eleven26

I haven't had time to breathe this week. So. Fucking. Busy. And it looks like all of October is gonna be this way.

So I never told you about Chicago, huh... yeah, sorry. Life's been crazy since I got back.

Here's the short version:

The drive out there was great. Six people in a minivan, and we all got along swimmingly. (what the hell does that mean, anyway?) Stopped in Nowhere, Indiania and hit some yard sales, talked with some old farmers. That was pretty cool. It cost $6 on the tollway to drive the entire state of Ohio. So why the fuck does it cost $9 to cross the goddamn Verrazano Bridge???

The show was awesome. It was in a parking lot, with a huge grey building with big, black Helvetica Bold type on the side, reading "City of Chicago Department of Fleet Management." Come on, how perfect a setting is that to see Big Black??

Highlights were Scratch Acid, Big Black, and Shellac. Killdozer were also awesome.

Scratch Acid were fucking amazing. Holy shit.

Big Black was great. It was mostly just the shock of actually seeing Big Black. They pretty clearly didn't enjoy doing it, but were mostly good anyways.

They played:
-Cables
-Dead Billy
-Pigeon Kill
-Racer X

And yes, we knew they were playing a short set. Cables and Racer X were fucking awesome. They nailed those. They absolutely butchered Dead Billy, and didn't do much better with Pigeon Kill. They didn't play any of the songs I was dying to hear (Kerosene, Steelworker, Bad Penny, L-Dopa, Columbian Necktie) but fuck, they played Cables and Racer X, so I'm not complaining. Steve did a really cool speech just before Racer X about Touch and Go and Corey Rusk, and how much they have meant both to him personally and to the history of music. It was very cool. There are clips of it on YouTube if you really want to see. Go find 'em yourself -- I'm too tired to look 'em up right now.

And of course, Shellac was amazing as always. The difference between Steve Albini's presence on stage with Big Black compared to Shellac (they played back-to-back) was huge. He was having fun with Shellac.

And a note for future reference: I had no idea how bad your body hurts after standing on asphalt all day. I have a whole new respect for festivals on grass or dirt. You don't realize how soft that ground is.

The drive home was cool. We drove from Chicago to Columbus, OH on Sunday (and saw the most incredible harvest moon I've ever seen -- I shit you not, it was blood fucking red. Not harvest moon orange, no, the shit was blood red), and stayed the night with friends there. It was really good to see them. Then we drove home the next day, across the corner of West Virginia (where we stopped and did some shopping), all 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles of PA (christ, that state never ends. I swear it's as bad as Texas. Wait, no, nothing's as bad as Texas), then Jersey, and finally home sweet Brooklyn. Driving across Jersey, we could see the World Trade Center memorial lights from probably 40-50 miles away. That was pretty damn cool.

So that was Chicago. On a side note, I really didn't like Chicago. It's a bleak, bleak town, and I'm sorry to any Chicagans out there, but jesus fucking christ, Chicagans are assholes! I'm not even kidding. On the whole, people there were so fucking pushy and rude. I won't bore you with stories, but holy shit. They made me seriously miss New Yorkers. New Yorkers are good fucking people, on the whole. Now, in fairness, I only saw a small area of Chicago (Wicker Park and the surrounding areas), but with that small experience, I'm in no hurry to return.

Yup. That was Chicago and the Touch & Go festival. Good times.

I'm exhausted. Off to bed.

Edit: christ, I've had to edit this entry like 15 times. I'm tired, I can't fucking type. So bear witih me if this entry is full of typos, misspellings, run-ons, fragments, or any other grammatical errors. Why the fuck am I still awake?