Saturday night I saw divorced friends Al and Gale's son, Kyle, perform with his band, Kryst, at Club Diablo. I've always wanted to check this club out, and it's pretty much as I expected; narrow, dark, loud, a pool table, a bar, a raised platform stage, and decor I could only describe as pop-gothic, (the devil's image was prominent but friendly like Santa Claus). We made a strange middle-age trio made all too evident when I bought the first round and my friends requested a 7-Up and a coffee. I really didn't want to walk up to this cool crude bar with the gorgeous waitress (everytime she reached down to fill a beer glass, the room swooned), and order a coffee. But I did and of course they didn't have coffee. Kyle and his band Kryst were way cool and experimental, heavy and prog-ish, making unlikely and effective use of a violinist, a vocoder, and a megaphone blending into the prominent drums and guitars onslaught. At one end of this musical horizon I detected an early Pink Ployd keyboards springing a young Syd Barrett into the world of madness, and at the other, a more psychedelic Nine Inch Nails in a decidedly rock and roll spirit. It was a fantastic set. I've talked with Kyle about music before, wondering if the younger generation left homage for the last wave of great cutting edge artists. I mentioned if he was familiar with, say, Sonic Youth, Talking Heads, maybe Swans, and he looked at me like I was from another planet.
