While the floorboards of 36 East Lorain Street, more affectionately known as Ministry, were throbbing and trembling with the energy of live, “real-time” rock and roll, my salted and hirsute frame was pressed flat by the silicon bosom and tendrils of ERES, located at eres.cc.oberlin.edu. I managed to escape that haughty lover ERES by 11:45 p.m., catching the last three songs of the show given there by the Phantom Limbs

Little Drummers: First year drum gurus pump up the jam at the First-Year Talent Show. (photo by Claire-Helene Mershon)

Wednesday night. Luckily, I was able to interrogate a few people who had been there the whole time, and had seen the entire affair go down.
Lots of people showed up for the show, which was the first in what will be an ongoing series of rock shows at Ministry. The opening act, called The Kurt Mask, is comprised of all of the male residents of Ministry. They were, quite literally, playing in their own basement. The Kurt Mask reaped the benefits of this home court advantage playing to a crowd liberally sprinkled with their friends and admirers. One housemate promised to take the band out to dinner if they played a particular Operation Ivy cover, and The Kurt Mask wouldn’t have been able to do it without copious musical and lyrical support from the crowd. The band also played several exciting originals, and one audience member was particularly struck by senior Joe Kremer’s “distinctive guitar stylings.”
Next up was Population Reduction. The consensus on this band was that they had more beards and hair than the previous act and a sound people were quicker to label “metal.” The lead singer was allegedly a “screamer,” although listeners were quick to point out that the band had a “non-threatening, cute and surprisingly quiet” stage presence. Despite their cuddliness, however, many in the audience pigeonholed the band with the genre label “grindcore.”
The third and final act of the evening hails from Oakland, CA and call themselves the Phantom Limbs. Featuring guitar, two keyboards (one of which was sometimes replaced with a bass guitar), drums and a vocalist, the Phantom Limbs began their set without Hopeless, their vocalist. They played one chord again and again, which a member of the audience reported as sounding like “a jackhammer on Quaaludes.”

After a while of this, singer Hopeless burst violently out of his hiding from behind the crowd wearing a straightjacket, and their set began. The combination of the basement’s exposed bricks and pipes, dim red lights, sweaty, smoky and beery atmosphere, and Hopeless’ “cabaret — style menace” created an ambience that some agreed was “perfect for Halloween.”
The crowd devoured their longish set, and most people seemed to approve of themselves and their neighbors for the way they were moving and dancing — I heard several remarks that “the crowd [was] moving well.”
After the show, the Phantom Limbs sold merchandise and cavorted with those in attendance back on the porch while people began anticipating the upcoming show at the Bike-Coop on Friday, Sept. 21. The show will feature the Fleshies, a group who often tours with the Phantom Limbs. Also present will be a variety of unnamed Oberlin bands, as well as Oberlin bands that are yet to have names.
The consensus on the porch was that rock shows at Ministry and elsewhere off-campus offer less pretentious and more approachable alternatives to the bands that come to the ’Sco. These are bands that arrive in rented vans and sleep in students’ beds; bands you can talk to without feeling creepy afterwards. One member of the Phantom Limbs remarked, “This was such a great crowd. This was such a fun show for us.” He then smiled and made eye contact with an OC first-year. Upon witnessing this moment of tenderness, junior Jason Klauber said, “That’s really refreshing to hear, after seeing so many bands at the ’Sco who later go on to insult the very college students who make up their fan base.”