Icebox Records

Been to a few rock shows in the past week…Thursday was Daniel John­ston, you know about that.

Fri­day was Cat Power.  Mmmmm…Chan.  All that shit peo­ple say about her, her rep for being dif­fi­cult, I didn’t see much of that, maybe a few lit­tle hints.  But I don’t blame her, espe­cially when most of the audi­ence is loudly gab­bing away through­out the entire show.  I don’t know what’s wrong with this town.  Shitty-ass groove­rock bands like Deep Banana Black­out and Strange­folk get undi­vided atten­tion, Cat Power gets a bunch of talk­a­tive hip­sters there because Alter­na­tive Press mag­a­zine told them it was cool.  There was a war going on in my head between my con­cen­tra­tion on her, and the relent­less bab­ble that raged behind me.  Fuck­ing losers.  And another thing…where are all these 7-foot tall indie rock­ers com­ing from?  And why do they always have to be in the front row?  Hey, beanpole…your view of the stage will be great any­where you fuck­ing stand.  Aside from that shit, Cat Power was great great great, stand­off­ish and pretty and flaw­less.  It’s too bad she def­i­nitely won’t be com­ing back here again.

Sat­ur­day we made the trip to Mon­treal to see Jackie O Moth­er­fucker and God­speed You! Black Emperor.  After get­ting a few rounds of beer and sushi we made our way to the club.  Nice place with a bal­cony.  Jackie O Moth­er­fucker SUCKED.  No other way to put it.  It was just noth­ing.  I don’t get it.  Their albums are really good…after a few tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, God­speed came out and just rocked.  It was truly exhaust­ing, in the way see­ing Light­ning Bolt was exhaust­ing.  The enor­mity of what was hap­pen­ing son­i­cally was almost too much.  My brain was going into these weird zones where it was like being asleep.  They sound just like they do on their records, but being there and feel­ing the music hit­ting your chest is some­thing else.  Fuck yeah.

Yes­ter­day (Tues­day) we went back to Mon­treal to see Yo La Tengo at the Cabaret, which is such a nice lit­tle place to see a band, I’ve seen quite a few there now, GBV, Mouse on Mars, Mogwai…Portastatic opened and they sucked.  Super­chunk were such a good band, I don’t know much about Por­tasta­tic, but it seemed like they were Mac’s Super­chunk reject band.  The songs just weren’t good, par­tic­u­larly the lyrics, typ­i­cal “hold my baby tight, hold my baby all through the night” type stuff.  Oh well.
YLT were great.  They can’t really fail.  And they’re so nice.  So tal­ented and yet, so nice.  They actu­ally like the fact that peo­ple like their music, no apa­thy towards their fans, although when one idiot started yelling “Free­bird” Ira very clev­erly sug­gested that yelling “Free­bird” at con­certs (which so many idiots do) might be the cause of SARS.  And yeah, YLT rock beau­ti­fully.  Although, again with the bean­pole indie dudes in the front.  Fuck that.

So I feel like I’ve been on some sort of indie rock tour, except I’ve gone home to sleep in my own bed every night.  It’s cool.  I’ve seen a lot of amaz­ing bands, amaz­ing music in the last ten years or so.  I feel lucky.