Amplified

Never thought the contact sport of making music would be so fun to watch, but about once every two months or so the SideCar Pub hosts a “band jam” competition and, like a good car wreck, it’s just too hard to look the other way.

This past week the jam brought ten bands out to vie for the prizes: $500, $300 and $200 gift certificates at Evans Music City for first, second and third place. Knowing that .011 Ernie Ball electric guitar strings can cost in upward of $7 (!) nowadays, a little graciousness from a music store is manna.

At the request of Peron Einkauf, SideCar co-owner with wife Marybeth Moore, myself, Houston Press account manager Dana Crumbliss and local AMG manager extraordinaire Richard Cagle judged the bands. We looked for how long it takes the band to set up and tear down (efficiency), professionalism (not playing with their backs to the crowd), originality (not playing covers), sound quality (at least trying to enunciate the lyrics), promo packs (spell-check, please) and crowd appeal (cleanliness is godliness, etc.). A “1” on our score sheets was “bad.” A “5” was good. We totaled up the numbers at the end and announced the winners.

The competition lasted two days, with five bands playing each night. And thank amber waves of grain Einkauf had given us judges an open bar tab and — on the second night — all the fried shrimp, onion rings and fries we could stomach. There were times we really needed it.

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t some great music. Crash Comfort, Feel, I AM I and Natives Are Restless performed terrifically. That some are regulars at the SideCar is no coincidence.

“I’d say we book about 70 percent of the bands that come out here,” says Einkauf. “It’s a great way for them to audition. They have a legitimate reason to audition. It’s hard to get a band out during the week.”

For further band pampering, SideCar provides a backline, 32-channel board with eight sub-boards and a sound man who will break his or someone else’s neck trying to get monitor levels up high enough so a band can hear itself. Word has it high-enough monitor levels is a hot commodity round these parts.

Einkauf and co-owner Moore have been running the club the past three years. They took over a former bar in the building, at 11202 Huffmeister (about 25 miles from town), after returning from Belgium, where Einkauf worked as a mechanical engineer for Solvay. The longing for home and another way of life, a way of life with music at its center, prompted the move.

Moore had worked at the bar before she and Einkauf purchased and remodeled it. On returning to Texas in 1996, the duo brought with them lots of European goodies. And all these small touches together helped transform the SideCar, which seats about 300 max, into the weird-but-friendly place it is today.

There are the glasses, which hang over the hand-built bar. Nearly all are shaped specifically for a particular brand of beer. For, say, Duvel beer — an abbey brew from Belgium — there’s the Duvel glass, which is tulip-shaped and elongated like a giant cognac glass. Having the right glass for the right beer is supposed to make the beer taste better, even though, in Einkauf’s opinion, the effect is largely “psychological.”

There’s also the SideCar’s 100-year-old-plus chairs, which are shaped like thrones and which Einkauf bought from a Belgium church at $3 a pop. They’re valued here, says Einkauf, at nearly $100 each.

All this, plus the bar back, which Einkauf didn’t bring from Europe but which is from 1878 Germany, 140 international beers, cigars, pool tables, dartboards and, yes, dart products help give the SideCar its unusual intellectual-blue-collar appeal. Pretty fancy for a club that hosts lots of original, predominantly local — but most always Texan — rock and roll bands six nights a week.

“We used to do about $800 a week,” in dart products, says Einkauf. “We used to be a gaming place, but we gave that all up for music.”

More than anything, Einkauf tries to make the bands as comfortable as possible. He knows it’s hard to get quality talent all the way out 290 from town. (“If they make money, we make money,” says Einkauf. “If not, we still honor them.”) And he also knows it’s just as hard keeping Cypress folk, who all live essentially next door to the pub, from traveling into town for live entertainment.

One thing that helps expose yokels to homegrown music is SideCar’s jukebox. Einkauf burns his own CDs and fills them with acts that frequently play or have played the pub. Track 7003 is “Blue Texas Skies,” by the Clay Farmer Band. Track 7012 is “Lost in Houston” by Loky. And Track 0718 is “Water” by I AM I.

The live version of that last song is what put the band in my top two the night of band jam No. 3 last week. It was I AM I’s fourth and final song. (Each band gets about a half hour to play a handful of tunes.) The group was followed by Chrome, an inexperienced, sloppy band but one with a charismatic, green-haired lead-singer/guitarist, so all the votes were already ready

I AM I won first place, followed by Feel in second and Sixth Sense in third. Each of the winners is from Houston, which is partly coincidental considering the competition is open to all and any bands that can make it to the day(s) of the performance(s) on time. (Though Einkauf prefers Houston acts, he says bands have come from as “far away” as College Station, Conroe and Angleton, among other distant lands.)

I AM I deserved to win, based on the band’s solid songs, vocal melodies and harmonies, though Feel could’ve easily been on top. This quintet’s techno-grunge is ready for radio. Like, immediately. The only thing that held them back was the show-off factor. I don’t like guys on stage who dance to their own music too obnoxiously or lead singers who ape Thom Yorke moves. It’s music, for Dick Clark’s sake!

Sixth Sense, a trio of teens lead by Dave Matthews in diapers that had never played a club before, was a worthy finalist.

Of the battle royale, I AM I lead singer/ bassist Patrick Higgins says: “It’s good. It’s a great bar. Great ownership. We know Peron and Marybeth, and they treat you like family.”

It was I AM I’s second time participating in the competition, and its first first-place prize. I AM I was beaten out in the inaugural band jam by 3rd Coast Seven, a teenage ska-punk band (just what Houston needs, another teenage ska-punk band), which reportedly broke up about three weeks afterward.

Of the rumble, fellow judge and talent scout Cagle, whom Einkauf tapped at the last minute, says: “It’s a good opportunity for a band to get kudos, keep them striving to get better. And hopefully a lot of these younger bands will learn from other bands and improve. I see lots of positive things here, but I’m not crazy about contests.

“Music’s not a competitive sport. It’s art. And all art’s subjective. We all see something different.Some people are too competitive. I’d like to see a team of local Houston talent, everyone working together. Not people branching off.”

Einkauf says the next band jam will be about two months from now. Interested parties should contact the SideCar Pub at (281)807-4040.

Coptic Hymns

Some of the oldest — if not the oldest — music in the western hemisphere can be heard this weekend at the Egyptian Festival at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church, 424 Mulberry Lane, Bellaire. A church choir will perform Coptic hymns on the first day of the weekend-long event, Friday, September 10.

What’s most appealing about this music is its history. No one’s sure where this type of music came from and why it survived, but the likenesses between the pharaonic songs of ancient Egypt and Coptic hymns are undeniable. There is antiphonal singing between priest and priestesses, singing characterized by melismata (the singing of many notes over one of the seven “magic vowels,” which were used to express piety and humility) and, way back when, the presence of cantors, who were usually blind, professional singers. Egyptian folklore also is reflected in the tones and rhythms of Coptic music.

All Egypt spoke Coptic, and some villagers even used the language up until the beginning of the 19th century. That Coptic music survives today is mainly the doing of Ragheb Moftah, who recorded the music as it was sung by Mlm. Mikhail Gerges El-Batanony, Archpsaltos of the Great St. Mark Cathedral, in 1927. Moftah enlisted the services of Ernst Newlandsmith, a London Royal Music Academy professor, who transcribed all the work into 16 volumes of modern musical notation in nine years’ time. If Newlandsmith were to have used the original notation — as it was discovered in “Oxyrhynchus Papyrus,” the first Coptic hymn manuscript from third-century Greece — he would have represented tone with colors (e.g., red=passion, blue=sadness, etc.) and note-length with circles (which were essentially mouth shapes).

About the music itself: Most of the hymns I’ve heard, even the ones not sung in English, sound wrist-slittin’ sad. It’s just their essence. And with lyrics like, “O my Lord Jesus raise my heart / which was killed by the devil,” who wouldn’t wanna jump?

But that’s not saying it’s all depressing. Using color to impart tone allows the cantor much room for interpretation. So while red may mean “anger” on one particular day, it could also mean “passion” on another. Same with blue. Sometimes it means “sadness,” but other times it can mean “acceptance.” Subjectivity plays a large part in what sounds like what in Coptic singing. Discriminating ears do, too.

E-mail Anthony Mariani at his online address.