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.

Hello, friends! Been a while, and I’m sure you’ve all been wondering what the hell I’ve been doing with myself. Answer: reading (pretty sure I’ve read 30 books in 30 days), traveling (I have been at the airport once a week for the last month), and not a whole hell of a lot else. I have a bunch of book reviews half-written that should theoretically be going up very soon, but for now, here is a concert report for the last month, some tattoo ramblings, something about traveling, and a little about cats. Warning: long.

I went to see OFF!, Keith Morris’ latest band (you may know him from Black Flag or the Circle Jerks), when they came through in July; they played Reggie’s as some kind of Lollapalooza afterparty thing. I don’t do outdoor fests, so I didn’t see them there, but I’m sure it was great. I basically blame OFF! for sucking me back into hardcore; when I went to see them at the Bottom Lounge in April, I hadn’t been to a hardcore show in years. Now I go to a lot of hardcore shows. Just when you think you’re out, you know?

There were some opening bands. The first one, local hardcore group the Vicelords, started off all right but deteriorated pretty quickly and I ended up not liking them much. (The bassist from the Brokedowns is in that band, and I like the Brokedowns, so I was disappointed in the Vicelords. They just didn’t have their shit together.) The second band, All Eyes West, starring guitarist Jeff Dean, played a really energetic and dynamic set of fairly classic early-90s post-hardcore. Think, I don’t know, Jawbox + that Chicago sound, whatever that is. (You know it when you hear it, right? Right.) They should have been third on the bill, because they made the next band seem sort of boring. That said, while I will fully admit that they were a good band and they should play out more, I can only listen to roughly 20 minutes of early-90s post-hardcore before I get bored of the miasma of manpain and want to move on. I appreciate it just fine, and sometimes I’m even in the mood to listen to it, but I don’t connect with it, and All Eyes West wasn’t any different. Sorry, emo kids. (That’s the best part of this post, by the way. All the arguments I’m going to get into at work over my dismissal of an entire beloved genre of music as a “miasma of manpain.”)

The third band, Ratasucia, I admit it, I remember nothing about them except that I spent the whole time trying to get pictures of the bassist’s Black Flag tattoo. Here it is:

ratasucia @ reggie’s, 2011-07-17

Here’s a picture of mine, taken when it was shiny and new:

It is not quite Cat Flag, but it’s probably as close as I’m going to get to tattooing a band logo on myself. It’s pretty close, though. On the other hand, I’ve been very wrong about my tattoos before, so who knows. Maybe I’ll get the real thing. Maybe I’ll start getting cat tattoos with the same frequency with which I get cats. As for this particular tattoo, its name is Henry. Raise your hand if you are shocked. I should not see any hands. It was inked by Kit Hall, who works out of Deluxe and is awesome, even though my tattoos are not her style (she is more illustrative, but I like her, dammit). Anyway. The bars double as legs for the cat, I guess, or the legs double as the bars. Not that that makes much sense, but ask me how much I care.

Speaking of Black Flag, during one of my trips, I read Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag, and I thought it was a pretty good band bio, especially considering the author spoke to neither Greg Ginn nor Henry Rollins. HOWEVER. While I do not expect everyone to be able to date photos of Rollins by counting how many Misfits tattoos he has this time (or by consulting this handy chart), I would submit that someone writing a biography of Black Flag should be able to do it. I also submit that someone with any common sense whatsoever should not date a no-tattoos photo of ANYONE as 1984 after dating a many-tattoos photo of the same person as 1981. Wrong, wrong, wrong. (Also, it’s Huntington Beach. Not Huntingdon. Come on, fact checkers.) Other than those minor quibbles, I liked it. I might even do a real review at some point!

Back to the OFF! show. Keith Morris, at 55, has approximately 37 times the energy that I do, and the band’s very short songs are packed full of piss and vinegar. As I, too, am full of piss and vinegar, it’s a pretty good fit. I think they played every single one of their songs at least once in about an hour. The pit broke out immediately, but I barely noticed because it was behind me. Often I notice anyway, but there’s no stagediving at Reggie’s, which makes it a slightly subpar venue for a hardcore show. Mostly I remember enjoying myself, and that Morris was mysteriously nice to me, in that he apparently decided I needed some water about halfway through the set, so he went and got me some. I was genuinely appreciative but confused, and I thanked him, and next time I’m going to try to talk him into doing “Nervous Breakdown.” He always says OFF! songs only when he is asking for requests (I should learn the damn names of the songs, I guess; I know the words, because they are things like FUCK PEOPLE, which, now that I think about it, is probably also the name of the song, so never mind) but he used to play that one with the Circle Jerks, so maybe there is hope. But I digress. I didn’t take many pictures of OFF! this time around, but here are the photos from last time. Morris was in a Germs shirt this time, but otherwise my photos would have looked pretty much the same. I also thought Morris was in a better mood, but it’s hard to tell.

At any rate, that concert was back in July, and by the time August rolled around and I found myself in Salt Lake City for a work conference, it had been nearly a month since I’d been to a show. Way, way too long. So the first thing I did was pick up a copy of the indie weekly to see if there were any shows worth going to, and yes! My adventures first took me to the diviest dive bar I’ve been to in ages. They had some mixed-drink specials written on a chalkboard, but they were out of all the required ingredients by 7pm. All they had left was whiskey and vodka. So I was like, well, okay, do you have beer? The bartender said yes, and then walked away. I was expecting her to tell me what kind of beer they had, but that step was unnecessary because they had only one kind: PBR. Two dollars, 12-oz cans. Done and done.

First up was some local open who played terrible, terrible covers, forcing me — forcing me — to drink a lot of PBR in response. Seriously, ‘Mother’ followed by ‘When Doves Cry.’ It wasn’t pretty. Next up was an all-chick band called ESX, and they were more new-wavey than my usual fare, but I liked them well enough, and they had cool tattoos, and they were lovely people who seemed like the sort of people I’d be friends with if circumstances were different. The headliner was Girl in a Coma, a San Antonino three-piece (again, all women) I saw open for the Detroit Cobras earlier this year. I enjoyed their set a lot, and so I got really excited when I saw they were playing their own show in Salt Lake. I genuinely think they are Going Places, you guys, and their current tour is almost over and is mostly west coast, but if you get the chance to see them, you should check them out. They play punk-tinged rock that kicks all sorts of ass, and they are nice people to boot. I had a really good time that night, and it was exactly what I needed.

The next night’s adventure took me to this bizarre venue called, I believe, The Complex. It was like a venue mall, one big building with four separate rooms to serve as venues, with an honest-to-god food court in the middle. Seriously, there were nachos for sale. The room this show was in looked like this:

It was just a big room with risers at both ends; one end was the stage, and the other was the bar. Most people were jammed into the bar for most of the show, because you couldn’t leave that area with your drink. That photo was taken at the set break, if that tells you anything. Normally people start drifting to the front, but not here! It was strange. There were barricades in front of the stage, although I cannot for the life of me figure out why, because they were just bike racks. They were unstable and unsteady, easy to tip over, and by the time the headliner came on, the racks had been pushed to within a foot of the stage. Why bother?

There were only two bands, Pagan Dead, a local psychobilly/black metal band that was not my thing at all (I know for a fact that other people in the audience enjoyed them a great deal, but I found it excruciating), and the Nekromantix, one of the older psychobilly bands. I tend to prefer my psychobilly with more of a punk rock slant than the Nekromantix give it, but they are one of the Big Names of the genre, and Kim Nekroman, well–

He has hilarious hair and great tattoos and plays a coffin-shaped bass. He also makes fantastic faces, but my camera and my photography skills are not good enough to have captured them. Still, some of my photos are okay, and I had a good time. The Brains (Canadians!) were supposed to play second but didn’t show up for some reason; I’m a little bummed out about that, but I should get to see them when the Nekromatix come through Chicago a little later this year. They’re bringing the Brains as support, and although I don’t have any sort of pressing need to see the Nekromantix again, I’d like to see the Brains, and psychobilly nights at Reggie’s are always fun.

By the time this post goes up, I will have been to a few more shows in Chicago and the tattoo I got on a whim in Salt Lake City should be farther down the road to healed, and probably I will have read 17 more books about heroin addicts and found them all to be completely boring. Read all about it! Next, on Newsprint Fray.

From the Not A Personal Blog And Yet files, I went to the Winter Olympics earlier this year. I really only remember moments; here are a few of them.

I remember dueling national anthems on the skytrain, being worried the Richmond Olympic Oval was going to come down around me when a Canadian won gold, the crepe stand in Yaletown, the appalled look on Sam’s face whenever I said something so utterly preposterous that the only thing there was to say was “oh my GOD” (I did this often, and mostly on purpose). The dude in line at Ontario house who called a friend and said, “well, there’s an American in this line, but she’s okay.” More cowbell. The kid on his bike with a Canadian flag cape flapping behind him. Looking at my hands, realizing they were swollen and discolored and covered in sores, but twittering something about frostbite before I put on my gloves. The running commentary on the nordic combined team event, provided by American skier Todd Lodwick, standing about six inches away. Being in BC Place for a medal ceremony, thinking it was reasonably loud and awesome when they played the American anthem for Shaun White’s gold, and then standing in awestruck silence as 20,000 people sang ‘O Canada’ and proved me wrong. Wondering how more bobsled people don’t die, because it is fucking terrifying. More cowbell. Sam’s cheerful, “good hustle, team!” as the three of us (her, me, The Dart), hating the world and the mornings in particular, stumbled out of the house at 7am to make it to curling. Freezing once we got there. Feeling like my life depended on how hard I cheered for Canada in the first USA-Canada hockey game, and hoping Gabs did not get us all killed by cheering too loudly for America. Fleeing the premises when the US got that empty-net goal. More cowbell, more cowbell, more cowbell. People on the skytrain platform cheering QUATCHI QUATCHI QUATCHI as I walked by, a giant stuffed Quatchi doll strapped to my back. “Pam, we’re never going to get out of here if you stop to flirt with every Mountie between here and the door.” The sky on that last Sunday, clear blue and beautiful when Canada won that gold in hockey, and there were kids on every street corner draped in maple leaves and cheering; people on their porches waving the flag; cars honking at each other as they passed, cowbells hanging out the windows; pedestrians waving and smiling and dancing; lines of high-fives with strangers as I waded through downtown to get to the airport; the Hip on my ipod playing Fireworks (if there’s a goal that everyone remembers…); grinning at people till my face hurt; laughing, laughing, laughing.

That is all.

This isn’t a personal blog, so I don’t really say much about what I’m up to, but I found a few pictures from the Amsterdam concert I went to last week. And I am actually in one of them! I always appreciate photographic evidence that I’m not making up my entire life.

These photos on flickr, by Henk Ritskes, are all really good.

This is early in the show, and nothing is going on right there, so it’s pretty calm. Just over the watermark, you can see my face right at Gord’s feet, my arms on the stage, looking up. I’m not kneeling; I’m on my toes. I look like I’m about eight years old. I didn’t feel like it at the time, but I look ridiculously tiny in that photograph. Note that I’m surrounded by guys who are all much, much bigger than I am.

This is the closing song (‘Blow at High Dough,’ for those of you who care about such things), a shot of the same area of the pit. I think it would not have been so bad if it weren’t for the height of me and the stage; it was exactly at mouth level for me, so one wrong move and I’d've lost a bunch of teeth. So I was a pretty quick to duck and cover, and right there, I’m curled against the side of the stage, trying to protect my head as the crowd pressed in, but mostly I just got crushed. It wasn’t the nastiest pit I’ve been in, not by a long shot, but still. Note, however, that I am not complaining! I’m small and by myself and get what I get for standing in the front row. I wouldn’t change a thing.

There was a moment in this show, during ‘Locked in the Trunk of a Car,’ which starts off a little slow, a little quiet, and the room was mostly dark. And then the lights flashed on, bright glaring white shot through with smoke, and the drums kicked in, low and heavy and driving, and I looked to my left and the pit was this huge writhing mass, and people were hanging over the rail of the balconies, and it went up and back and on forever, alive. I thought, “yes,” and then I didn’t think anymore for a long time.

And that is pretty much what I have to say.