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![[I come from a Punk Rock family.]](family.jpg "[I come from a Punk Rock family.]")
"Woman" by James Gang. Play Count: 5
I visited Chicago for a long weekend to go to a Duelin' Firemen! reunion. The ultimately never released, fun-to-describe, square-detecting, never even played once game shot on film that became an online trailer that didn't quite predict the dystopian future, featuring underground heroes enduring as a slow burning internet sensation has now morphed into a choose your own adventure comic book. The book release party was held in Bridgeport at a place run by Ed who I can pretty much remember from my Champaign days. Many from the era were there and it was great to see people from 10, 20, and 30 years ago again. So much catching up commenced. After an introduction from RunAndGun's Tony, Grady, and Sandra, a new documentary short was shown about the history. There was also a tribute to those who are no longer with us. Then the two bands rocked the house from completely different angles. Vic Vacume And The Attachments are a big band in multiple dimensions. They were loud fast and fun. I was reminded of Didjits and others of their ilk. They and the crowd were all having a great time. Next up was the inexplicable Flying Luttenbachers. Loud crazy fast and incomprehensibly complex, they shredded from the ladders. Hard core jazz.
It was the second night out in a row for Mike, Dan, & I. None of us could remember the last time we did that. Dan was even going to go to the show again on Friday! Epic. So we knew the opener was Portland's own Gaytheist, but I didn't know anything about them. Just my assumptions. They are a three piece. The bassist has a very long beard and a shaved head. The drummer, front and center, seemed to have a tattoo on the side of his head. The singer / guitarist was wearing a gray suit, cufflinks, bow-tie, mustache, and horn-rimmed glasses. They walked out to a familar disco tune, whose name I just can't remember right now. The singer smiles and waves in a goofy way. He says that The Jesus Lizard are having local bands open for them on this tour. Towards the end of the set he said their next show was going to be at Kenton Club. He then kicked off the show and proceeded to shred. It was hard, fast, and fun. I couldn't quite make out the lyrics. It was so great, they really did win the crowd over. Sometime during the Jesus Lizard set, I saw the singer again out in the hall. I told him they rocked. He told me David Yow saw him when they got off stage. Yow said he looked like a high school principal. Once The Jesus Lizard were on stage, the lights stayed white and bright the whole time. David Yow stepped up to the mic and said "Steve Albini". Then the band launched into "Mouthbreather". Soon thereafter, at 64, David Yow jumped into the crowd. I think he was out about three times during the show. He only got near me once. They played so many hits, and lots off the new album. Another Yow announcement was "Repeat after me." "Trump!" "Sucks!" "Thank you" and the band goes right into the song. They did two encores tonight. At some point I decided to get as close to the front as possible. I figured I didn't know when the next time I nor The Jesus Lizard would be able to do this. So why not? I got jostled around but not too much. After I went back to my friends, the band had done "Blockbuster" and Yow acted out some of the lyrics and showed off his behind. The sound was great. The bass player's fingers move so fast. He still has the 100 mile stare, right from the edge of the stage. When I was up close, I could see his stage monitors were aimed at him from the sides. Presumably this would allow him to be even closer to the edge. No revelations here, but when you see them live you appreciate even more how the music is mostly bass and drums and Yow. Then the awesome guitar is comparatively sparse on top. Mike mentioned how Yow has a resemblance to Uncle Butch. I'd go see them again, just not the very next night! My body has been tired ever since, even three days later.
Awesome show! I went with Mike and Dan. Mike had never been to Revolution Hall! The opener is a woman who had a table full of electronics and contraptions. It was a noise set much like what Dan had invited me to at No Fun. However she took it all to the next level. She was a performer. She'd go into the audience with her instruments. She also had many physical and extreme poses while presenting her work. She'd stand on the table. She'd wrap a braided wire around her foot and pull it until she was doing standing splits. She had contact mics on her fingers to make the noise. She'd connect them with conductive things and magnets to make a whole bunch of sound. You could hear all the movements so loudly. Towards the end she was pulling a microphone comb through her hair. It was pretty awesome. You can get an idea of what she does on Evicshen's site. There was were I learned she made the comb. She ended her set with a crack of a bull whip. The Hard Quartet were terrific. They played probably all the released songs. They really seemed to all be having a fun time. Lots of smiles. They'd switch off who was playing bass or singing what seemed like every other song. It's always so interesting to watch people make music. It's something I wish I could do better. The drummer Jim White is fantastic to watch. He moves in such large and dynamic ways. He also holds his snare drum stick underhand style. Steve Malkmus alluded to having moved from Portland, and he gave a shout out to his dentist who he visited that day. They played straight through without an encore. I hope this band makes more music in the future. I'd like to see them again and hear new things from them.
I'll be headed to a party in Chicago for the Duelin' Firemen project. I worked on it for a short period of time. It was a hard development environment (to say the least). I also had a full time day job. The article alludes to the issue. Fortunately over the decades, I'd see two of the creators when I lived in San Francisco. I wound up with a story I can tell to others to this day. It gets people interested every time. I'm looking forward to it! #
I've been working harder than expected to make a nice database of all my iTunes/Music.app listening history. Database design and SQL are all new to me, even after all of these years of tinkering. I think I'm close to having a database designed and populated with my data soon. #
The last time I saw Bob Mould, I'm sure it was this same band. I'm sure it was just as rocking. However that was a period of time when I seemed unable to find the time to write things up. The band is so intense. Tonight it was non-stop rock, start to finish, no encore. Bob's vocals and guitar are just screaming. It was lots of songs that felt familiar, but I couldn't name. The Hüsker Dü songs I remember were "Flip Your Wig", "Makes No Sense At All", and "Hate Paper Doll". It was my first time at Wonder Ballroom, and I liked the place. I went with my friend Dan. While I was in line, I saw Scott who I know from San Francisco. Craig Finn opened and sang his story-like songs with an acoustic guitar accompanied by a saxophone. We were amazed he could remember all of his lyrics. It was a fun night out.
Both John Davis and Lou Barlow opened the show with 3 solo guitar songs. John went first and his first one contained the phrase "don't google me". He then told us he's a 4th grade teacher and this is his Spring Break. This is one of the things he tells his class. Lou played "The Ballad of Daykitty" and "Skull" and another I did not recognize. Once they were together Lou mostly played bass and John played guitar. They had an iPad that would serve as a rhythm track. On a few songs Lou would play the live drums. They played quite a few songs I didn't recognize. One I recognized was "Pole Position". During "Natural One", Lou's vocals were messed up until the end of the song. It seemed like we were hearing them only through the stage monitors. He told us he once sang that song Karaoke with Sleater Kinney. I bought a CD and told him I listened to his podcast and that the "Bidet Song" was so funny it brought me to tears.
Our neighbors invited us to this kid friendly show on a Sunday afternoon. It was at a screen printing shop that is celebrating its 10 year anniversary. They had a few bands, and we stayed just for one with our neighbors. Dreckig are a couple that sing in both Spanish and German. The music is electronic beats, and they have live drums and percussion on top. They also played a song or two that had a flute played through reverb. While they are playing and dancing they are wearing sparkly hooded capes and big sunglasses. It was really fun. I think it might have been Oscar's second show. We went to see Red Yarn years ago at Alberta Street Pub, but I never wrote it up. Oscar seemed to like watching the drumming (it was pretty cool). We also checked out the mixing board. I hope to make it to more shows with Oscar.
I've still been coding for fun. I've really dug deep into Swift Concurrency over the last year. It's picked up again in the last month or so. The program I use to backup my iTunes data is able to process the data in a massively concurrent manner. This means on my MacBook M4 it will use 1200% CPU while running! I keep learning more ways to get more processing done in parallel. What I discovered most recently was that my code would do work concurrently to make a single collection, usually an Array. Then it would process over that Array again with massive concurrency, to once again make a single Array, and then even do one more concurrent process after that. I learned how to not serialize to an array each time, using AsyncStreams. They are so cool. #
After seeing them about two months before, I went with Jesse to see Sunbathe again. It was at this old bar in North Portland. It was another bar with a one foot stage in the corner. It was fun, and seemed packed. I really liked the first band, Strange Pilgrim. The entire show had both a smoke machine and lasers, so it was pretty cool. I just liked their guitar sound, and the vocals were reverbed. The singer was able to turn a dial on a box to change the reverb while he sang. The second band, The Fur Coats, had two saxophone players (who both also sang). They also had a slide guitar and a keyboardist. So their sound was nice and big and fun. Sunbathe put on a great set; just as good if not better than last time. I still must buy their album. This was a rare bar show for me, and it went late. I got home at 12:30 AM and I was so so tired.
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