we all carry the tune we love

Last year, I put up a list of the five best shows I saw in 2010. Allow me to quote from that post: I don’t know how many shows I saw in 2010; somewhere between 25 and 30. … I actually think 25-30 is the right number for me.

Now allow me to laugh hysterically: AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

Ahem. As you may have surmised, the number is much higher this year. I went to 82 shows in 2011, and the number would be higher still if I broadened my definition of “shows.” However, what I mean when I say that “I went to a show” is that I got there early enough to watch all the opening bands and I stayed through final teardown. I saw 224 sets by 156 different artists playing 40 venues in 10 states. There are a few more on the calendar in the dying days of 2011, but I honestly feel like if I have to talk to another stranger I’m going to say avada kevadra, which is either going to get me a very confused look or a punch in the face. Best not to risk it.

I still don’t really know what makes a show good. Some magical combination of the music, the sound, the crowd, the venue, my mood, my memory, my expectations. Who I’m with, if anyone. How long I’ve spent in line. How hungry I am, how many vodka-and-red-bulls I’ve thrown back, what the weather was like. What I am saying is that this is not a precise science and if you ask me tomorrow, you might get a different answer. With that in mind, here are the best shows I saw in 2011, with pictures when I’ve got them. (And not including Social Distortion. When you see a band 14 times in one year, that band goes in its own category.)

7. The Damned. Metro, Chicago. 2011-10-25. With The Legendary Shack-Shakers.
For their 35th anniversary, the Damned played Damned, Damned, Damned (1977) and The Black Album (1980) and at one point I put my hands over my heart and I looked at the woman next to me and said, “oh my god, I’m so happy right now,” and it’s possible it was kind of dusty in there and she put her arm around me and said “me too” and shared her whiskey and now we’re friends on Facebook.

6. Koffin Kats. Reggie’s Rock Club, Chicago. 2011-04-29. With Pearls Mahone & the OneEyed Jacks, The Venom Lords, nothing to gain, and The Ugly.

koffin kats @ reggie’s, 2011-04-29.

I didn’t know what to expect from this show. I seriously had no idea. I’m not much of a psychobilly person, I’d never heard of any of the bands on the bill, I thought people playing an upright bass on stage were pretty limited in terms of on-stage shenanigans. I was utterly blown away. One day, I will follow the Koffin Kats around on tour, and I will write you something about the trainwreck that ensues.

5. Detroit Cobras. The Bottom Lounge, Chicago. 2011-06-02. With Girl in a Coma.

detroit cobras @ bottom lounge, 2011-06-02

Three things. One, the music was fantastic all night long — Detroit Cobras are this raunchy garage.rock act and the woman who fronts the band has that terrifying charisma I can’t handle. Two, I’d never heard of Girl in a Coma, and now I love them a LOT. And three, the number of straight white dudes on the stage and in the audience was very, very small. As a friend said when I was telling him about it, “Man, straight white dudes are like McDonald’s. You don’t realize how many there are until you’re someplace where there aren’t any.” So true, my friend, and I didn’t realize how much I needed a show like that until it happened. I’m glad it happened at one where everything else was so fantastic, too.

4. The Pogues. The Congress Theater, Chicago. 2011-03-03. With Titus Andronicus. I can’t say it any better than I already did. (That’s my most popular blog post, by the way.)

3. Fucked Up. Logan Square Auditorium, Chicago. 2011-09-29. With Culo and Wavves. I worked the doors for a little while, inexplicably. I was there early and it was cold, so I let myself in and they gave me shit to do. Fine by me. The opener was a glorious trainwreck I want to see in a sweat-soaked basement with crumbling ceiling tiles and dripping walls. The first thing the singer did was kick a guy in the chest, and he proceeded to spend the rest of the set either physically menacing the front row (except for me, for whatever reason) or trying to untangle his mic cord from the kick drum. It was a hot mess.

Wavves was great, a full set of bleached-out feel-good surf.punk that really got the pit going and ended when the crowd — mostly kids — crashed the stage. The band tried to keep playing and the kids tried not to fuck with their gear, but the whole thing fell apart spectacularly. Their latest album, King of the Beach, was one of my faves last year.

Aaaand then there was Fucked Up, who made one of my faves from this year, David Comes To Life, and I am never sure what to say about their shows. I love them. Here is a picture.

photo by jeremy larson, for consequences of sound

That’s a different show (from earlier in the year, at Lincoln Hall) and I did not take that photo, which should be pretty clear given that I’m visible on the left, yellow mohawk and orange earplugs. The shows are a sweaty, pulsating mess of bodies and noise, and I hurt so good for days.

2. OFF!. Bottom Lounge, Chicago. 2011-04-02. With Trash Talk and the Brokedowns.

keith morris with off! bottom lounge, 2011-04-04. full set here.

Just when you think you’re out…

Regular readers will be aware that I spent roughly ten years not going to shows at all. Those were grim years in a lot of ways that I’m not discussing, but even before I stopped going to concerts, I had stopped going to see hardcore. I had largely stopped listening to hardcore. But then I heard that Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks) had a new band with some other dudes I’d heard of. I got curious. I listened to their EPs. I went to their show. Some part of me snapped back into place.

1. Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg. AAA, Chicago. 2011-10-09. No support.
This was the final show of Riot Fest — for me, anyway, and I believe in general. I’d been fighting pneumonia, I was taking steroids as treatment and so I hadn’t slept in days, and when I’d tried to get up and take a shower that morning, I collapsed in the hall and stayed there for a long time, unable to summon the energy to stand under my own power, without a rail at my front and a few thousand people at my back. I was in no shape for a show. It took me hours to leave the house, and I promised myself I wouldn’t go anywhere near the stage because I couldn’t take another beating. Yeah, guess where I ended up.

AAA is a tiny, nondescript club in Wicker Park that is impossible to google and difficult to find. The ceilings are unfinished and the stage is made of plywood, and that night, they packed us in like sardines. It wasn’t just me who was in no shape for a show, either. That place was full of aging punks with aching backs, people who’d been staggering from venue to venue for a week straight, closing down the neighborhood bars and starting over again the next day. We were exhausted and punchy and almost certainly drunk on something, and when the band came out, we laughed and danced and sang and loved every second of it.

Marky Ramone isn’t one of the original members of the band, but he is the only surviving member of the longest-lasting lineup. He’s the drummer and didn’t say much, but then again, neither did Michale Graves, who was providing vocals. He’s a little guy, but the stage is tiny and Marky’s drums take up a lot of room. Graves had the space to jump up and down in one spot, and so that’s what he did for 90 minutes straight. The stage was slick with sweat three songs in, 1-2-3-4! and they didn’t let up for a second. It was like getting run over by some kind of contentment truck. They might as well be a Ramones cover band, but I am rarely in a room so full of unadulterated joy as I was right then.

Other fantastic shows were:

• Okkervil River, the Felice Brothers at the Vic
• Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard at the Chicago Theater
• Stiff Little Fingers, Flatfoot 56, Rambos at the Double Door
• Dayglo Abortions, Verbal Abuse, I Attack, Eske at Cobra Lounge

Next up: Best sets of 2011, and probably something about my feelings re: Social Distortion. Because I know you’re all waiting for another post about that.