I think maybe I mentioned my Secret Project. The time has come!

The 2011 Rock and Roll Lifestyle Report
by pam, aged mumbledy-something

I want to make a really long post explaining myself, but the explanation is that I like going to concerts and I like data collection and analysis and visualizations. There is this guy, Nick Felton, who puts out an annual report every year. It is this beautifully insane, beautifully rendered look at all the minutae of his life: how many dinners he had, where, with whom, what he ate and drank and how much it cost. On and on it goes. It’s amazing. For a few years now, I’ve been thinking I’d like to do something sort of similar, except you really have to work up to that kind of thing. It would be easy for me to get so consumed logging my activities that I didn’t actually do any activities.

At any rate, I figured that since I already keep track of the shows I go to, it would be pretty trivial to collect a bunch more data. I’m pretty pleased with the results, if I do say so myself.

check it out!

download the pdf.

It’s two pages. Mostly it was done using google spreadsheets / charts, Photoshop, and then InDesign. I also had some help from wordle. I think it is self-explanatory, but let me know if you have any questions. Or comments, for that matter — let’s make next year’s even crazier!

I didn’t start out 2011 intending to see Social Distortion so many times. In the fall of 2010, I’d seen them play a fantastic show in Chicago, and shortly thereafter, they announced a west coast tour in February. February, for whatever reason, is a month in which I tend to go pretty batshit insane. Mostly that’s related to insomnia; one year, I added up all the sleep I got that month and the total clocked in around 50 hours. That’s less than most normal people get in a week. I can function very well for a very long time on very little sleep, but that kind of insomnia wears me down pretty quickly. I start to look at sleep like I look at time travel: as a fantastic impossibility that only happens in books and movies.

Now, I do have a full-time 9(ish)-to-5(ish) grown-up day job. I’m sure you can imagine how useful I am at that job during the month of February. It’s really best for me to be elsewhere, which I’d discovered the year before when I took most of the month off and hung out in Vancouver. It was the best thing I did for my mental health that year. So I thought, oh, they’re touring the southwest in February, I’ll take ten days and go somewhere warm, see some friends, see some shows, relax in an environment where my sleep-dep isn’t going to fuck me up too badly. Off I went!

That was the winter tour. The next tour, in May, they played Milwaukee but not Chicago, and my roommate and I drove up. It was my fifth Social D show of the year, and so things were averaging out nicely to one show per month. But then they went off to Europe and Australia, and although I have followed bands out of the country before and will do it again, I won’t do it for outdoor festivals. I hate outdoor shows of all kinds. So then it was announced they were playing Riot Fest, followed by a fall/winter tour that fell right around Thanksgiving. That’s usually a pretty good time to follow bands around because I can see a lot of shows without taking many vacation days. And I looked at the tour dates and thought, hmmm, I have friends in those towns, I have airline vouchers from getting bumped on a regular basis, I have seven shows to see if I want to meet my totally arbitrary goal of seeing them once a month (on average). Let’s give it a shot!

social distortion at hob san diego, 2011-02-20

I didn’t consider any of these shows for my best-of 2011 lists because when you see a band so many times — especially a bunch of times in a row, which does weird things to your head — you judge the shows very differently. But here’s the full list, ranked as well as I’m able to do it.

tier one

• denver 3 (2011-12-04): Look, I’m not one to complain about setlists when I see a band so often. The whole reason I’m willing to do it is that I don’t care what they play. It’s all rock & roll to me, you know? But sometimes it’s the last show of a tour and Mike’s in a great mood and the setlist seems to have a little something extra. In this case, it was the latter half of the main set: Untitled / Dear Lover / Sometimes I Do / That’s Alright / Nickels and Dimes. The first two are dark pieces of bitterness off White Heat that I love and rarely hear, I’d never heard “Sometimes I Do” and I love it to pieces (although the best part of that song is watching every live recording of it on youtube to find the one that’s least coherent. I love Mike, but the man is a mumbler), “That’s Alright” is a totally ridiculous blues number that they break out a handful of times every ten years or something. “Nickels & Dimes” has no special amazingness for me, but it’s a good set closer.
• denver 2 (2011-12-03): Good friend, good crowd, good mood, good beer, “Untitled” into “Ball and Chain,” which is the only time I heard “Ball and Chain” on that tour. I know people get sick of that song, but if there is one moment I love in a Social D show, it’s when Mike rears back and lets the crowd take over singing the final verse. I’m born to lose, and destined to fail. That song is why I have so far resolved not to tattoo any song lyrics on myself. One thing will lead to another, and I’ll end up with an elaborate neck tattoo that says TAKE AWAY THIS BALL AND CHAIN.
• madison (2011-11-29): When the worst part of the evening was the part where I met the band, you know the evening was pretty great. Was it the “My Sharona” cover? The bag of chalk someone threw? The cheap drinks? The impromptu jam they threw in that I’d never heard before? Listening to them soundcheck “Drug Train”? Whatever it was, the whole evening was fantastic.
• buffalo 2 (2011-11-23): the first night was rough going, but the second night was great. The crowd was better, the band was in a better mood, and it was the first appearance of “That’s Alright.” Turns out that Mike is actually 12 years old. He spent so much of this show laughing.
• fresno (2011-02-16): Gord is always saying that for a show to be great, something has to happen. This is the show everything happened. The blizzard in the Donner Pass. Social D opening for themselves. An ex-con named Todd and a late night at Denny’s. A fight, a nightstick to the face, too much red lighting, “Motherfuckers, don’t make me come down there,” “Ring of Fire”: it was the quintessential Social D experience in 20 seconds flat.

tier two

• chicago (2011-10-06): a short festival set (for Riot Fest), but a great one.
• grand rapids (2011-11-27): weird venue but a great crowd. I forget how much energy I spend dealing with crowd surfers until I go to a show where there aren’t any.
• reno (2011-02-15): everything about this show was nasty. The flight was bad, I had problems getting my ticket, casino shows are always clusterfucks anyway. The pit was ugly and Mike was in a bad mood, but those two things put together made the show really, really intense.
• san diego 1 (2011-02-19): I got beat to hell in the pit because I was trying to keep the crowd off the kids next to me — eight years old, I believe — and Mike gave me a pick for my trouble. This is the first time I saw the background singers, too. I don’t like those songs much on the record, but I like them live, and the two women on background vocals add a lot.
• san diego 2 (2011-02-20): I have nothing special to report about this one either way, except it’s one of the few that was not all-ages, meaning I had only myself to take care of. Often there are kids around me on the rail at all-ages shows, and I’m just not the sort of person who’s going to leave them to fend for themselves in that sort of situation. It’s tiring and it can be frustrating, but there it is. It’s also the first show I took my camera to, thus starting me down the road of taking pictures at concerts.

tier three

• milwaukee (2011-05-07): I wasn’t in the pit for this and I hated every second of it. I can’t really complain, though. The show wasn’t bad, it just killed me to be so far away.
• stroudsburg (2011-11-20): god save me from an incompetent crowd at a punk show. They wanted to have a pit, but didn’t know how. A few people tried crowdsurfing, but there weren’t enough people, and the people who were there just ducked and covered. “There’s no room for racism at a Social Distortion show,” Mike told a room full of white people, at which point three bare-chested boys in the pit with their t-shirts around their heads started chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” It was very, very weird.
• buffalo 1 (2011-11-22): I don’t know, the crowd was bad, something was off. I just wasn’t feeling it.
• denver 1 (2011-12-02): I’m still mad at the big drunk guy in the black shirt who crushed me for no reason. Like, really, really mad.

And that’s it! Who should I follow in 2012? I need a band that’s touring somewhere warm in February. Oh, look. Social D fits that bill. …dammit.

Best ten sets of 2011, in no particular order. All of these were in Chicago unless otherwise stated.

Larry and His Flask. Congress Theater, 2011-10-08. Riot Fest. Jesus Fucking Christ. Music should be played this way every single goddamn time. They’re going to be opening for the Reverend Horton Heat in March, and everyone should go. Everyone in the whole world. We’ll fit if we can get a TARDIS installed in the Metro, so there’s no problem.

The Menzingers. Subterranean, 2011-06-16. My morning-after post still sums it up as well as I’m ever going to be able to.

t.s.o.l. @ reggie’s, 2011-05-14

T.S.O.L. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-05-14. Perfect for the Code Blue singalong alone. (Full writeup.)

Unnamed impromptu group of musicians. Rainbow Ballroom (Fresno, CA). 2011-02-16. The actual bill for the evening was Chuck Ragan, Lucero, and Social Distortion. Everyone had played Reno the night before, and there was a blizzard in the mountains early that morning. Do you know what’s between Reno and Fresno? The Donner Pass. Anyone who left Reno after ~0700 didn’t make it to the show, and that group included Lucero and Jon Gaunt, Chuck’s fiddle player. (I have seen all of them since, so although they did not make it to Fresno that day, neither did they resort to cannibalism to survive.) So the members of Social Distortion, minus Mike, opened for themselves. Brent and Jonny traded vocal duties. They played a bunch of country covers and some stuff they’d written themselves and they had a great time doing it and I had a great time watching it happen.

peculiar pretzelmen @ reggie’s, 2011-09-08.

The Peculiar Pretzelmen. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-09-08. I’ve said this before, but allow me to repeat: Imagine, if you will, Tom Waits doing a lot of drugs and finding himself in Appalachian coal country and he has to do a concert consisting entirely of Loony Toons theme song remixes and so he goes to the junkyard and makes up some instruments for his show. Weird and riveting.

The Dwarves. Bottom Lounge, 2011-08-20. If I hadn’t actively loathed one of the openers, this would be on the best-show list instead of the best-set list, because Nashville Pussy were also excellent.

Made By Man. Cobra Lounge, 2011-09-27. A local band I’d never heard of, but the frontman is terrifyingly charismatic and he freaked me out in the best way possible.

Trenchtown. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-10-13. Some sort of surf.punk reggae band that I swear is from California, except they’re from Michigan. They covered ‘Maneater.’ Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Tracer Bullet. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-12-16. The first time I saw these guys, I spent half the set wondering where the hell I know the singer from and the other half drooling on the half-naked saxophone player. The second time, he also took his pants off, and normally I would probably like that less, except that he was wearing Batman briefs. Batman briefs get a pass. Oh, also, their music is good, punk rock mixed with a Detroit oldies station.

Chuck Ragan. Ogden Theatre (Denver, CO). 2011-12-03. I picked Denver 2 as my favorite Chuck Ragan set of the year, but I never saw them do a bad one. This one sticks out in my head, although I’m not sure why. The “Coal Tattoo” cover, maybe? (Link to the Hazel Dickens version, which isn’t the original, but it’s very good, and it’s the one Chuck namechecks when he intros this song.) All three nights in Denver were great, actually.

Live music is the best music, guys. Here’s to another year of it.

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.

Quick round-up of shows I have seen in the last few months but, for whatever reason, didn’t get around to writing about. So behind the cut: The Damned, the Meat Puppets, the Koffin Kats (part III) and John Doe.

the damned’s captain sensible and dave vanian, metro, 2011-10-25

I love the Damned. Like. A lot. They were celebrating their 35th anniversary by playing 1977′s Damned, Damned, Damned and 1980′s The Black Album back-to-back. The former is one of the greatest albums of all time ever, the latter is not far behind, and there was no way in hell I was missing this show. The band came out and waved and Dave was in his dark suit and sunglasses like one of the original gothboys that he is, and Captain Sensible looked like a guy wearing a Captain Sensible costume, and the bassline of “Neat Neat Neat” kicked in and I smiled and danced for hours. I knew I would enjoy the show, but oh my god, I had so many Feelings. It was actually a bit overwhelming! I tried for weeks to write about this show and couldn’t do it, but it was one of the best this year.

Support was The Legendary Shack Shakers, as kickass a rockabilly band as I’ve seen. I’ll definitely be trying to see them again. Full photo set.

curt kirkwood of the meat puppets. double door, 2011-11-11

Confession time, you guys: Sometimes I get the Meat Puppets confused with the Meatmen, the Marked Men, the Mustard Men and Mustard Plug. None of those bands have anything in common, though, don’t worry. There is no need for alarm. It’s just a name thing.

Anyway. When trying to tell people about the Meat Puppets, I always forget that they were sort of popular in the 90s (thank you, Nirvana), and I fall back on describing them as one of the “big” SST bands from back in the day, when SST signed weird hardcore bands and a handful of them got popular (for some punk rock version of popular) by mixing hardcore and something else. Black Flag went metal, Hüsker Dü went pop, the Minutemen went funk, and the Meat Puppets went country. But whatever, I love hardcore!Meat Puppets and alt.grunge!Meat Puppets and I’m not super wild about contemporary.country!Meat Puppets (which seems to be what they are doing now), but this was a good show. Those dudes can really fucking play, and they were having such a good time up there doing it. They played old songs and new songs and the Kirkwoods might be looking rough, but I like my people with some edges.

Support was a local band called the Sweeps that I can’t really tell you much about (except for, “My name is Santiago, and that’s Bob.” The juxtaposition of those two names cracked me up) and a Belgian garage.grunge band called Black Box Revelation. I was not really in the mood to listen to drawn-out noise jams (which means I was also not in the mood that would’ve been most receptive to the Meat Puppets), but I thought these guys were worth checking out.

The light was shit that night, and so the photos are terrible. They are here, nonetheless.

koffin kats @ reggie’s rock club, 2011-12-16

You guys know how I feel about Koffin Kats shows. Fantastic good times all around. They are hard as hell to photograph, but whatever. Let’s just look at more pictures.

vic victor zooooom. koffin kats @ reggie’s rock club, 2011-12-16

tracer bullet @ reggie’s rock club, 2011-12-16.

That’s Tracer Bullet, the band that drives me completely insane because I swear to god I know those guys from a different life. Which life? I have no idea. If you like your punk rock mixed up with the oldies station I listened to in Michigan (50s rock, early early r&b, motown, some soul), you should check them out. Also because Chris tends to take his clothes off. As you can see, he is a fan of Batman. I approve this message.

Full set here.

john doe, old town school of folk music. 2011-11-26

Took a break from Social D to go to my second John Doe show of the year. The first was with Jill Sobule at Lincoln Hall supporting their album, A Day at the Pass, and this time he was at the Old Town School supporting his own new one, Keeper. His backing band includes Maggie Björklund on pedal steel, which is completely aces, and Dead Rock West’s Cindy Wasserman on supporting vox. Which is to say that the people behind him are fantastic. Anyway, I love John Doe so much that I walked up to him of my own volition and told him so. His shows are fantastic, but he doesn’t belong at the Old Town School. He has too much energy for that place, or a different kind of energy, or something. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic venue and a great place for certain kinds of shows, but there was something off about it in this case. All that sitting, sipping your wine while John Doe is rocking out a few feet away? I can’t even deal with that.

Also they irritate me with their no-photography signs, which say “per the artist’s request,” as if they ask each individual artist and go from there. Lies! They do not allow photography and they should just say so. But whatever, I heart John Doe and I will go see him every time, even playing venues I feel are not kickass enough for him.

I added a new thing to my show-going this year: I started taking pictures. Not because I particularly enjoy it (I don’t) or because I want to be a rock & roll photographer (I don’t), but because I have some kind of weird hangup that is almost certainly leftover from journalism school. I do not like to post things without any art. So I decided I’d take photographs.

I have a Panasonic DMC-TS1 Lumix that is about the size of a pack of smokes. It fits in my pocket, and I bought it during the 2010 Olympics because my last digital camera broke after I’d dropped it on the ground in the rain one too many times. It is water-resistant and shockproof, and it now goes almost everywhere with me. I can put it in my boot to sneak it into shows if security is lax (Danzig) or in my pants if security is somewhat tighter (also Danzig) or wrap it up in a handkerchief and put it in an empty coffee cup under a dumpster in an alley if security is AMAZINGLY DOUCHEY (Puscifer). With this point-and-shoot, I set it to high-speed burst, turn off the flash, stand in the pit, and lay on the shutter. I take an average of 847 photos per show. If I am very lucky and no one has pushed me and the musicians aren’t too jittery and the light is exactly right, I will get a good photograph.

Here are the ones I like best from this year.

Black Box Revelation at the Double Door. Belgian two-piece garage.grunge act, opening for the Meat Puppets. The light that night was fucking terrible, all red gels and fog machines. So, for the first time ever, I messed around with my camera enough to discover its black & white setting. It also has a lot of manual settings that I don’t understand even a little bit (despite having read the manual a lot). I fucked with all of them. Somehow, despite my incompetent flailing, there is something about this picture that I am madly in love with.

Nashville Pussy’s Karen Cuda. Bottom Lounge, 2011-08-20. Sheer luck of the light on this one.

Social Distortion. Buffalo 2, Town Ballroom. I have a hard enough time taking photos, and taking photos of the same band night after night is very hard. They start to look the same, and the whole enterprise is just a boring slog. I’m really happy with this one, though.

Dead Superheroes Orchestra at Reggie’s. I actually took this with my phone as they were setting up, and not only is it one of the best photos I have taken with my phone, it is maybe the best photo I took of this band. They are a 10- or 11-piece chamber orchestra with a skinny gothboy singer and given their name, I was hoping to learn that they play in the skull makeup all the time. Sadly, they do not; this was the Halloween show, and so they were dressed up.

Amon Amarth at Bottom Lounge. My roommate decided it was time for us to see some viking metal, so off we went. The hair. The horns. The synchronized headbanging. Incredible. Most of those photos turned out pretty well.

Koffin Kats at Reggie’s. Just go see them. Hard to photograph but fantastic to watch.

The rest of my personal favorites from 2011 are in a cleverly named photo set, and you are free to check them out. In the meantime, I bought myself a “real” camera for Christmas this year. Don’t ask me to tell you about it, because I don’t know. It’s a Canon. I could very easily check to find out what kind of camera it is, but it’s perhaps more telling that I have been trying to remember for a good twenty minutes, and I failed. I won’t be able to take it with me to all the shows I go to, but if my 2011 numbers hold, it will go with me about 60 percent of the time. Stay tuned.

Favorite albums of 2011. Turns out that I like punk rock, Canadian alt.country, and some other things (though I recognize those other things are not very far from punk rock). I have divided this year’s list up accordingly, mostly because I was not actually capable of listing only five. I was not intending to split the list this way when I started, but it works out nicely. Note that they’re in alphabetical order. Picking five was bad enough without having to rank them, too.

punk rock

• Fucked Up – David Comes To Life. Hardcore, or maybe post.hardcore I can get behind. It’s a punk rock opera, and yes, the woman gets fridged so David can come to life, but at least she has a name (Veronica)! Regardless, I’m so grateful I saw them a few times this year before they broke up (if indeed they have), and I’m grateful that someone recorded them playing it top-to-bottom in the round, but watching that video makes me regret not putting in more of an effort to go to that show.
• Mischief Brew – The Stone Operation. Best one yet from these anarcho.folk.punks. I’m really bummed I missed them when they came through Chicago.
• Old Man Markley – Guts ‘n’ Teeth. Bluegrass punks. A stranger on a sidewalk in San Diego told me to check them out. He wasn’t wrong; the title track is one of those songs I occasionally just put on repeat for the day.
• Touché Amoré – Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me. This record clocks in at a whopping 20.8 minutes, but it blows me away every time I listen to it.
• Wild Flag – Wild Flag. If my house were not full of giant windows and shared walls and close neighbors, I would turn this to 11 and dance around naked. Alas, I have to settle for turning it to 10 and dancing in my pajamas.

canadian alt.country

• The Cowboy Junkies – Demons. Vic Chesnutt covers. The album so good I cannot bear to listen to it.
• The Deep Dark Woods – The Place We Left Behind. This is the album I listen to when I’m on airplanes, and it’s never a good idea. I keep doing it.
• Elliott BROOD – Days Into Years. Latest offering from the “death-country” three-piece I love beyond the telling of it. They’re touring it now; go see them. Some of my best live concert experiences have been with this band.
• Little Foot Long Foot – Oh, Hell. Some kind of fucked-up, bluesy garage-country album that kicks my ass every time. Also, they have a song called “Neko Case Hate Fucks Kurt Cobain,” and it is really good, okay? Okay.
• One Hundred Dollars – Songs of Man. Something of an update on the Cowboy Junkies, I suppose, with a little more punk rock somewhere in their DNA.

other things

• Dave Hause – Resolutions. If this album had been out in 2007, I’d've listened to it nonstop.
• Hey Rosetta! – Seeds. Canadian garage-rockers with a string section. This is the album for lying in the middle of the living room floor with the lights off and staring at the ceiling in the dark until it moves.
• The Pack A.D. – Unpersons. Sleaze with a swing and lot of garage.punk attitude. This album is good for fucking someone you don’t love on the kitchen floor. Also, doing dishes, as long as you don’t mind someone watching you accidentally grind against the dishwasher.
• Chuck Ragan – Covering Ground. If I were forced to pick a top five total, this would be on it. I fell in love with this record as it was being written and they were testing new songs on a live crowd, and I didn’t buy the damn thing until very late in the year, after I already knew most of it by heart. It didn’t disappoint me.
• Wugazi – 13 Chambers. There’s something really weird and hypnotic and compelling about this, and I actually like it way more than I like either Fugazi or Wu-Tang.

I knew, going into the meet & greet, that both meeting and greeting might be on the agenda. I spent a long time being nervous and pissed off about said nervousness — I really do feel celebrity is bullshit — until I remembered about social anxiety and how I get nervous whenever I have to meet anyone at all. I do just fine meeting strangers on the sidewalk, but put me across a table from someone and I’m lucky to string together two coherent words about the weather. This is true if the person across from me is a possible coworker, a blind date, a long-time internet friend, or Mike Ness.

I should have prepared remarks, but I didn’t. I was told it would be casual, and I can totally do casual. But surprise! It was not particularly casual, and so I have no idea what the hell I said. I don’t think it was mortifying, and that’s about all I’ve got.

If I had prepared remarks, though, maybe it would have been something about how me and Social Distortion are the same age, almost exactly, and I can’t tell you the first song I heard. But you know how some people get the urge to start nesting and they buy a house or have a kid or get a dog or organize their closet or drink a lot of hot chocolate or take up quilting? Me, I go to Social D shows.

social distortion @ the ogden, 2011-12-03

It’s not just about the music; I love a lot of bands. It’s not just that they put on a good show, although they do. It’s the whole thing — the other fans, bikers and punkers and straights and rockabilly queens, drifters and criminals and cops and PhD students and plumbers; parents there with their kids, parents there without their kids, sisters with their little brothers, couples on dates, the anti-social there alone. It’s getting to know them before the show and being family for a few hours, having a fantastic time, and not seeing them again till next time. It’s the writhing of the pit and the roar of the crowd as we all shout the words back at the stage. It’s whatever happens after the show — sometimes nothing, sometimes something. I’ve never been someone who felt I fit in anywhere, and my family is not exactly familial, and although these days I do better than fine, sometimes I want to be with my people. And my people, apparently, hang out at Social D shows.

So probably I’d've thanked Mike Ness for my people, for writing the kind of music and fronting the sort of band and being the type of personality who could build this community of fuckups and keep us coming together time after time. (They sold out three shows in Denver, in this economy. That says something about the band, yeah, but maybe a little more about the fans.) It means a hell of a lot to me, and if handing over a good percentage of my paycheck to that band isn’t thank-you enough, I could maybe say the words. I didn’t, of course. I have no idea what I said instead, but it sure wasn’t that.

That was in Madison. I was following the band around on their winter tour — Hampton Beach, Atlantic City, Stroudsburg, Buffalo (x2), Louisville, Toledo, Grand Rapids, Madison, Denver (x3) — taking pictures and trying not to freeze to death and falling hard for the second opener, Chuck Ragan. I didn’t quite make it to all of them, but I came damn close.

So let’s start by talking about Chuck Ragan! Check this shit out, guys:

Fuck, they’re good. Like, I can’t even handle it. Right? I wasn’t at that show — different tour — but watching that video mostly makes me think how lucky I am to have seen them so goddamn many times. Thirteen, I believe, and they’re better every time, Chuck’s gravelly baritone and Jon’s haunting fiddle and Joe’s bass keeping it together. It makes it hard not to smile, even when the songs aren’t the happiest.

chuck ragan @ the ogden, 2011-12-04.
maybe not the best photo, but it’s how i tend to picture him: belting it the fuck out.

[n.b.: I wish people who are bands would have band names. It's hard to discuss my love for Chuck Ragan and differentiate between Chuck-the-guy (who is lovely!) and the-music-he-plays-with-Joe-and-Jon-under-the-name-Chuck-Ragan (which is kickass!). Like, just talking about my love for Chuck Ragan sounds vaguely creepy because it sounds like it's directed at Chuck-the-guy. Although, I guess I do love Chuck-the-guy enough that if he needed a favor of some kind, I'd do what I could to help him out. Which is easy to say, given that I cannot imagine the circumstance under which he would call on me for a favor. Perhaps in his secret life as a crime-fighter? I have some fake moustaches he could borrow. Is that love? Maybe I should brush up on the concept.]

…sorry, that just went completely off the rails, didn’t it? My point is, Chuck is a good guy and when he is on stage with Joe Ginsberg and Jon Gaunt, they make amazing music. All those sets, and at no point did I think, “jesus, is this over yet?” And I think that about almost everyone, including Social Distortion. Which, granted, has absolutely nothing to do with Social Distortion and everything to do with how beat up I’m getting in the pit. But still. I have, on occasion, wanted their set to be over over over oh my god just stop, and I have never wanted such a thing during one of Chuck’s sets.

joe ginsberg @ town ballroom, 2011-11-23. i’m pretty sure he’s not actually as emo as he appears.

The schedule isn’t out yet for the upcoming Revival Tour, but it’s coming up in the spring. Keep an eye out for dates, and then go to as many as you can. The Revival Tour is a thing Chuck organizes with other current and former punk frontmen who occasionally leave their bands to travel the country with an acoustic guitar. This time around, it’s Brian Fallon (Gaslight Anthem), Dave Hause (the Loved Ones) and Dan Andriano (Alkaline Trio). Chuck himself fronts Hot Water Music on occasion; they were on hiatus for a while but I think are heading back into the studio soonish. So I’ll see you out there in the spring, yeah? Yeah. Trust me, I promise greatness.

social d @ the ogden, 2011-12-03

As for Social Distortion, I’m not sure what to say. Some of the shows were better than others, but none of them were bad. They’re a pretty well-oiled machine at this point, and if I didn’t have an amazing time, it was more about the crowd than the band. Yes, they’re my people, but my people can be fucking assholes sometimes. I can admit that.

In Stroudsburg, for example, there was a kid next to me on the rail (just assume “on the rail” for everything in the future), 13 years old, there with her older sister. Her sister was bracing her from behind, I was to her right, and there was some other woman to her left. We totally had it covered; the kid was fine. And then this creepy dude shoved his way up and was like, “she’s real young,” stroking his mustache like he was from Deliverance or something, and then he went on about protecting the children, and the sister was getting more and more freaked out but was clearly not going to say anything because who knew what the guy would do, and then he put his arm around me and announced that young boys also need protection. And at that point I turned around and just looked at him, and he was like …oh, shit. I informed him of my status as a grown-ass woman who did not need protecting, and the girl is young, yes, but we’ve got it. Go away. And he did! VICTORY.

The bus ride to Buffalo was long and depressing, and I love me some rust belt architecture. It was windy there, cold and pissing rain, and the handful of us who showed up early sat on the sidewalk and talked about hockey. I love it, ten punks on a sidewalk for a show, and what are we talking about? Our hatred of the Boston Bruins. The Sabres-Bruins game went to a shootout that night, and the venue had the game up on screens inside, and I remember thinking “oh shit, if the band comes out before this game is decided, the crowd is going to revolt.” They didn’t, though. Mike’s tech came out and watched with us, and Social D came on when it was over. The Sabres lost. “Fuck Boston, anyway,” Mike said. “I hate that town.” And the crowd goes wild.

Let’s back up for a second. The first Denver show was Friday, 2 December. Two days prior, I was home and went to see Hank III.

hank iii @ house of blues, chicago, 2011-11-30

I guess the show was fine, but I can’t tell you, as I had my clothes torn from my body — and that was a straight-up sexual-shaming revenge assault, my friends, it had nothing to do with anything else. If I throw a punch in a pit, I get what I get and I know it, but that isn’t what happened. Some guy ripped my shirt off in a room full of dudes for the lulz, and it took me completely by surprise. I do not like to be totally unprepared for anything, ever, and all I could do was stare at the guy in stunned silence. So that was good times. Security eventually threw him out, I think. They were nowhere for this show and should have been. The guy’s friend apologized to me, but I still stood in the House of Blues with my shirt in tatters and wondered what the hell to do next.

I made it home eventually, once I pulled myself together and realized that I generally have enough safety pins shoved through various articles of clothing that I could fashion something semi-decent out of what was left of my shirt(s). From there, I had some help from my new friend Phil, who sleeps on Lower Wacker and offered me his own shirt. Thank you, Phil, I appreciate the offer and you have restored a bit of my faith in humanity, but I’m not taking the shirt off the back of a homeless man, no matter how shitty my night was. (Here is that post-show picture, my t-shirt on backwards so the rips in it and in the undershirt were on opposite sides, everything sort of pinned together. Of all the post-show pictures I’ve taken of myself, that one’s the one I can’t look at. To me, it’s a much more violent image than even the ones where I’m beat to shit.)

The photos from that show turned out pretty well, though. I suppose that’s something.

So that was Wednesday. Thursday I could barely leave the house, and on Friday I went to Denver and emerged from the first show looking like this:

The rest of my left side looks about the same, but that’s all the photographic evidence you get. That night, I could have moved, but I’m a stubborn motherfucker and so I didn’t. For my stubbornness, I got crushed good and hard by some 300-pound passive-aggressive drunk guy. You know the type — the kind who turn their back and put their elbow to your windpipe without looking so they can disavow all knowledge and swear they didn’t mean to do it, and then they turn around and do it again, oh my gosh so sorry! And what gets me is that it was totally unnecessary. There was plenty of room! I screamed twice, once in pain and once in rage, and if he hadn’t been so big I probably would have tried my damnedest to break his nose and to hell with the asskicking I would’ve taken. At one point, the lights went down and Mike was changing guitars and the drunk dude let up for a few seconds, and so I put my head down and tried to breathe, and Mike yelled at me for it. “Wake up, girl, wake up! You’re at a rock & roll show!” Yes, Mike, I am well aware of my surroundings, thank you. He was joking, mostly, but I was not in the mood. So I went to my hotel after the show and wasn’t sure if I was going to go back. I haven’t left a show in tears since I was a kid, and that was two in a row.

I went back, of course. Saturday I even took a friend, who scared me by announcing that she had never been to a punk show before, and I was like — oh shit, are you sure you want to come down there with me? But she did, and the crowd was actually pretty mellow while still being very into it. On Sunday, I learned that there had been 15 fights on Saturday, and that it took between three and five security dudes to haul out two different people. I learned that when Social D comes to town, the venues call in the big guns, security-wise, and that shows don’t get much rowdier than Social D shows. I contest that claim, but what do I know? My friend had a great time. She didn’t like the opener, Suedehead (neither do I), but she went home a little in love with Chuck Ragan and sort of boggling over the strange and terrifying charisma of Mike Ness. Success!

Company aside, Saturday and Sunday were both fantastic. Chuck made me happy and I really appreciated how much they changed up their set from night to night while still somehow managing to always play my favorite songs. I think the rest of the crowd was increasingly into them, too; I wasn’t the only person singing along on either night, and I loved it so much and it felt so good to look around and see so many people down there having a good time. I don’t know, what can I say, I’m invested. They work so hard up there and have such a great time doing it. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. On Sunday, I asked Chuck for the setlist because I thought it was particularly good, and he also gave me his harmonica (which I thought was a mistake at first. Chuck, wait! You gave me your harmonica! Don’t you need it??? I am a terrible fangirl.). I don’t have a ton of memorabilia — a few setlists, a couple of drumsticks, a pile of picks — but I don’t know what to do with any of it. The harmonica, though, I think the right thing to do with that is play it. I’m rusty as fuck, but whatever. That’s what practice is for.

Kentucky I skipped. Atlantic City, I had some kind of stomach bug and so I stayed in Philly with friends and whined on their couch. (What happens if you shit yourself on a plane? Thank god I didn’t find out.) The people with me in Grand Rapids were some of the best people I’ve met anywhere and I should’ve got their names so we could be friends for real; that show was great. In Madison, the band played half a cover of “My Sharona,” and I knew the guy two people down from me from a previous SxDx show in Chicago. Someone threw a bag of chalk that covered the lot of us, except Mike, who I have yet to see actually get hit with anything anyone throws up there. Jonny, yes, but Mike is either surprisingly alert and has great reflexes, or he has excellent timing. Or both. In Stroudsburg, my hotel room almost burned down and there was blood in the bathroom of my replacement room. In Denver, I traded the Misfits pin on my jacket to someone called Quo for a free tattoo the next time I’m in San Francisco. Drifters and misfits, the lot of us, and that’s why I love it.

I took pictures sometimes, but not always, because it’s very hard to keep taking photos of the same band and have them be different or interesting. I think I’m most proud of this one:

social distortion @ town ballroom, 2011-11-23

Here is the full set. And here is some video I took in Buffalo of a song that seriously seemed like they were making it up on the spot (they weren’t). Social D as a Mississippi blues band. Genius:

And now I’m back in Chicago, wondering what’s next. I guess we’ll find out.

title: Dirty, Drunk, and Punk: The Twisted Story of the Bunchofuckinggoofs
author: Jennifer Morton
other shit: 223 pages. 2011, Insomniac Press
website: Dirty, Drunk and Punk
rating: 4/5 safety pins

I wish this book were bigger. I wish it were longer. Shinier. More expensive. And it cost me a pretty penny to begin with, seeing as how I had to order it from Canada and their dollar is up and shipping is expensive and I think Canada Post has Godot.

In theory, this book tells the story of the Toronto hardcore band/gang/something Bunchofuckingoofs, but in practice, it’s a punk rock coffee table book full of gorgeous photos, weird anecdotes about bizarre characters, quotes and flyers and lyric sheets and small pieces of prose that maybe kind of sort of fit together to tell something like a story. I’m generally of the opinion that “truth” is an unachievable goal when we are talking about 20+ years and a lot of mind-altering substances and people who sometimes have excellent reasons not to lay out their lives for the world, and so I thought the scattershot approach worked really well in this case. The whole story isn’t in the book — it probably isn’t anywhere — but there are enough pieces to shed some light on the mystery, and there are a lot of different viewpoints represented.

The book came to my attention earlier this year, when I read “Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the Dayglo Abortions,” because the Dayglos spent a fair amount of time in Toronto, hanging with the Goofs. That book kept saying things like “slept in cages” and “bicycle gang” and “lived in a boozecan.”

(A note to my American readers: A “boozecan” is an illegal after-hours drinking establishment. Presumably we have them here, but I have no idea what they’re called. Speakeasies? It seems so old-timey.)

Naturally, I tracked the book down. I did find myself wishing it had more of a cohesive narrative, but I found it to be a quick and fascinating read — well, more of a skim — that mostly followed lead singer/den father/gang leader Crazy Steve Goof and his troupe of miscreants. Theirs is a not-uncommon blend of violence, anarchy and social justice: The Goofs smashed TVs on stage and got in huge chain-swinging brawls with Nazis, and Steve Goof took in fuckups by the hundreds and gave them a home and something a lot like a family. They dove off the roof into mountains of beer cans, and Goof ran for the Toronto city council twice, leading a campaign to get hard drugs out of Kensington Market. (Coke: The Real Thing For Real Assholes.)

There’s even a chapter on Goof’s cock. It is called “You Want Me To Include What?” and comprises two pictures. That would have worked out better for me if I hadn’t been reading it on a plane next to some kid who was was on her way home to Ft. Lauderdale, where her boyfriend had just bought his first car, a Mustang. She was excited to ride in it. I glanced at Steve Goof’s cock and didn’t make the obvious comment.

A few months after reading the book, however, the thing that sticks out most is the anecdote involving oral sex and a shorted-out refrigerator. Are you thinking “…what the actual fuck?” Because that’s exactly what you should be thinking.

Recommended for fans of punk rock coffee table books, fragmented narratives about weirdass Canadian subcultures, and people who like a good contradiction.

The first draft of this posted started: As you have probably gathered by being on the same planet as me, I have some sort of Henry Rollins thing. It’s complicated.

And then there were like 1,400 words about Henry Rollins and a digression into my Glenn/Henry OTP. I deleted all of those words. You can thank me later.

The salient bits are that Rollins has a new book out called Occupants, which is photos from his travels along with essays for each of them. If you already like his written work, you will like this book. If you don’t, this isn’t going to convert you. If you have no idea, let me sum up all of his books for you: Winter is coming.

To promote the new book, he has been doing in-stores and signings across the country. One was at the Oak Park Public Library, and so off I went.

henry rollins, oak park public library, 2011-10-18

The talk portion of the evening started early (“They’re here, I’m here, let’s get it done. Waiting in line is a drag.”) and was one of the better ones I’ve seen, even though it was only about an hour. If you don’t know much about him or his talks or how he lives his life, well: He goes to places that white Americans do not normally go, he does things that white Americans do not normally do, and he reports back. He does weird shit and then he tells people about it, because he believes that learning about new things is valuable, and that there is no substitute for experience.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but that is pretty much my ideal life. I want to do weird shit and report back. To some extent, I do, and when I travel, I usually ask the internet what I should investigate or do while in a new place. What would you do if you were in Prague, internet? I’ll do it and tell you how it goes. I make a point of getting lost in new cities. My navigational system consists of “well, I haven’t gone this way yet,” and I often pick which direction to go in by going in the direction that looks sketchiest. I hate agendas and itineraries, and if I end the day somewhere I expected to be, I consider that day something of a failure. I don’t do very well traveling with other people because other people like to know where they’re sleeping that night. (I suspect that Henry Rollins is my ideal travel partner, in that I would never see him. We’d compare notes on the plane home.)

That said, I have limitations on my own travel that Henry Rollins does not. One, it’s basically his job. Me, I’ve got a day job and responsibilities at home that keep me from quitting said day job and vagabonding it around the globe. When he wanted to go to 12 countries he hadn’t been to before, he emailed his travel agent and had his personal assistant arrange the visas. Me, it’s a little harder.

But the second one is the bigger one: I’m a woman. So many of the stories he tells about the things he does — how many of those things does he get to do because he’s a dude? All those clubhouses he wanders into, how many of them open up because he’s got a dick? The slums and scary places he walks through, how much more dangerous are those places for women? If I tried to actually do it for real, to really go out and do weird shit and report back… how far would I get? I don’t know.

I wanted to ask him what he thought about that. I wanted him to tell me if he thought it would be okay, or not okay, or if he thought I should just suck it up and try it, damn the torpedoes. I wondered if there would be places that only women get to go, if there are places where it’s so dangerous that it wouldn’t be worth even trying, if I could keep my mohawk, if I am freaking out unnecessarily about the woman thing (I don’t think I am).

But that seemed like a really big question to ask him when there were a few hundred people behind me in line, and also I was so nervous I felt like I might throw up, and so instead of asking him any of those things or telling him how much I love that Wesley Willis cover of Thin Lizzy, it’s possible I said, “I like to imagine you yelling at me” and handed him a macro of him shouting.

He was very nice about it. He told me he has a friend in LA who gets him out to shows, who calls him and says YOU’RE THERE IN TWENTY MINUTES, and then he is there in twenty minutes. Me, I don’t have anyone, just imaginary Henry in my head, shouting at me to do things. Whatever works, right?

Maybe I will make myself a macro of him yelling at me to email him with my real question.