Music Union : Live Your Music

Mariana Knabben, Brazilian, Journalist

Throughout the year Amoeba Music Store in Hollywood has live performances. I’ve never had the chance to see one until I saw this lady’s name Exene Cervenka outside as the last live performance of the year and decided to check it out for many reasons. First, I’ve had never heard of her, I had no clue who she was. Second, I’ve been trying to go to Amoeba and check their performances for quite some time, like when “Mutantes” played and I only found out one day later (I still can’t believe it), and this was actually the first time I made it possible. Third, it was the second time ever I stepped inside the store.

The performance was scheduled to start at 7pm, so I arrived at the store one hour before because I wanted to have time to explore it. The store is huge with many posters in the walls and uncountable CD’s, DVD’s and vinyl’s. I checked every aisle. They have a lot of cool material, rare and masterized. I saw many CD’s that either my father and my mother would love it and decided to come back another day to get it., which I did a week later as Christmas gifts!

Well, around 7pm, I positioned myself right in front of the stage only to wait 20 minutes more when Exene finally started her performance. The store was full, people were in between aisles to watch her pocket show. I could notice a big number of people in theirs 40-something, but also a good number of fresh faces enjoying the act. For me, honestly, it was something very different from what I’ve watched before and frankly not so enjoyable. Probably because I didn’t know her music style.

Her songs tend to sound folk, a rhythm that I don’t like too much and don’t follow it. Totally different from her “X” group music. She was there mostly to sing songs from her new solo album, “Somewhere Gone”. To me, the songs didn’t really touch me the way I was expecting or thought they would. I felt that she was there just to play her music and nothing else. She barely talked to the audience. And I was there just in a body than with my head. I watched people’s reaction. They seemed to like it a lot. It was like that pretty much during Exene’s whole performance until the last song. That song touched me in a way the others hadn‘t, truly a great one. With that, she finished her 40-minute show.

After ten minutes, she came back to sign autographs, she seemed more sympathetic thou. I watched it for five minutes and decided to leave. Days later, talking to friends, they suggested me that I should try to contact her for an interview, which I did promptly. I tried every way possible, but I didn’t get any response from anybody. That’s all my report.