Review of the SK6er's at the Paradise Lounge 10/13/06.
Friday night. And some thoughts afterwards on Contradiction.

Material Girl, a Kazoo, Enrique’s hero, the national anthem, and dancing in underpants. One would never group these items together if not for Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers last Friday night at the sold out Paradise Rock Club. In their fifteenth Boston appearance after ten years as a band, the “SK6ers” thanked Boston for being their “most supportive city” and a place where they know they can experiment and can “mess up but still be liked.”
Since they fist started performing together, Stephen Kellogg on guitar and vocals, Keith "Kit" Karlson (bass and keyboards) and Brian "Boots" Factor on the drums have made the listeners smile with songs reminiscing about French kissing in the eighth grade, medleys of pop-covers and lines from movie classics. They have also touched audiences with ballads of lost love and self discovery. On Friday, the band ended on a particularly poignant note by singing an acoustic, un-amplified new song while standing in the midst of the crowd.
Braddigan, originally of the band Dispatch, opened the night and shared the song, “Passerby” with his ex-band mate Chad Stokes from State Radio. Following him, the local Boston band The Bright Wings set the stage for Stephen Kellogg and the Band. As a whole, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers displayed incredible growth and maturity compared to their early days of playing. Along with Braddigan, Stokes and The Bright Wings, they continue to support Independent Music.
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My theme in observation and analysis this week has been “contradiction.” Contradiction as a concept discussed in my classes as something that apparently only we as humans recognize. Contradition in the brilliance of underground culture, and its simultanious depressive and anomic loneliess and confusion. The contradiction of coming home from a spectacularly happy concert to Joia Mukherjee 's preface to Sickness and Wealth about injustice and AIDS open on my bed. I think back to my conversation with Lauren. She told me earlier that day that she thinks that she isn’t doing enough. She is doing the most for the world out of any one of my friends. I think: Is activism the right way to achieve? I answer myself: It isn't about right or wrong in this case, such judgments only lead to the feeling in the latter description of the American underground.
My thoughts continue to churn as I take my sensuously hot shower. Ever since I've been out of Inida, everytime I shower I think about bucket showers, Bolivia, and the recent front page of the NYT on water shortages in Mumbai. Sometimes I shut off the water as a lather, but most of the times I soak.

Where is the contradiction? In my mind. But what does that mean? What is meaning?
The lyrics go: I keep you in my thoughts.
Where are my thoughts? What are my thoughts? An amalgam of significant memories (What makes them significant? Meaning.) and current sensations and perceptions.

The concert was great is because I feel like I learned a lot. At one point I noticed that Boots the drummer looked angry. I wondered why. Then I felt my own anger at Sofe’s drunkeness, and saw it was the same feeling that I get when I see my dad drunk with his friends. I love Sofe, and I love my dad, does my anger stem from care? “The counterpart to Anger is Compassion,” said Julie’s UROP poster on traditional Chinese Medicine. The point is that Boots' anger resonated with mine, which is why I noticed it. At the moment it seemed significant. The last song brought it all together for me. One of those moments of understanding. "Anger... Jealousy, I guess I learned that too."