Had it not lasted over two decades, one might be tempted to believe the Bug Jar exists as some hipster CBGB wannabe bar.  The durability of the venue is proof enough, as if it were needed, that the funky vibe and grungy alternative feel is legit.

 

Under the years of grime and grunge, the original psychedelic decor still shows through.  Many years' accretions of alternative, punk and metal band stickers on various surfaces throughout the joint lend a genuinely punk feel to an already alternative venue.

 

The audience space is quite small, and the stage space is even smaller.  The bar area is in the adjoining anteroom. The apparently regular crowd skews older than one might expect.  Tonight's performers also skew a bit older than most of the acts reviewed in this magazine.  44-year old me fits right in here.

 

The already surreal evening was made more surreal when the concert organizer and promoter were arrested in the bar, right next to me, due to some outstanding warrants.  He claimed to have no knowledge of what the warrants were.  He was released the next day without bail.  I found out, two days later, that they were bench warrants as he had no knowledge of the dates - which were on the same day at the same exact times. Bureaucratic confusion in the Hall of Justice caused this... big surprise, I'm sure.

 

The concert began a bit later than scheduled, probably in part due to the strange turn of events, but also likely due, in no small part, to the fact that the audience hadn't shown up yet.

 

The evening's first act, iConspire, donned his four-string bass and began a long jam featuring slow, trippy electronic beats and substantial looping and sampling of sounds. Behind much of his set, recorded spoken word were significantly featured in the background sounds.  IconSpire, a one-man sound machine, used his bass to generate sounds for sampling usage in his set.  Later, when I got to talk to the man behind the music, he told me "I literally have no idea what I'm going to play when I get up on stage."  This goes perfectly with my observation that his set is what jazz would sound like if "they" wanted us to like it.

 

The next act, Walmart Supercenter, performed a more composed-sounding mix of cool overlapping sounds that he pulled out of a keyboard and what looked like some sort of unusual mixing hardware.  The next space-themed movie/planetarium presentation really ought to hire this guy for the music.  The performance began with a really solid overlapping massage of sound.  By the  middle of the tune, the solid sonicwall had been reduced to a whimper, and the sound of piano and bells predominated.  Not for long, though, as he slowly returned to the massive shimmering futuristic sound again for his finish.

 

The final solo act, Makeshift Letterbox, brought the most "commercial" sound of the concert.  Commercial is a relative term, as Makeshift Letterbox's vocals featured a ton of reverb and distortion, (not in the crappy auto-tune of a Justin Beiber song, either).  The distortion and reverb matched the music perfectly, and totally made the songs work.  Makeshift Letterbox is truly a one-man band, frequently scrambling to keep up with himself as he switched out plugs and cables and tweaked machines and various pieces of equipment he relied on for the music beyond what he could wring out of his guitar.  At one point he did a sort of drum machine solo on what looked to be an iPhone.  The highlight of the set was a cover of Wreckless Eric's "Whole Wide World," an enjoyable ditty, done well.  This guy gets into his music, and, even though the initial impression is "frustrated rock-star,” the result is more "talented friend showing off.”

 

"I don't know who's next, but they've got great equipment," Letterbox said as he finished his set.  They certainly had the most unique gear of the evening.  Arch Aeologist are two guys, (and the youngest of the evening, by far), a table of mixers and sound generators, and their very own light show.  The set began with some determined beats, while the two musicians began improv mixing a most eclectic array of digitally created sounds.  Over the long set of maybe 15 minutes, the sounds ranged from meditatively trance-y to R2-D2 vomiting bleeps and blips all over the place (this is not meant as a criticism, mind you).  While they obviously knew they were performing for an audience, they were focused and bent over their table, playing and mixing and creating, enjoying themselves and bringing us along for the ride.  These two bent over their table resembled nothing so much as NASCAR mechanics bent over an engine working to get that extra bit of horsepower out of the car.  As the set wound down, the guys got a little looser and began to respond to the audience a bit.  Their set marked the end of the show and the end of a surreal night of crazy good music.
 

If this were an Amazon review, I'd say "A+ would attend again!"