MUSIC
Mean Motor Scooter Still one of the hottest tickets around, the Fort Worth rawk band returns with the new record Mr. Sophistication. B Y
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Mean Motor Scooter may be “local,” technically, but the hard-rocking and -popping quartet has fans all over, including France and Spain, where MMS has received some airplay and good press. Now with the release of the band’s latest recording, the EP Mr. Sophistication, there’s hope that keyboardist Rebekah Elizabeth, drummer Jeff Friedman, singer-guitarist Sammy Kidd, and bassist Joe Tacke can take advantage of their newfound international profile. Too bad a
HearSay Let me start this by saying that music venues and pretty much every other kind of establishment, most notably restaurants, are two wildly different things. At a music venue, congregating is sort of the point. At a restaurant, under any circumstances but especially now, you’ll need to stay as far away from my family and me as humanly possible. None of us wants to be forced to shield ourselves from your splattering coughs or, worse, overhear your inane conversations in your outside voice inside. We have much more exciting topics of our own we need to discuss, like Why do we wait until entire TV series are over before we start watching them? and Is getting dressed really all that important? and Why do I always have to be the one to help him with his homework?! You at least have zero patience. I have -10! All the data indicate that most momand-pop establishments are not going to survive the lockdown, paycheck protection or not. (And it’s most likely “not.”) A restaurant at 25% capacity is, for most restaurants, about as close to closed as theoretically possible. The average bar at 25% capacity is what is referred to in the beverage industry’s esoteric parlance as “dead.” Most venues here in the Fort are
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pandemic stands in their –– and everybody else’s –– way. MMS was scheduled to play the Wildflower! Arts & Music Festival this week in Richardson with Joan Jett, Loverboy, and several other vintage rock headliners, but due to the pandemic, the event was canceled. Locally, MMS was supposed to perform an EP release show on April 11 at MASS. That instead turned into a livestreamed concert from the same venue on May 1. More than 2,100 people have viewed the almost hour-long show. The average turnout for the group’s North Texas shows is approximately 50 to 100 people on most nights, Kidd said. While touring the West Coast in 2018 and 2019, performing in California and Oregon, sharing the stage with Alternative Tentacles’ The Darts, and meeting the label’s founder, Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, the group played in front of some pretty packed crowds, Kidd said. “Releasing an album during the pandemic has been less than ideal, to say the least,” Tacke said, adding that he and his bandmates have been able to pivot quickly to “focus on more streaming and radio stuff.” Mr. Sophistication was recorded in one day in Fort Worth at Cloudland Recording Studio (Pinkish Black, Ting Tang Tina, Chillamundo) and One Horn Studio (Josh & The Jet Noise, Dome Dwellers). It was engineered by Dreamy Life cofounder
Robby Rux (The Cush, The Fibs, Maestro Maya), Elizabeth, and Tacke, who also mixed and mastered it. Now available on digital platforms, including Bandcamp, Mr. Sophistication brings a high-frequency hard-rock pop sound with catchy beats crashing back and forth. It’s more than a well put together EP. Kidd’s screams accompanied by Elizabeth’s high-pitched organ match the ferocity of Tacke’s bass and Friedman’s heavy beats. On “Portals,” lyricist Kidd describes an outward universe longing for explanation, but to no avail. Instead, screeching and wailing resonate in concussive reverb-drenched waves. Kidd said the nature of Mr. Sophistication is a characterization of the ego as someone seeing oneself in a way meaning to be good or bad or selfless or helpless, adding, “The EP relates to human form and acknowledging the dark shadows inside of us with bad and good elements and certain figures looking at the occurrences while not pretending everything is so black and white all the time.” Kidd said MMS’ music is “a collage of a lot of different artists that we all listen to. Besides our main influences, we try to stay connected to artists,” including William S. Burroughs and other Beat writers and filmmaker David Lynch. Part of Mean Motor Scooter’s international profile comes from their
essentially bar-bars, and most of them are on the small side, equating to about a couple dozen people (not counting staff) to manspread in rooms built for 150-ish whenever Gov. Greg Abbott greenlights the reopening of bars/venues. For the curmudgeonly among us, the fewer walking meat bags on the stools next to us and down in front of us, the better. No pesky lines at the bar to stop the precious Bud Light from a-flowin’. No adjacent convos about messy breakups or crappy neighbors. For the venue owners and the patrons who want to rock out at a rock show, including the bands, it’s a bad scene. Being within cheersing distance of other people who want to bang their heads or two-step defines the essence of places like Lola’s Saloon, MASS, The Moon, and the White Elephant Saloon. Livestreaming takes the ethos of rocking and rolling only so far. There may be a way to move forward. As the concert/ticketing juggernaut Live Nation Entertainment has begun, um, rolling out concerts at drive-in theaters, Lava Cantina (5805 Grandscape Blvd, 214618-6893) is launching “drive-in” shows. At 8:30pm on Wednesday at the sprawling Colony-located venue/bar/restaurant, you can watch Texas Music singer-songwriter Wade Bowen perform in person, via Facebook Live, or in the cantina parking lot, a.k.a. at “the drive-in” — it’s a patchwork of designated parking spots, each with a table for up to six people separated 8-10 feet from
the next closest table. The performances inside will be broadcast in real time to a “massive” LED wall facing the tables, the cantina says, and in full sound. Concierges will serve food from the abbreviated menu and drinks and escort driver-inners to the restroom. For customers who do not feel safe leaving their vehicles to experience the performances, the shows will be broadcast on an FM station. Prices vary. For live views inside the cantina, the area in front of the stage will be divvied up into eight “yards” — a yard is a table enclosed by bicycle racks and at least 8 feet away from the next nearest other yard. On the patio, eight tables will be spread out by 6-8 feet, and 10 tables separated by the same distance will be available on the balcony. For stream viewing inside, a distance of 6-8 feet will separate the 16 tables in the dining area and the 10 tables on the roof. Lava Cantina’s adherence to social distancing deserves to be commended. Now it’s up to Bowen to make sure they are respected throughout his concert, and since he appears to be a pretty standup guy who’s unfairly maligned by Texas Music purists, I think he’ll do just fine. This is not the future. It’s just the future for now, and it’s a positive step. In many ways, Lava Cantina’s Wednesday show predates what’s being called the first major U.S. concert since the pandemic began. That’s on Friday, when country singersongwriter Travis McCready is scheduled
record labels. Along with Dreamy Life Records here in the Fort, Dirty Water Records U.K. released Mr. Sophistication. MMS had been working with Dirty Water U.S. before that office closed. Though the EP has been spun locally only on KXT and The Pirate, it’s received airplay overseas on several platforms and outlets. Mr. Sophistication was part of a planned double-EP release at two separate dates with a future plan to release a vinyl version with the EPs on sides A and B. “That’s what we were talking about doing,” Kidd said, “but we don’t have the funds to put it out right now.” Kidd is happy with the band’s sound now, especially with the relatively recent addition of Elizabeth, who joined in 2016 right before MMS’ lone album came out. Hindu Flying Machine and the 2016 singles “Naked Brunch/Such a Seducer,” a music video for “Gutterboy Blues,” last year’s TV Baby EP, and two other music videos altogether helped propel the West Coast tours. “We have no idea what it looks like moving forward,” Tacke said. “It doesn’t look like live shows will be back in any real sense of the word for a long time. Live shows were obviously our bread and butter. They were by far our biggest source of income, and now that’s completely dried up.” l
to play an intimate acoustic set at an 1,100seat venue in Arkansas. Temple Live is still waiting for Gov. Asa Hutchinson to sign off on the show because it’s arriving three days before venues can reopen according to his most recent proclamation. Temple Live promises to adhere to social distancing. Like Lava Cantina. After the past several weeks, of pain and confusion on all levels, from the urban villages and ’burbs to the (scandalously clueless) White House, people are just ready to rock. While drive-ins and drive-in shows are great, people are still going to have to wait for the full live-show experience. It could be over a year, based on some estimates. “In today’s world of fear and unease and social distancing,” the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl recently wrote in The Atlantic. “It’s hard to imagine sharing experiences like [concerts] ever again. I don’t know when it will be safe to return to singing arm in arm at the top of our lungs, hearts racing, bodies moving, souls bursting with life. But I do know that we will do it again, because we have to. It’s not a choice. We’re human. We need moments that reassure us that we are not alone. That we are understood. That we are imperfect. And, most important, that we need each other.” And we do. — Anthony Mariani Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
