Week’s Worth
By Michael Henningsen
Oh, the Glamour: So you think this job is all fun and games and free shows? You’re right … most of the time, anyway. Except for occasions like this past Tuesday, for instance, when I embarkedon a mini-tour of Denver, Colo., with my good friend Joanne Deers on in an attempt to witness our very own Rondelles open for SonicYouth at the Ogden Theater.
So off we went, seven boring hours spent putting more miles on my car and eating truck stop junk food. We pulled into Denver right on schedule, dropped 50 bucks apiece on mediocre sushi ata picturesque bar in picturesque downtown Denver and headed off to the show. Our names, of course, were not on the guest listas promised, at which point we would have happily purchased ticketsexcept that there weren’t any left. Imagine our surprise, though,when young Joanne managed to steal a peek at the list, finding her own name after having anxiously awaited the mysterious “updatedlist” for 20 minutes. The idiot in the box office sort of apologized, gave us our tickets and sent us to the metal detector line where we waited another 20 minutes to be “patted down”by security guards who are too stupid to be cops. We got in justin time not to see the Rondelles. At all.
Helium came on next, successfully boring everyone but me into submission. I like Helium. By the time Sonic Youth took the stage,security agent No. 111 had forced me to move six or seven times,claiming no one was allowed to lean on the railing, sit on the floor or lean against the wall while everyone but me leaned on the railing, sat on the floor or leaned against the wall. It wasall really very interesting. Joanne was nowhere to be found. The last time Mr. 111 asked me to move, I was compelled to insist that he show me where he expected me to sit, stand or whatever.He pointed out a place on the floor directly in front of a row of chairs. I dutifully sat where instructed, just in time to get kicked in the back by disgruntled Denver resident No. 638. AsI turned to, um, address Mr. 638, he attempted to spit on me.Just in time for me to stand up, wheel around and get off one decisive shot to the midface before my new friend got off his chair and gave me the ol’ right back atcha. Then we both got kicked out before Sonic Youth played any of the old shit. Then we droveback.
Incidentally, the Rondelles have been asked to open for Versus in Denver late next month. I can’t wait!
From the Weekly Wire 5/27/98

HELIUM at the O’SHAUGHNESSY AUDITORIUM
St. Paul, MN, USA. May 17,1998.
I had had the Helium album The Magic City warmly recommended to me, so it was a nice surprise to see that this reportedly exciting band would open for avant-garde noise rock legends Sonic Youth. I was sadly disappointed.
The concert was oddly divided in two. During the first 4-5 songs, they were plain awful!! Pretentious bleeps and twangs that just did not have anything attractive about them. Then came three songs that were pretty good, with some drive and cool melody lines, before the finale: a noise attack worthy of SY themselves!
In other words, a fifty-fifty concert that nevertheless made for a negative impression since the band was so bloody amateurish. I don’t know if they were very nervous or what, but they kept having to re-tune their guitars, re-program their synth, the singer/guitar player kept unplugging her guitar by accident, etc. Annoying.
This page was originally published to Tore’s Official Concert Guide
in May 1998

Live: Helium/Sleater-Kinney
The Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge, Mass., March 28, 1998
Sleater-Kinney: Punk, or whatever else you want to call it this year
HELIUM/SLEATER-KINNEY
The Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge, Mass., March 28, 1998
Just when it seemed as if rotating headliners Helium and Sleater-Kinney had taken rock and roll about as far as it could go in one night, Helium’s Mary Timony had an idea for an encore. “We’re gonna do a song with Sleater-Kinney,” Timony said from behind her keyboards as she beckoned Olympia, Wash.’s punk darlings back on stage to ecstatic cheers from the sold-out crowd.
With guitars duly strapped on, plugged in and tuned up, the crew plunged headfirst into the crushed-out bliss of “The Revolution of Hearts Parts I and II,” a swirling, ethereal epic from Helium’s magnificent ’97 LP The Magic City. The song, stretched well beyond its eight-minute studio version, amply demonstrated what Timony’s art-damaged outfit has been up to since the release three years ago of their debut, The Dirt of Luck.
Although no one would ever accuse Helium of becoming subdued, they have (for the moment at least) smoothed the splintered Sonic Youth-via-Pavement rhythms of their earlier work, embracing instead the elegant menace of underground rock godparents the Velvet Underground. With Timony trading vocals with Sleater-Kinney lead singer Corin Tucker and S-K guitarist Carrie Brownstein pinwheeling her strumming arm like Pete Townshend’s upstart kid sister, the moment ultimately proved to be the evening’s highlight.
Elsewhere during Helium’s enthralling, enigmatic sixty-minute set, Timony didn’t let her hometown audience down, distilling jagged slices of glittery guitar on numbers like “Ocean of Wine” and “Devil’s Tear.” Again and again, Helium carefully constructed distortion-saturated pop melodies, tastefully toeing the line between coherence and indie-cred dissonance.
Minutes before, Sleater-Kinney had offered a compelling reminder of how simple, direct and effective rock and roll (or punk, or whatever else you want to call it this year) can be. Though a little of Tucker’s fluttery yet piercing warble went a long way, the band’s urgent, minimalist (no bass) assault made for a fiercely honest statement that seemed to instantly erase the boundaries between artist and audience. In Sleater-Kinney’s hands, raw, startling blasts of expression like “Heart Factory” and “One More Hour” became more than just songs. They became imperatives. A revolution of the heart indeed.
from Rolling Stone Online