Making the Scene

Chapter 17 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir of one week in Iceland in 2022. Mondays on Flippism is the Key

There was a break between acts. Kaktus and his band tore down, the drums were covered up (a symbolic gesture?) while the crowd amused themselves with selfies and general milling about:

A mother and daughter managed to find refuge in a hallway; there is no generation gap at airwaves:

I struck up a conversation with a middle-aged German couple sitting next to me in the balcony. They had been to the preview show the night before and from the point of view of their iPhone shots (of the peek-a-boo outfit of Neonme) they had stood only been a few feet away from where I was for that show.

The next band, Nation of Language, finally was ready after an over-long set-up; they were the same band that was late doing their sound check in the afternoon, causing a delay for JFDR’s boutique show. I hadn’t come 2,000 miles for this kind of aggravation. When they began to play (the bassist was actually playing an instrument rather than fiddling with knobs!) it was oddly retro: 80's new-wave, a scene I had experienced first-hand 40 years ago with better bands playing better songs with actual drummers instead of drum machines. But they were a big hit with the scenesters in the front row:

They played on, and on, and the anguished singer even strapped on a relic Japanese “bizarre guitar” and scratched out a few edgy chords:

It was well after midnight by the time they finally stopped:

I stayed in the balcony to watch the next act set up.

They were the reason I came to Airwaves.


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