Apostrophe S

Mental picture of bands are often based on impressions from their music. Other times, like this one, it’s based on the art from the album. I’m learning this can not alway be relied on. Of course, should I have expected Sune Rose Wagner to be decked out in motorcycle gang attire? I suppose not, but I should at least have been able to point him out in the crowd. More on that in a minute…

The opening opening act, Elkland, I missed because I was eating. Sorry. The other opening act, the the Rogers Sisters, pleasantly surprised me. They have this sort of hard rock/White Stripes/Von Bondies sound, and they all contribute vocals, which is always a bonus. Another bonus was the female drummer. Maybe it’s just because I don’t see them often, but I love female drummers. They had a female guitarist, but you see that all the time. But a drummer, well, let’s just say I hope I see more of them. So all in all the band filled the room with sound and head-bobbing. I don’t know why good opening acts make my heart glad. They just do. A word of warning, though: their Web site sucks.

When the Raveonettes finally did take the stage, I recognized Sharin Foo. Her hair and face are unmistakable. But the other guy, Wagner, could have been anybody. I wasn’t even sure it was him until they started playing. Apparently the whole tour, Elkland, the Rogers Sisters, and the Raveonettes had just played Nashville, Tenn., the night before. Foo sported some cowboy boots. Wagner, an Ernest Tubbs Record Shop trucker hat, which held down a mess of curly black hair. He wore a Brian Jonestown Massacre t-shirt, Dickies slacks and bowling shoes. I should have taken a camera. He also had a gold cross pinned to his t-shirt over his heart. Foo had a fold cross on a chain around her neck.

Wagner’s guitar is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen’s famed instrument, in that it was beat to shit, all chipped and dilapidated looking. Sounded great, though.

The band played all of the songs of theirs that I knew, which could have been every song they’ve released. Foo was nice to the crowd and seemed grateful to be playing in front of people. Wagner acted kind of indifferent, but was possessed on the guitar. The backup band, another guitarist and a percussionist who also played the Powerbook, played along but didn’t exactly seem to fit. The backup guitarist was crazy jumping all over the place all the time. Wagner and Foo were relatively stationary, with Wagner bending his knees and turning around for feedback on his solos. The only time he really went nuts was when he held held all the strings down past the final fret and strummed them like he was trying to sand the finish off of his guitar.

They sounded great. The acoustics at the Patio are excellent for a small venue, and the crowds never seem to overwhelm. The only thing about the Raveonettes is that sometimes the songs seem to blend together. When they returned for an encore and started playing, I nearly swore they’d played the song already. Especially in a show setting, where vocals often get lost in the noise, it was difficult to tell the songs apart unless you knew them by heart. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Bands like the Raveonettes, B.R.M.C., and the Jesus and Mary Chain rely on creating an atmosphere with their music, a mood, a state of mind, if you will. And they succeed at doing just that. It’s part of the reason why they have a more difficult time breaking into the mainstream. You just have the damndest time pulling singles from their albums.

You may or may not know that I wrote a blog this past summer detailing my adventures during my internship on the Jersey Shore. I had a million awesome experiences in Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, and a bunch of other places. That blog ended with my internship, but it’s still available if you want to check it out at andyzeigert.com/tenweeks. Enjoy.

I know this is longer than most readers have the patience for. But I guarantee it’ll be worth your time.

I spent a great deal of Saturday deep underground. No, not in the seedy low-lying places in NYC, but actually below ground, in southern Indiana, near Bloomington, in a place called Buckner’s Cave.

Now, I’d never technically been caving before. Unless you count caves that have built in lights, asphalt staircases, handrails and gift shops. This was the first time I’ve been in a cave where the only light I had was supplied by me, and there was no guide.

This idea sprung from the brilliant mind of my dear friend Jeremy, whose overwhelming enthusiasm for all things adventurous is contagious. Normally, I would think crawling around in a hole in the ground wouldn’t be much fun. But he made it sound fun. So it was originally just going to be he and I. Then it became Jeremy, myself, his younger brother Joe, and my younger brother Corey. Then Jeremy’s dad, Mike, joined the expedition, as well as another guy, Dave, who had apparently been in Buckner’s Cave once, long ago.

This was the second part of an already crazy weekend, and it was only Saturday, but I spoke of the earlier craziness in an earlier post.

Our team arrived at the site around 11 a.m. Although the place received hundreds of visitors a week during the peak season, it was hardly a tourist trap. We followed a gravel road up to an old iron gate, secured with a chain and combination lock. Just on the other side was an old home. Apparently not getting anyone’s attention just by pulling up, Jeremy and I decided to step up to the door and knock. Out came a jolly old man who proceeded to tell us the life story of the cave and many other mildly amusing facts that we may or may not cared to have known. The one important thing he did say was that everyone must have a helmet and three sources of light. These are standard.

The next step was to move our vehicles farther onto the property, nearer the entrance of the cave. Near the path leading to the entrance lived a scary old mountain man, complete with crazy grey hair and beard, only 2 teeth, and open sores on his face and neck. He was truly a frightening sight, but nice enough to talk to. He lived in the back of a truck parked nearby. He pointed one long, crooked finger toward the gravel path which would take us to the entrance to the cave.

Our ragtag posse made our way into a small valley and came upon a gaping, rocky hole in the ground. This is where we entered the bosom of the Earth. The initial entrance, about 20 feet wide, curves a few hundred feet into the side of the hill we had just walked down. By the end, most of the natural light was gone, and we had to depend on our headlamps to see. In addition to our headlamps, we all carried two flashlights in our pocket or other satchel.

The first actual hole we had to crawl trough was roughly the size of a garbage can warped flat on two sides. In order to get through, we had to climb head first down a pile of rocks, or “breakdown” as it is called in caving circles, then army-crawl 10 feet or so into a slightly bigger corridor called “The Crawl.” This section of the cave is aptly named. Averaging about 3 feet tall and 8 feet wide, this hallway into the main section of the cave forces you to crawl on hands and knees or roll for about 450 feet. At the end is the “T Room,” where you must choose a direction. The layout of the cave forms a rough circle, so in the end you arrive back in the T Room and must make The Crawl back to daylight.

We took the left fork in the T Room, which took us through a generally easy section of the cave which required little crawling. There were some neat formations, though. Unfortunately Buckner’s Cave is light on formations, as it is under a layer of sandstone, which prevents the water necessary for the creation of formations from seeping through. A fringe benefit, however, is that Buckner’s Cave is also a very dry cave, so you don’t have to crawl through a lot of mud.

After this initial easiness, we came to another fork, where the path splits into the “easy” and “hard” sections. Mike and Dave chose the easy path. Jeremy, myself, and our brothers chose the hard path. Little did we know just how hard it would be.

The first part wasn’t so bad, some crouching and crawling was necessary, but nothing too crazy. Until we came to yet another fork, with yet another “easy” and “hard” path. This time we chose the easy path. But what is easy, really? The easy way started as an 8-inch high passage which generally opened up several more inches throughout. The hard way started at 9 inches and remained 9 inches throughout. Although neither probably sounds fun, we were glad we had that extra few inches when we came to areas where we couldn’t even turn our heads because our helmets would get stuck. It was slow moving, too. You try crawling in a space you can barely squeeze your ass through.

We did make it through, and rejoined the original “hard” path that we had chosen. The hardest part was yet to come. We were to rejoin the regular path, and Mike and Dave, in the Air Force Room, so named because it takes quite a climb to get to it. We got lost trying to get there, as the “way” is a matter of squeezing around huge piles of breakdown. We were so hopelessly lost at one point that we had to resort to shouting to Dave, who we knew must have been close by that point. He and Mike heard us, and responded, and helped guide us to the most ridiculously hard climb of the day. We had to climb basically straight up, contorting our bodies around and between boulders to get to the top and enter into the Air Force Room. It was brutal.

After the Air Force Room, it basically became a matter of getting out. We’d been in the cave for 3 hours, and we were beginning to grow weary of it. With a less than detailed map, no compass, and a guide who only half remembered the cave, we slowly made our way toward the Signature Room, which would lead us full circle to the T Room. We had to follow an underground stream, quite dry at this point in the year. Every time we came to a new section we were confused by the layout compared to the map we had. We had to climb up and down several times, and more than once doubled back thinking we had gone the wrong way. Eventually we did make it to the Signature Room, which is a large cavern covered in graffiti tags and assorted other markings. Feeling exhaustion set in, we made our way to the T Room and back into The Crawl, which, despite feeling bigger compared to other tight passages we had endured, was nevertheless unforgiving on hands and knees that had already spent nearly 5 hours taking quite the beating.

We all made to through The Crawl, and out the garbage-can sized hole we came in. We all walked very slowly out of the entranceway into the fading sunlight, never so happy to see the color green again. One thing I also noticed was the scent of the surrounding woods, which quickly replaced the wet earth smell that had monopolized my nostrils for the past few hours.

My whole body ached after the experience, and I new the next two mornings would remind me again how out of shape I was, but the experience was worth every moment of pain I would endure later. Many people do this regularly as a hobby. Most call Buckner’s Cave a “beginners” cave. They can say all they want about it being easy and not difficult, but I tell you it was one of the most fun yet most physically demanding experiences of my life.

Afterward, on the car ride home, I thought back on some of the tiny places I’d stuffed my darty carcass that day, and thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t claustrophobic.