All the photos in this blog were taking by John Newberry.
Friday morning Austin drove Mr. Mark & I to the airport. I was nervous but not too much. As we sat in the Terminal I noticed this comic in the Statesmen:
Chris Mosley thought that perhaps his friend Brittany was going to be on the same flight as Mark & I, and sure enough she was. She was even coincidently on the row right behind us. There were only 3 seats on our row, Mark & I occupied two of them, and a little boy wearing a Longhorns shirt had the window seat. We eventually agreed to have him switch with Brittany so she could sit with us and he could sit with his brothers, but before any of that happened he looked out the window at the engine right next to us and said to me "If this window breaks, we'll probably fly into this thing and die." All I said in response was "probably."
The flight was sort of nerve-racking, but not nearly as bad as a rollercoaster. The fact that there was a window to look out of made it seem like it was something that was happening on tv. We flew into Chicago around 12:15 and as we descended we had to fly out over Lake Michigan and circle back towards the runway, that part was a little scary. We picked up our bags and then Mr. Mark abandoned me less than 5 minutes after arriving, he had to leave to go stay with his friend Troy. Before he left, I had commented to him that when we arrived in Chicago (my birthplace), it would have been funny if everyone there talked like me (since I have always been told that I talk funny). Later on during the trip, Chris Mosley would compare this idea to "a baby Sasquatch returning to the woods to an entire civilization of Sasquatchs he didn't know existed."
Brittany & I killed time walking around waiting for Mosley, DFD, and John to arrive. Before they showed up we met up with Mosley's friend Mary. Her and her boyfriend Alex are two of the nicest most generous people I have ever met, if it wasn't for them I don't know how much time I would have wasted trying to navigate the city. I don't know how Mosley does it, but he's been blessed with the friendship of some amazing people.
With everyone there, we rode the train into the city (I bought a 3 day pass for $12 and I used it for my entire trip, not a bad deal), and then we went to Mary's place.
Danny Doyle on the Subway
Mary & Brittany on the Subway
Over the weekend I really became accustomed to riding the subway, I wish we had on here. We grabbed a slice of pizza on our way to the Hideout for the first night of the Touch & Go Festival.
When we arrived there, they made us show our ID's if we were drinking. As we were waiting to enter, the gentlemen checking ID's (he was probably in his mid-forties) was having trouble explaining to a young Italian guy what he was needing for him to do. Frustrated the guy checking ID's turned to Danny Doyle (I guess thinking that they were both Italian) and asked him to explain to the Italian guy what was going on. Danny, caught off guard and feeling like he needed to help in someway, began translating English to English. Mosley later remarked that the guy just realized that Danny spoke "human."
Once inside we checked out the area and went to watch the Shipping News play. I had never really heard them before outside of a couple comps, and they weren't bad at all.
Shipping News
Afterwards we went and sat down at a table while some band called Supersystem (poppy dancey electro stuff) played. None of us really had any interest in them, although I kind of did when I had them confused with this band called Supersilent. During this time Mosley's friend Natalie showed up, and I got to hear DFD hunger for something to eat from the Timeout Chicken stand which was actually the Timeout Chicago (a local Magazine) stand, I don't think I'll ever let him live that one down. Danny also ran into his friend Nate during the down time, Nate was doing behind the scenes work driving the bands around and thus relaying stories to Danny about some of his favorite bands). Some of us went to go watch Girl Against Boys play, they preformed the album "Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby" in it's entirety for the first time ever. They weren't bad, but I couldn't really get into them, although I sometimes I think actually knowing some music by a band can make all the difference. Some of us watched Ted Leo & the Pharmacists (I didn't), while some of us hung out. During this time I ate a Pizza Pretzel from Wholefoods and an Orange while also learning that Chris Mosley has a somewhat prevalent fear of broken glass. We took the train/bus back to Mary's place, talked, and crashed pretty early around 11:00.
The next morning we woke up early determined to get to the festival by noon for the first band, The New Year, but first we yearned for pancakes, except Danny who opted for a sandwich from 7/11. Alex and Mary took us to this place called the Melrose for breakfast. It was really delicious although as Danny commented "everyone's plate looks amazing, but Popkoff's eating shit (pancakes & scrambled eggs)." My only defense was to tell him that he bought a sandwich from 7/11. John bought everyone's breakfast (bless him) and running late we all rushed to try and make The New Year's set (Danny & I literally ran). When we got there they were performing Danny favorite song "Disease".
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Disease (thank God for YouTube)
We saw 4 songs and they closed with my favorite New Year song "18" The New Year, in typical Slowcore fashion, are a difficult band to appreciate from an audience perspective since they basically just stand there hardly moving, but fortunately for them, their songs are wonderful. Their set also played really well with the dreary weather conditions, there was rain predicted, but fortunately it didn't come that day.
Without a doubt the most startling performance from the festival for me was from a band called Uzeda which features the guitarist and vocalist from the present day band known as Bellini, as Danny Doyle put it: they sound like Shellac if Shellac was fronted by a mid 40's (ultra intense) Italian woman. If you're having a hard time imaging what that sounds like, how about Shellac if they were fronted by "Rid of Me" era PJ Harvey. Still don't have it? Here, download this!
They were unbelievably raw and effective, and I certainly wasn't expecting such an amazing performance. I bought an album by them afterwards and I also bought an XL (only size they had left) Big Black t-shirt (when I went back later to buy Daniel one, they were sold out) and Shellac's "1000 Hurts" (which I got Todd Trainer to sign). I didn't watch Pegboy, but I kind of heard them from a distance (sort of standard early 90's punk rock).
Afterwards Tim & Andy from Silkworm played a one song set.
If you are not familiar with Silkworm tragedy that occurred last year, you can read about it here. The performance was very touching, and Tim was said to have broken down in tears as soon as he walked off stage. Here is a clip of the actual performance someone posted on YouTube (the sound is not that great, but since it's a quiet song, it's not that noticeable)...>
Next up was The Ex, a noteworthy punk band that has managed to remain relevant since the late 70's. The guitarist by himself would probably make a pretty mind-blowing band, his guitar was probably the nastiest looking guitar I've ever seen, and he played with a rather fidgety intensity. Maybe by the second song or so, it had became quite apparent that he had cut his playing hand while strumming and had begun bleeding all of his guitar. It was very unsettling to look at and to a degree, disturbing, but punk is not pretty.
Playing Harmonica into his guitar.
When they played the song "State of Shock" Mosley claimed that he cried during the song, but I didn't see it, although I did hear him shout "Fuck Yeah!!!!" at the end.
The Crowd at The Ex (Mosley front & center)
I missed out on Killdozer, but saw the short set played by Jon & Kat (of the Mekons & The Ex respectively). I really wish the Mekons would of played the festival, although Danny Doyle really seems to hate that Jon Langford guy. I pretty much ignored the Didjits and P.W. Long. I wanted to see Negative Approach, but since they were playing on the opposite stage of Scratch Acid I opted to stay there instead. Poor Sally Timms was issued the unflattering task of playing a 15 minute electro-folk set prior to the long awaited Scratch Acid reunion. Danny thought that she should of not giving a shit what the audience thought and just played without constantly referencing the awkwardness of the situation, but I thought she recognized the unfortunate scheduling and was just trying to make things go along as smoothly as possible. ..>
The Scratch Acid set was one of the more anticipated performances of the festival and you could certainly tell by how packed in everyone was for it. Danny was a couple of people in front of me before they came on, but not too long after their set began, so too did the pushing and shoving (I pretty much lost sight of him after the 3rd or 4th song). I started off in the middle of the crowd, and the sound seemed really muffled, but by mid-set I had moved towards the left side of the stage (where I met up with Mosley, Brittany, Mary, & Alex) and it sounded much better.
David Yow is a hell of a front man (duh), and John caught one of his beer cans that he kicked into the audience, and he had me take it back to Austin in my suitcase to give to Danny (I think he wanted to save it because it had his DNA on it, so we could clone him in the future and make an army of David Yows like they did with Hitler in the "Boys from Brazil").
Next up was Man...or Astroman?, who were playing on the opposite stage of the reuniting Big Black, so as expected, I didn't watch them. When Big Black came on there was a strange energy in the air ( I wouldn't call it magic exactly, but I certainly felt like I was part of something). Steve Albini lit some tiny firecrackers and tossed them across the stage, they burst and popped in a brief flurry that you could have easily missed if (for some reason) you weren't paying attention. As promised, they only played 4 songs, but thanks once again to the glory of YouTube, you can watch all of them (with pretty decent audio in fact).
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Dead Billy
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Pigeon Kill
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Cables (this is probably the worst quality of anything I found)
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Racer X
Musically for me, the whole weekend peaked with the Shellac performance. After seeing them again, I'm convinced that they are one of the best (if not the best) live bands in the world.
Their Q&A section was hilarious as usual, but even more so thanks to their drummer Todd Trainer's rant about not wanted to be bothered ("Autographs? I love 'em. Photos? I'm a poser. Wanna make out? Fine, just don't fuckin' bother me"). He also gave a heartfelt thanks to Corey, founder of Touch & Go. ..>
Afterwards we all went to a 24 hour diner called The Pick Me Up, it sort of had the ambiance of Star Seeds, but with much much better food.
The next morning we woke up prepared to get more pancakes, which we did once again from The Melrose, this time Alex paid (bless him). It was drizzling, and somehow even though the first band we wanted to see, The Monorchid, wasn't playing until 2:00, we found ourselves running late again. Group Indecisiveness led to Mosley paying $16 dollars for a cab to the festival when there was really no way of us seeing The Monorchid. After we got there we heard that their set was cut short because they blew out 2 speakers. Sunday was filled with a lot of lackluster, interesting but not really that interesting bands. A lot of them were the kind of bands you can see anytime (Quasi, Enon, Pinback etc.) So not having that much interest in the bands coupled with wanting to see some of the city resulted in us detouring from the festival for a few hours and hitting up a bookstore (Myopic Books) and a record store (Reckless Records). When we got back to the festival, there was a rather hilarious interaction that involved Mary insulting Mosley and him responded by throwing his umbrella over his shoulder and saying "I'm Out!" He then walked away leaving us somewhat bewildered. When we went looking for him, Mary, Brittany & I were spinning around in circles trying to spot him when one of them pointed behind me and said "there he is." When I turned around and saw him, for some reason, maybe it was the way he looked at us and sped away coupled with the fact that he was tiptoeing to avoid puddles, or maybe it was his Baby Sasquatch comment earlier in the trip, but I was reminded of this image:
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We eventually watched Brick Layer Cake (Todd Trainer's one man band). Afterwards DFD and Mosley managed to get backstage for an hour or so while the rest of us wandered around. Danny & I (maybe John as well, but I'm not sure) were the only ones to watch CocoRosie (Dan watched from backstage). Their set was neat, but I still don't know what I think of them overall.
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K-Hole
That night Mosley, Mary, Brittany, & went back to the Pick Me Up and they had milk shakes while I had something called a pizzadilla. While there Mosley got a call from Danny Doyle who informed him of some truly bizarre events that transpired after we left them at the festival. At the end of the festival all the bands got to gather and sang Happy Birthday to the founder of Touch & Go, Corey, and then they all had Birthday cake. Somehow, with Danny and John being backstage (maybe Danny's waiting experience factored in, I don't know), the two of them ending up serving cake to some of their favorite bands.
Here's One of several staged group photos (check out Nick on the end rockin' the 2 beer cans and a cigarette, who does he think he is?)
The next morning Mosley and everyone left before I did. I walked to an IHOP around the corner and met up with Mr. Mark for...pancakes. It was raining and 7:30 in the morning, and our flight wasn't until 1:40. We walked around and slipped into a tea house, read Optic Nerve, and waited for the other Reckless Records to open at 10:00. We spent an hour there and got some good stuff before catching the bus/train to the airport. Our flight got delayed so Mark and I ate at the airport McDonald's. Before that though, I had a strange encounter with one of the guys from the band Calexico, who approached me at the Terminal when he noticed by Touch & Go bag. It was a lengthy and awkward conversation mostly due to the fact that I was trying to avoid the subject of his band.
The flight back was way less stressful, although the final descent seemed to take forever (ear-popping pain) and most of it was spent in the white haze of the clouds. It reminded me of that scene in the movie The Others where Nicole Kidman is walking through the woods and she becomes surrounded by fog and silence.
Well, I guess that's it.
