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January 25, 2008 > Arts & Entertainment > Final events bid spirited goodbye to Proletariat

Final events bid spirited goodbye to Proletariat

By Evan Mintz | Thresher Editorial Staff

Covered in promotional movie posters and the nicks and dents from concerts past, the Proletariat has built up a thick layer of rock-and-roll moss over its five-year history. But in the right hand corner of the Proletariat’s front window sits a small poster, a tribute not to the venue’s past, but to its future: Hands off Richmond. Come next month the Proletariat will close down for demolition this summer in order to make room for the appropriately bourgeois MetroRail University Line along Richmond.

This black-walled dive only has a few weeks left and the death knells have already begun to ring. Last Monday was KTRU’s final DJ night before it moves to its new location, the Mink, and Friday was the final Houston show for local mainstay the Mathletes, who afterwards went their separate ways.

The crowd that Monday was what one would expect: an assortment of KTRU DJs, friends, hangers-on and creepy grad students.

The night began with Brown College senior Alice Chai spinning techno remixes, huddled over the turntables in a darkened corner with a KTRU 91.7 FM banner. But the music seemed to have little effect on the KTRU crowd that was gripping longnecks like life preservers while circling into a middle school cafeteria worth of cliques. Among the dank floors and pool table, this group of too-cool-for-ClearChannel hipsters was begging for an excuse to put those hips to use. But whether the conversation was too enrapturing, whether the crowds were too self-conscious or whether the turntables just could not reach a critical mass of people, the swaying hips did not move to full-out booty shaking.

It is only appropriate that the final DJ of the night threw down some tracks that could only be seen as memories of a dance-time past: Disco. Eyes looked up from drinks as the room formed into a dance circle. The Proletariat may have been dealt a mortal blow, but it was still alive at that moment.

Still, it was nothing compared to what happened Friday.

The Mathletes defy musical label — low-fi bedroom pop or cute rock are as close as you can come. But what once was a high school student with a four-track cassette recorder has grown into a sprawl band, all headed up by that original Joe Mathlete. And Friday the band was out in full form: A 20-person ensemble of trombone players, multiple drummers and guitarists galore, cobbled together from the Linus Pauling Quartet, the band formerly known as the Dimes (the Seattle version was mentioned in Spin, forcing our dear Houston band to change its name), and some original Mathletes, including elementary school teacher turned rock star Gie Gie McGee and Rice alumnus Ryan Goodland (Lovett ‘06).

Just as tequila shots started pouring, the Mathletes started playing while a man in a Pee-Wee Herman suit began dancing in front of the stage. Oh yes, this was a Mathletes concert. The band sounded almost like an orchestra tuning up, with the twenty or so instruments colliding into a wreck of a creative symphony, which then seamlessly swelled into the first original song of the night, with Joe belting an upbeat ditty about how he always has to drive his friends — including former director of Infernal Bridegroom Productions Tamarie Cooper — around in his car.

“We rehearsed four times,” Joe told the crowd.

There was seemingly no rhythm or rhyme to the concert — except in the songs, of course — with singers reading lyrics from cell phones and at least three tambourine players at once. But somehow, it all came together. Like how the Houston sprawl can somehow give birth to a place like the Proletariat, this unordered sprawl of disorganized players brought out of chaos a true rock band. But the Proletariat is facing its end, and so were the Mathletes. It was a concert eight years in the making.

The energy felt that night, or even the Monday before, was not constrained to the building. The people would leave once the music ended, diffusing back to their Houston day jobs, and bringing their memories, or maybe hangovers, with them. It was a final night for the Mathletes, or at least for their current incarnation. But as Gie Gie put it: “He’ll be back, you know Joe.”

The Mathletes have never been a solid band, just people with a passion for music. The band may break up, but the Mathletes will continue. And with the Proletariat’s booker Dunnock Woolford and KTRU DJ nights moving to the Mink in midtown, the Proletariat may be dead, but long live the Proletariat.

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