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with XBXRX and Wolf Eyes Here's a collection of all of the photos I took of Sonic Youth on Saturday night. I'll give the whole story too... Let's see... At 12 o'clock on Saturday I called in to Ticket Master to get the tickets and it turns out they had already sold out (whodathunkit). Since the computer I was using presently was broken at the time, I called up my cousin and had her look it up on eBay, she found 2 listings, both backstage passes. We decided not to take our chances and got the $100 ones, and over some more phone conversations I found I was supposed to pick up the tickets at the will call office. Sounded easy enough... We went up to san francisco, mosied around at the art center and ate dinner, then went to the Fillmore. Getting the tickets turned out fine, they knew who I was and all, but when I was sitting at maybe 8:15 waiting for the band to start I looked at the tickets and noticed that they just said general admission-no "backstage access", no "special access" or anything like that. So, I asked an employee, they said that it was supposed to say something, called someone else over... looks like we got ripped off a bit, because the ticket meant we didn't get to go backstage. Oh well, I guess I'll never get to meet Jim O'rourke and the rest of the gang. I've contacted the seller, and they haven't replied... if I get no response at all, I'll mess them up, eBay style. I ended up standing about 4 people back from the stage, which was fine, not front row, but fine. At seriously 9:00 on the dot, these 4 guys wearing smalish frech looking shirts with scarfy things on the side jumped out on stage and started playing. Clearly to make a mockery of metal music, they had this sort of very loose and screamy sound... not the kind of thing you'd want to listen to, but they were hilarious. Clearly joking around. The singer jumped all over the place, the whole thing... Then, next thing you know, 30 people dressed in animal costumes come out on stage, the drummer opens up a bedsheet-sandwich or two of balloons onto the crowd, and confetti flies across the audience. Just a very very odd show. They were quite cool, though. Here's some pictures of that:   They also did a bunch of odd stuff, IE at one moment the singer screamed "EVERYONE GET DOWN. EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE PLACE GET DOWN. I WANT EVERYONE EVEN IN THE BACK TO GET DOWN, SIT DOWN" then after a bit of music says "OK THIS IS A PARTY WE'RE ALL GOING TO JUMP UP AND PARTY LIKE CRAZY ON 3 ARE YOU READY OK 1 2 3"... at one point between songs he started screaming about how bad it is that we have to bring our kids to the doctor, etc... Anyways, mid-show this guy brushes in front of me, seeing only the back of his head I think "Huh, his hair looks like lee ranaldo". The kids next to me are mumbling and pointing "That's lee, isn't it" I look, and sure enough, Lee Ranaldo had brushed in front of me and was taking pictures of XBXRX's antics. I think the 3 kids and I were the only kids that noticed, he was completely nonchalant.  I got to move out of the way for him on his way back, too. Man oh man. Almost as good as actually going backstage. Wolf Eyes came on... they were very much a noise band, the guys weren't your typical noise guys though (although what does a typical noise guy look like?). At least one guy was the overweight motorcyclist type. Lots of bad noises all over the place, not very pretty music, but it was my first noise show. One guy a bit in front of me, who was drunk on gin (I actually had the pleasure of hearing him converse about it before then-"Yeah, I heard that the berry that they use to make gin is really bad for your liver, so I'm going to drink vodka from now on. I drink 1 bottle a night. Tomorrow I'm going to start vodka.) started screaming amidst rythmic bass drum hits... really wanted to punch him. At least give the music some respect, even if it's just noise. Turned out quite a few people didn't like it, I guess the SY crowd is 80% indie rocker, not noisist, but the people up front enjoyed it. My guess is that it's a Lee's pick thing, which is cool. Like I said, my first noise-performance, and interesting at that. Their gear was cool for sure.  Sonic youth came on after a long break... their intro was awesome, the tech guys played this droney stuff over the speakers, then Steve came out and started doing hi-hat-clicky-clackying, that sort of thing, then jim, lee, thurston came out, kim came out, they ambiented their way into one of the new songs. Second song was Bull In The Heather, my favorite, very cool version and all... Many of the songs sort of went New Song->ambience->Thurston Moore self-oscillating vibrato->end. Very fun. Here's a bunch of pictures, I'll put a comment on it if I can remember where it's from and if that's important.     Thurston sill had all of his indie rocker left in him. He was very dynamic, I was right in front of him, really. Lee and Jim basically just sort of played guitar and whatnot, Kim is getting old... She did a lot with raising her arms and whatnot. He crowd surfed at one point. The tech freaked out because he thought Thurston lost some guitar part in the crowd or something.  This is Thurston playing his Eric's Trip guitar. Basically 4 strings, the top tuned to something and the bottom 2 tuned to something else... action like maybe 3", he just played with a drumstick. This picture was taken for Ryan.     Kim played trumpet during one of the two encores (the first, even). The second was teenage riot. Woo!  Here's Lee/Jim during one of the ambience jams. Note the guitars on the amp for better feedbacking. Never held the guitar like that, I must say. Lee played his jazzblaster in 1/2 of the songs and the 12 string twice. Here are pedalboard pics for those who're interested (I have bigger ones too for identification... Sorry that the angle is bad on some of them. I don't know which is which, if ritz had actually given me the pictures in chronological order I would have. And no, that's not a gonkulator...)     I thought I had more, maybe not. Anyways, it was a good night. Good stuff. Picture quality is bad, oh well. |