The Go Fight the Good Rock Fight

The Go

So why are bands like the Monks and Chocolate Watchband headlining Cavestomp!, instead of bands like Dead Moon? Especially since, as Jon Weiss (Cavestomp!'s organizer) so kindly explained to me, garage rock isn't about mimicking or recreating 60s music. It's about a couple of kids who scrape together enough money for instruments, move their parents' car out of the way and commence making very low production, extremely real rock 'n' roll. The theory behind Cavestomp!'s facilitating a Monks reunion, at least as far as it concerns the record geeks who make up a significant portion of the festival's audience and therefore its funding, goes something like this: "Hell yes I'll cough up $35 to see Mick break out his walker and hobble through that chicken strut to 'Satisfaction'!" But only as a novelty act, and only because they were too young to see it the first time around?when it was real, when it was good.

I was glad to hear that Weiss prefers "to use the younger bands," and largely books old-timers to help fill the hall. It's a gag that, in time, he hopes to phase out.

Luckily, one of the up-and-comers he's secured for Cavestomp! 2000 is the Go, that Detroit quintet who, with their 1999 debut album Whatcha Doin' on Sub Pop, literally made me believe in music again. The course of true love never did run smooth, and much like Lizzy and Mr. Darcy, or Buffy and Spike, my pardoner was, initially, my jailer. When I got the Go's CD, I listened to it once, then threw it on the pile of promos to sell back or give away. I believe my reaction was violently negative, and I might even have indulged in a few nasty conjectures as to the pretensions of the musicians involved.

You'll have to forgive me if these musings are fuzzy now, because at some point, slowly I think, or perhaps with all the spontaneity of epiphany, I fell in love with that record. And when I say I fell in love, I mean I turned into the hard rock guy; the one you usually see only at metal shows. He never knew his dad, his mom kicked him out when he was 16, and the only thing in his den besides a tray full of stems and a dent on the carpet where the tv used to sit is a calendar. Every year he buys a new one?to mark down the day his band will come to town.

At the show, finally hearing live all those oohs and yeahs and all rights he knows by heart, he headbangs with his entire body. He follows the guitarist's fret work perfectly, even though he's never held one in his life. It's hard to imagine someone feeling comfortable enough to perform air drums in the privacy of his own bedroom for an entire hour, much less in public. And no matter how loudly you laugh, no matter how obviously you point, he isn't fazed. Doesn't he know he's making an ass of himself?

Yes...and no. No, because at the time the emotions he was feeling were nothing like guilt or fear. But yes, with the sobriety and clarity of the morning comes the fleeting realization somewhere inside that, fair enough, he made an ass of himself. The only difference between you and him is?he doesn't care.

That's pretty much where I'm at with the Go. I knew a while back I was going to make an ass out of myself for this band, the same way I made an ass out of myself for Led Zeppelin when I was 15. The difference being that the Go are all still alive (not including those who were in the band less than a few days, unless they are credited on the album), and Led Zeppelin never needed to crash on my floor when they came through town. Most importantly, Led Zeppelin was long since over by the time I bought Physical Graffiti at the mall in Temple, TX. The Go, like so many other young garage rock bands today, are happening right now. I can still hear them live in dive bars or small venues, the way rock 'n' roll was meant to be experienced, and their last record is, I hope, many years away.

Let me begin by inserting the disclaimer that it's hard not to write like a fan about rock, because, as I discovered while watching David Fricke shake it during Dead Moon's set, that's the reason most people start writing about it. (Those who didn't fall kicking and screaming into music journalism should be forced to grab their glasses, beaded seat covers and Weight Watchers mugs and head down to the local DMV for a life sentence.) The first time I saw the Go live I had that old, familiar, diehard fan feeling again, just like when I used to watch The Song Remains the Same and cry as Jimmy Page got on the plane to leave (pressing rewind always stopped the tears).

Sometimes in life what you think you need is significantly different from what's actually in order, and the night I heard the Go play I was in the worst possible shape?clutching my scratched copy of Nine Tonight, unaware I needed anything at all. Midway through their set, during which I clapped, danced and generally testified myself blind, I was transformed once again into that out-of-control 15-year-old?"Big girl, D cup, yeah/She likes to dance." The one who had to hear her music every day, only now it wasn't the music of someone else's generation, but my own. Those adorable, largely innocent and mainly talented boys from the Go gave me all that, and if there was a God I'd pray for them every night.

It's difficult for me to analyze the individual tracks on Whatcha Doin', because each one is so overflowing with powerful lyrics, raw, trembling sexuality and goddamn guitar. Singer Bobby Harlow summed up the group best one night when he leaned in close, after taking a nervous swig off a communal handle of whiskey in a Birmingham bar, and said under his breath, "The thing is, Tanya, it's real easy to rock, but not many people know how to roll."

Get the album. I've turned a lot of people on to that record and no one has come back and told me they weren't turned on. After a whole year of ownership I still listen to my copy once a week. Minimum. The butterflies come and go, but my ring finger has never turned green. The band tells me the next one, due out in February, differs from the first in that "the production quality is lower, and it's sexier," so I'm expecting a cassette of them making love via a handheld tape recorder submerged in water. Guitarist John Krautner, the man who's such a gentleman he once opened a revolving door for me, played a copy for his sister's teenage friend and told me, "I think she wants to drop out of school now."

The band has, as usual, seen some lineup changes. Dave Buick (never met him; love the name) is back on bass replacing the cuddly Steve Nawara, and Dion I-don't-need-Jack-White's-tricks Fischer has taken over admirably on lead guitar. The kind, nymph-like Marc Fellis still presides over the drum set and John, who, it's rumored, will drink with anyone, refuses to set down that rhythm guitar. Last but not least Bobby, the eternally brooding frontman who gave me one of the best conversations of my life, still claims that the day they bury the Go is the day they bury him.

But just like the Mooney Suzuki, the Greenhornes, the White Stripes and other garage rock bands all over the country, it doesn't matter if the Go are good people?they're fighting the good fight. They're not afraid to, as one musician recently explained on these pages, "invoke" the spirit of rock 'n' roll and make it their own, or, as the Go would say, "Play it like y'all/Done before." So for kids of all ages busy collecting vintage Who and Stones on vinyl, pull your head out, because the kids are all right. The past has its place, but what's going on now is just as good, if not better.

The Go play Cavestomp! this Sun., Nov. 5, at Westbeth Theater, 151 Bank St. (betw. West & Washington Sts.), 741-0391. Tickets available through TicketMaster: 307-4100 or ticketmaster.com.