November 17, 2004 News & Views » Scene & Herd

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Here Comes The Neighborhood 

Gettin' frisky in Camden

By
click to enlarge TIMOTHY C. DAVIS - Dinosaur Sr: J Mascis brings the noise
One of the most common complaints I hear is that Charlotte is comprised of too many piecemeal neighborhoods, all containing a few cool elements but too far removed from each other. There's NoDa, of course, as well as the burgeoning Plaza-Midwood area. One area that often gets overlooked, though, is the Camden neighborhood, located within the so-called SouthEnd district. More of a commercial district than a residential one (even though the nearby Wilmore neighborhood is growing faster than you can spell g-e-n-t-r-i-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n), Camden is a neighborhood on the rise. Let's take to the streets, shall we?

Friday evening, I headed to the Marvin Building in Camden to attend the annual Create For a Cure gathering for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (otherwise known as ALS or "Lou Gehrig's Disease") research. Many of the who's who of the Charlotte art and design community were there, along with local musicians Reeve Coobs and Jeff Williams and a coterie of artists donating proceeds from their work to the cause. In a novel concept, the benefit didn't charge for admission, but instead accepted donations for beer, wine and food. Most people tipped five or ten dollars here or there, but I did notice one man regularly drop a 20 for his drinks, which momentarily made me think I had entered a downtown bar by accident.

After viewing the artwork (all rather good, I thought), I decided to check out the rest of the neighborhood for a few minutes before walking the block or so to Amos' SouthEnd, where indie legend J Mascis (ex- Dinosaur Jr.) was to assault his fans' eardrums with enough loud guitar pyrotechnics to make Pete Townshends of us all (I mean the hearing loss thing, not the pedophilia accusations thing). First, however, some refreshment.

After roaming around in a gallery next door and the combination skate shop/clothing store Black Sheep, I stepped into the Artbar, which is just what it sounds like: a combo bar/art gallery, featuring works from numerous local artists and beer from numerous national breweries. Instead of downing a PBR tallboy and listening to your friends ramble on about their personal lives and whatever new hot band sucks/rules, you can down a PBR tallboy and pretend to listen to your friends ramble on about their personal lives and whatever new hot band sucks/rules while actually checking out cool art by the likes of Jeva and Jeff Mangum. The bar even has paints and a canvas set up, so you can catch an artist creating right there on the spot while you suck down some brew.

The only way it could be any cooler, I thought, is if they had a "community canvas" on the premises, wherein everyone that entered could add a splash of paint here or there, in effect creating a piece of work "for the people and by the people." Said work could then be offered up to Hizzoner, Pat McCrory, for consideration for the new light rail station uptown. Granted, it'd probably look like a drunken mess, but then again, so is uptown Charlotte on most weekends.

My art fix satiated, I headed to Amos' SouthEnd to see Mr. Mascis, who was taking the stage when I arrived. Standing in line to enter the venue, I noticed the concertgoers ahead of me being frisked, something I've never encountered at a club in Charlotte before (or any other city for that matter, including Seattle or Boston). People were patted down and people's purses thoroughly checked, which didn't seem to bother most folks (then again, I noticed a lot of people heading back to their cars to quote/unquote "put their jackets away," so the club may have been onto something).

If the club was really looking for weapons, they should have confiscated Mascis' guitar. The show by Mascis and his band The Fog was the loudest show I've ever seen, causing even the ballsiest guitar rock fans to suck it up and wear earplugs. Playing a full set of solo work plus select nuggets from old Dinosaur Jr. albums, Mascis affected the audience like no show I've seen this year: folks were excitedly yelling at each other at the top of their lungs after leaving. Of course at that point, it was the only way anyone could hear each other.

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