The time Skeleton Key buried Archers Of Loaf under a pile of crap
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re talking about shows we’ve seen where the opener eclipsed the headliner.
Skeleton Key, “The World’s Most Famous Undertaker” (1996)
In 1996, I spent my first year at Boston’s Emerson College going to a lot of shows—for various reasons. I enjoy music; that would be one reason. Another would be that Boston (and surrounding cities like Cambridge) got a lot of touring shows I never would have experienced back in Dallas-Fort Worth. But often, far more importantly, I was lonely. I had graduated high school at 16, so I went away to university especially ill-equipped for making new friends. I was spotty-faced, sarcastic, and uncomfortable around strangers. I smoked a lot of pot, which made me clam up in crowds. And the few social groups I had, like the school comedy magazine I joined, were staffed with the exact same maladjusted introverts. So I went to shows. A lot of them.
That meant I also went to shows by bands I only kind-of liked or even was just barely familiar with—which was how I ended up seeing Archers Of Loaf at The Middle East. I kind of liked Archers Of Loaf, though they never really moved me. A few days before, I’d even committed the grievous error (one of many) of telling my roommate, a super-hip New York guy who’d interned at Matador Records, that I thought Eric Bachmann sort of sounded like Bush’s Gavin Rossdale. His reaction was stony disbelief at what a lame asshole he’d been saddled with. But as a way of proving that, no, hey, I was just sayin’, Archers are cool—but also just as a way of getting out of that constantly tension-filled dorm room—I went and saw the band anyway, thinking maybe hearing them live would convert me.