­stant stream of noise and peo­ple. It was a good way to end off a tir­ing evening.