Thinking Fellers Union Local 232
Fri June 11
Berbati’s Pan
10 SW 3rd
“Art” and “schedules” are by nature at odds–think about how many crappy tromp l’oils or scratchy violin sonatas you turned out fulfilling art prerequisites during college! Were you allowed to take your time, do what you wanted and maybe enjoy a tall whiskey sour in the process, sans time constraints? Hell no, and that’s why Mrs. Taylor always harped on you for not “living up to your full potential.” Thinking Fellers Local Union 282 are perpetual students of freedom’s effect on musical output. They’ve been playing arty orchestral punk, using every instrument imaginable since the late ’80s in San Francisco. Now, TFLU282 is playing their first shows–one in PDX and one in San Francisco–for the first time in three years. Why? Freedom, friends. Freedom.
“We never officially broke up, because we’re like a family. As far as we’re concerned, we’ll always be TFUL282,” asserts Anne Eikelberg, genius-minded bassist and philosophizer for the group. She, Brian Hageman, and Mark Davies grew up together in Iowa, and moved to SF to start a band in 1986.
After that, they simply became one of the most prolific and creative forces in the independent art punk scene of their time, releasing long-winded albums with long-winded titles that are famous for being far more exuberant and tight live than on record. 2001’s Bob Dinners and Larry Noodles Present Tubby Turdner’s Celebrity Avalanche, is as viciously diverse as it is solid. Stooges riffs clash with mechanical clicks; quivering melodies frame John Bonham-style percussion blasts, then melt Velveeta-smooth into cracked-out vocal asides.
In their heads, TFLU 282 are still in that apartment, and just as free, despite having stopped for a few years here and there to get married, start families, and embark upon an adult way of life. The shows are “a good excuse for us to hang out for several days and work on our scatological cosmology. It’s just more effective to discuss concepts like ‘tall cool glasses of lumpy ass water’ when you’re all in the same room,” Anne explains.