I’ve always thought of in-store performances as mere supplements to “real” shows. Maybe it’s because they’re usually short. Maybe it’s that they’re free, so I never feel the need to commit myself like I do when I’ve forked over lots of cash. Maybe it’s the lack of stage and formalities. They might be fine for intimate acoustic performances, where the situation’s awkwardness complements the music, but surely they’re not for the technically and compositionally ambitious.
Well. After seeing Dustin Wong play at Vacation Vinyl in Los Angeles’s Sunset Junction, I’ll have to rethink my philosophy.
Vacation’s a tiny store, with only four rows of well-selected vinyl and two aisles for the audience to cluster in. Dustin delineated his performance space with a semi-circle of eight colored pedals and boxes (just like the cover art from Infinite Love) linked by wires. For the small space, it was a perfect stage, setting the performer apart from us symbolically, but without the ego of something less purely functional. I mean, the pedals were there for him to stomp on, tap and twiddle — not to be a stage. Even a chalk line wouldn’t have worked so well, because it would have been trying too hard.
The semi-circle of gently tethered islands of metal could also be a pretty good sculptural stand-in for the music that was coming out of Wong’s amp — staccato notes linked together by his impressive knack for melody, cold and slight units that were spun into a warm, seemingly massive whole. Wong sat, looking down at his semi-circle or closing his eyes in concentration and/or contentment. But in such a close setting, his fingers’ graceful gliding over his Fender’s frets was entrancing. And, thanks to the magic of live loops (done better than any I’d seen) and fx pedals, there was more going on sonically than at most shows with full bands: melodies upon melodies like on Infinite Love, but often with a wider, wilder palette of sounds.
After 45 minutes of transforming a little record store into another world with just looped guitar, Wong sat up straight and sang a series of wordless tones straight into the air. The physicality and vulnerability of an unprocessed human voice transported me back to the record crates I was leaning against and the audience that was standing around me, slowly dispelling the illusion.
I talked to Wong after the show and asked about his performance the previous night at The Smell. He told me that his amp had broken, and he had to use a tiny, borrowed amp that might have been too small for the venue, which wasn’t that big itself. This show might have been better, he said.
[Photo: Joyce Kim]
