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• Thursday, June 28, 2007 01:16 PM

  Akron/Family becons from the mountain top!

  Really, there's no discussion people. Akron/Family, on Michael Gira's Young Gods record label, is re-defining what a live show can contain. They played over 200 shows last year and I was lucky enough to attend two of them.

  Here's how it went down at the Echo in LA. Playing to a hyperactively jaded bunch of eastside Echo Park/Silverlake hipsters, Ak/Fam they broke every rule, knocked down every wall, blew through more than two hours of stunnign material, and left the audience gasping for more.

  "This is LA, we don't do that" a girl said from the front. Fifteen minutes into the show the band instructed the crowd to hold their arms up and create a wave that went from the front of the club to the back again, all the while making the "whoosh" sound of waves breaking on the beach in order to recreate the sound effect from the album. But in less than a ten seconds, there we were, dumbstruck, waving and whooshing, grinning from ear to ear. Jadedness melting alway with every whoosh. A miracle was happening.

  Later A girl shouted a non-sequiter from the crowd. The band jumped on it, had her repeat it, then they chanted it, worked it into a rave up, and broke through into a song from their most recent album. All on the fly. All un-rehearsed. All for us. All from us. We were in this together.

  The show descended into a sonic wall of sound and one by one the players left the stage, only to congregate in the back of the club to begin singing a-capella 4-part harmonies during a spiritual about love and space. The crowd caught the refrain and joined in and soon the entire club was part of the act as we held the coda and the band continued with the song, with 200 back-up singers.

  Find a picture of them playing a live show on the net. See the crowd on stage? See the ecstatic look of surprise on everyone's faces? See the transfiguration of rock projected from the mountain top? It's real.

  —markdaddy Read markdaddy's other letters
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