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Originally Posted by Everyneurotic
ok, here's my report of what happened saturday:
first things first; I WAS THE OPENING BAND, meaning that I/C/O/C got selected personally by thurston to open the show here; it's usually me but for this occasion, i got help from improv guitarist julio clavijo.
being the opening band hand selected by sonic youth themselves, i got to hang out with them for a lot, i got to see the soundcheck (they played "incinerate" and "reena"), and we actually had a very good soundcheck ourselves, everything was loud and well mixed; we had a minor crisis because our sampler crapped out before soundcheck but when we were already in the venue, so we had to run to my house with a laptop to retrieve the samples from my desktop computer, which wasn't so bad since i live very close to the venue (in case you care, I/C/O/C's stuff is constructed with sampled "rhythms" and on top of it there's guitar improvisation, which range from atonal to harsh oversaturated signals); while leaving, thurston, lee, steve and mark decided to go look at the flea market with bootleg shirts and merch in general that got set outside the place (later, lee scored an engraved coffee mugged and a beer glass with their logos), thurston said they were going to go out and "flip their tables", they went out, took a look and, when we were already like half a block away from them, got their fans chasing after them, they ran back to the venue a la "a hard day's night."
so, on to the show, we went onstage when the crowd roared, then realized it was not sonic youth coming onstage and a deafining chorus of booing started, i was getting ready plugging my guitar (i had my pedals on a table) and everytime i looked to the crowd, everybody was flipping me the bird and telling me to fuck off and die, i flipped them back and smiled; the plan was originally to have an improv starting with soft almost unprocessed feedback and then to take it up until the end, adding the samples on the way to the end to have a grand harsh noise finale, but the crowd was so rowdy, we decided to go balls out all the way, we did start with feedback, my guitar on the floor, picking it's own vibrations; someone threw a coin over to us, in order to hit us, but it landed just out of reach, so i went, picked it up and thanked the crowd for throwing it. as the crowd grew louder, we grew even louder and the sound people, perhaps fearing their p.a. might crap out because of us, turned my guitar down, at first i thought a cable shorted or something but everything was ok with my stuff, then i went down to see if the amp was doing good and it was, so to fuck with the sound people assholes i started to yell into the mike picking the sound from the amp, then the sound guys started to fuck up the laptop, still we got a descent noise and our time was up anyway, so we ended our performance there, with a stranded high note of noise from my unplugged cable, i turned my amp off, threw my guitar on the stage and took a bow like saying "ta-da!" and left. to my surprise the whole band plus lee's kids were there watching the whole show, thurston thought it was amazing and wanted to know if we made a recording of it (we didn't, we were originally going to use the laptop to record our set), kim told us we were very brave to face such a rowdy crowd, lee followed us to our dressing room; he then told us, and i still can't believe this, "one of the best opening acts they ever had"; it was so overwhelming to hear that from one of my heroes.
now, i want to say one final thing about my own set and then i'll move over to report about sy's; I WENT ONSTAGE TO PISS AS MANY PEOPLE OFF AS I COULD, i wanted to go and have a great time and play the best that i could, as i expected, there was a lot of chaos involved and things didn't worked out as planned musically but i counted with that (i've never played a smooth show, what's the fun in that anyway?) and it ended up being better than i expected. yeah, i was cocky because i was not going to take shit from anybody, especially some posers who went their to see sy play "kool thing" and because they were associated with nirvana, i'm glad people got angry and was a lot more glad to have been invited by the band and not the promoters and, even better yet, that sy liked my shit...my editor also thought my set was tits, he liked us more than sy and some people did come up to me afterwards and told me they liked it and there was this one guy in a dinosaur jr shirt all the way in the front who started giving us the finger and shit and ended up loosing his mind the whole time of our set.
ok, on to sonic youth; thurston came on and said "hi, we're sonic youth and this song is called 'incinerate'!!", they announced "candle" as an old song they don't normally play from their album daydream nation, as i said, the band struggled to start "skip tracer" and then switched it for "mote" which was amazing, they extended so many of their songs, it was crazy!!!! thurston was rocking the guitar so hard over his amps for mad feedback and shit that he broke a string in the process, and they connected the end of "mote" effortlessly and incredibly from pretty fucking loud and dissonant to quieter for "rapture" (i saw them do this last time with and extended "pattern recognition" into "unmade bed"); one of my other favorite parts of the show was, unexpectedly, the rather ripped songs, played with more grit, edge and noise as opposed to the less sonic (no pun) more lean recorded counterparts, highlights being the middle part of "turquoise boy", which surprised me, and "pink steam"; kim was playing the rockstar, proving my untold theory that rather ripped is sy's glam rock album; tom violence was an amazing surprise, apocalyptic even (the majority of the crowd seemed to not know the song, unsurprisingly), at some point, kim introduced mark to the crowd and a section started chanting "PAVE-MENT! PAVE-MENT!"; my favorite songs that were performed were the songs from confusion (i kept yelling for "inhuman" and "confusion is next"), one of the best parts was the clapping on "shaking hell", at first in unison, then accompanying the toms on the verse, it sounded way cool, it was so dark and dissonant and scary, it was awesome. then, they played "teenage riot", with the "spirit desire" intro and everything, when the song finally ended, they extended it with a noise section, lee dragging his guitar across the stage and trying to stick it into the lights above, and thurston, first trying to feedback the house speakers, then jumping offstage and in front of the barricade, smacking his guitar in the hands on the people in front; then, when he was coming onstage again, he lifted his guitar while still being down and lee met him and they clashed their guitars together, then they smacked them a couple of times, sword style, then they retired to their respective corners, faced each other, counted, then rushed towards each other and when they reached the center of the stage hit the chord, the whole band ending together.
for the second encore, when thurston started playing the intro to "silver rocket" i started to lose my mind yet again, although in all fairness, that's probably the only song that kinda let me down, they played it slower than the studio version and the improv in the middle was very short, still, it was rocking; and then "expressway" was mellower than expected, contrasting perfectly with the other extended noise songs they had performed previously, opting for a gentle drone that was hypnotic, crecending at points but never to ultra noisy territory, the ending was perfect if a little shorter than i expected; first kim left the stage and the crowd went nuts, then mark, then lee, then thurston and steve.
i did the "we're not worthy" wayne's world thing when i went to congratulate them for an amazing show, i told steve it was the greatest show i had seen anyone play, better than the last time i saw them and that was my favorite concert of all time, i told steve my second favorite concert ever was slayer and he looked at me funny; then i heard him give a brief interview and found out that they are planning to release the deluxe edition of daydream nation (which we already knew) and, get this, THE SCREAMING FIELDS OF SONIC LOVE DVD for this year!!! because we were already asked to leave (sy and us) i couldn't ask them if there's going to be extras and what extras will there be on the dvd...oh well.
it was one of the happiest days of my life.
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