50 Concerts

1. KISS and W.A.S.P. at the L.A. Forum, 1986. My first concert, unless you count the time dad inexplicably dragged me to see Linda Ronstandt. Mom dropped me and a friend off outside the parking lot to save me the embarrassment. Or did that just happen in Almost Famous? I can’t remember.

2. Iron Maiden, Long Beach Arena, and Irvine Meadows Ampitheatre, Somewhere In Time tour, 1987-1988. For the Irvine Meadows show I slept outside the Warehouse the night before tickets went on sale and got front row, and Lars Ulrich made a cameo appearance.

3. Monsters of Rock, L.A. Coliseum 1988—Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica, Kingdom Come. When Metallica started playing the headbangers tore down the fences separating the Coliseum seats from the field and we all ran past the security to the front of the stage. Security turned off the sound momentarily. I remember hearing “Harvester of Sorrow” for the first time, and nothing else from this show.

4. Alice Cooper, Long Beach Arena, 1988. The one and only time I got Laurie Ahlin to make out with me. Sigh.

5. Dio, Irvine Meadows Ampitheatre, 1988. Dio slayed a mechanical dragon with a sword that must have been ten times bigger than himself. Very impressive to a teenage metal dude.

6. David Lee Roth and Poison, L.A. Forum, 1988. The only time I went to a concert for the sole reason of seeing hot chicks in spandex. Camel toe aplenty from what I remember.

7. Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force, Long Beach Arena, 1987 or 1988? Can’t remember what inspired to want to see this, but I did.

8. Dark Angel, Fender’s Ballroom in Long Beach, 1988? For whatever reason I was pulled onstage to toss stagedivers back into the pit.

9. Primus, multiple times, Cactus Club in San Jose, 1989-1990? Primus sucks!

10. fIREHOSE, San Jose State, 1988-1989? First time I became aware there was this band from San Pedro, where I grew up, with this crazy bass player named Mike Watt.

11. Metallica, …And Justice For All tour, Cow Palace in San Francisco, 1989.

12. Anthrax and Public Enemy. 1989 or 1990? The Cow Palace in San Francisco.

13. Clash of the Titans, 1989-1990?, Cow Palace in San Francisco, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax. Before the show I remember some kid who looked like he crawled out of the sewer was in the parking lot and smashed a beer bottle and yelled “Slayer” at the top of his lungs. Slayer was just amazing that night.

14. Bridge School Benefit, 1989, Shoreline Ampitheatre. Tom Petty, Neil Young, Tracy Chapman, Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and Young later, of course).

15. The first Lollapalooza tour, 1991, Shoreline Ampitheatre--Jane’s Addiction, Living Colour, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Ice-T and Body Count, Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band. I remember being unable to swallow my sandwich during the Rollins Band performance because the bass was so loud. Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers kept firing a gun. Nine Inch Nails was painted green.

16. Mudhoney, Slim’s in San Francisco, 1991. Bob and I got drunk on Mickey’s big mouth in the car. The Giants had eliminated the Dodgers from the NL Western division race that day. I was wearing a Dodgers shirt and in a drunken stupor threw it on stage. Mark Arm picked it up and showed it to the crowd and everyone booed. I got my shirt back but I have no memory of how.

17. Sonic Youth, Helmet, and the Jesus Lizard, the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, 1992-93? I had the misfortune to see David Yow of the Jesus Lizard naked. And then Kim Gordon got all pissed off because some dude hit her mic stand and it hit her in the mouth.

18. Soundgarden and Monster Magnet, The Warfield in San Francisco, 1992. Monster Magnet was incredible. Seriously.

19. Jane’s Addiction, the Pixies, and Primus, San Jose State, 1991 or 1992?

20. Lollapooza, 1992, Shoreline Ampitheatre—Peal Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Ministry, Ice Cube. Eddie Vedder jumped the shark that day with all his shirtless crowd surfing and epileptic shaking.

21. Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Pavement. Somewhere in the California desert, 1993? Pavement had become my new favorite band but we didn’t get to see them because we were stuck in line waiting to get in. Kurt Cobain came out and did a solo acoustic set that included “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” Only time I managed to see him.

22. Green Day, UC Santa Cruz, 1992. Pre-Dookie, when Green Day was just another Gilman Street band, they played outside our dorm at Porter College for some sort of end-of-the-year spring event.

23. Lollapooza, 1993. Primus, Alice in Chains, Dinosaur Jr., Fishbone. Shoreline Ampitheatre. The one and only time I saw Rage Against the Machine. I had no idea who they were, they came out naked for their encore with the letters PMRC painted on their bodies, and I absolutely hated them. I saw Tool on the side stage and Timothy Leary came out to introduce them saying they were being the next big thing in music.

24. Royal Trux and Truman’s Water, the Casbah in San Diego, 1993. My first show at the Casbah featuring two of the most underrated noise bands of the 90s.

25. Babes in Toyland, the Casbah, 1994. Kat Bjelland spit like every 5 minutes and was so much hotter than Courtney Love.

26. Rocket From the Crypt, multiple times, various venues in San Diego, 1994-2002, and many other times when I didn’t see them because they were sold out and I didn’t my shit together in time. I can’t remember a Rocket show I didn’t enjoy.

27. Drive Like Jehu, the Casbah, 1994. Once and only once, right before they broke up. I just remember sheets of noise and thinking that Jon Reis looked like Superman.

28. Pavement, Soma Live in San Diego, 1994-95? By the time I saw them in the Crooked Rain era they had their tongues lodged too far in their cheeks to be truly enjoyable.

29. Beck, San Diego, 1996? At his peak in the Odelay era, a fantastic show interrupted when the sound system suddenly failed, at which time Beck stood on the edge of the stage and did an impromptu acoustic set. I didn’t feel gipped at all.

30. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Soma Live in San Diego, 1996. My introduction to the theremin with Spencer at the height of his powers circa Orange.

31. The Supersuckers, the Casbah, 1995-96? Foam fingers and ironic devil/metal hand salutes galore. Amazing live band.

32. Weekly shows at the Casbah, San Diego, 1994-2002, fluf, Truman’s Water, Three Mile Pilot, aMiniature, Heavy Vegetable, Lucy’s Fur Coat, Chinchilla. San Diego had a really great local scene in the 90s and I will always love the Casbah.

33. Phish, some forgettable place in San Diego, 1999-2000?. I got super stoned in the parking lot and walked around the shakedown for a long time. That was the fun part. But the music was so Godawful that I got in a fight with my girlfriend because I couldn’t stop going off on how horrible Phish was.

34. Sleater-Kinney, The Fillmore in San Francisco, 2002. They were so great and I saw Jim Jarmusch there. Unfortunately they were so great that I decided I also had to see them in LA and that was the show where Sarah Schrank and I had our infamous meltdown break-up. That’s a story for a different list.

35. The (International) Noise Conspiracy, some club in San Francisco I can’t remember the name of, 2002. It was an excellent show and one of only 2 times I’ve seen them, but this show is especially memorable to me because this gorgeous blond hipster girl came up and just started talking to me and I…just…froze.

36. Hot Snakes, somewhere in San Francisco, 2002. Not as good as the Drive Like Jehu show, but damn close.

37. Yo La Tengo at the Granada in Lawrence, KS, 2003. I got massively drunk with another professor and had to teach at 8:30 in the morning the next day.

38. The Shins and the Rapture at the Granada in Lawrence, KS, 2003. Katy Livingston came up to me and we flirted and she tried to get me to go to an after-show kegger at her house, but she was still my student at that point. Sigh.

39. Spiritualized, the Granada in Lawrence, KS, 2003, As with Phish, a show I remember only because of how horrible it was. I convinced a bunch of people to go and dude just sat there in a chair with his guitar, not looking at the crowd with this look like he was just so pissed off to be in Kansas. We had paid $20 each to see this bloke but we all walked out like 10 minutes into the set and I couldn’t stop apologizing to my friends.

40. Q Not U and the Black Eyes at the Bottleneck in Lawrence, KS, 2003. The best show I remember from my days in Lawrence. I became a true believer in the Black Eyes from that day forward, at least until they broke up like 2 years later.

41. Ozomatli, Colgate University, 2004. I’m pretty sure this was the only concert I went to during the dreaded Colgate year. And they were good, but I was drunk, so what do I know?

42. Le Tigre, the Granada in Lawrence, KS, 2005? Not a big fan ordinarily, but man they were great that night, closing with a great version of “I’m So Excited”

43. Suicide Girls, the Granada in Lawrence, 2005? Technically not a concert, but more hot mostly-naked chicks than I’ve ever seen in one place at one time, unless you count strip clubs, which I don’t.

44. Bob Dylan, Montana State University at Bozeman, 2005. One of two times that I saw Dylan, but this one was especially memorable because I went with my dad and his wife, and Dylan enraged my father because he performed with his back to the side of the arena where we were seated and didn’t say anything between his songs. I remember that Dylan was his usual mumbling self but his band was really awesome, but the best part was that my dad got so pissed off in the parking lot saying something like “Would it kill him to just say, ‘Hello Bozeman’” and threw his hands in the air in exasperation. My dad was just like every teenage kid who’s waiting for the rock star to say the name of his hometown. Then he and his wife went on a diatribe about how much better the Sting concert they had attended in Missoula was.

45. Cat Power, Studio A, Miami, 2005. Chan Marshall did some amazingly beautiful a capella that night. And no one really cared, they just couldn’t wait for that crazy bitch to get off stage so they could dance to Latin-flavored techno.

46. Langarado Festival, 2006 or 2007? Fort Lauderdale? Cat Power and Explosions in the Sky, plus about a thousand horrible jam bands and reggae bands, the only one of which I recall was Widespread Panic. Katy and I got drunk, watched Kansas beat Texas to take the Big 12 championship, and I bummed some hits off a joint from these kids and I swore that Explosions in the Sky was like the new classical music and that if these other stoner kids had any brains or ears they’d be into them rather than Widespread Panic.

47. The Flaming Lips at the Pompano Beach Ampitheatre, 2007? So beautiful and happy and hopeful that it briefly restored my faith in the power of live music.

48. Miami Noise Festival, Churchill’s in Miami (duh), 2009. An evening of irritating but beautiful noise and vomiting on cymbals. Please read my blog on the event if you haven’t done so already.

49. Timb, Zombies! Organize!!, and the Freakin’ Hott, Fort Lauderdale, 2009. So good to see the kids keeping the local scene and live music thing alive. The Freakin’ Hott is just fantastic—think AC/DC-ish stoner rock with female vocals, and if you don’t know about Zombies you can read my blog from an earlier show of theirs. Timb is this giant freak who does a good acoustic show of witty songs. It was his birthday that night, and there were maybe 50 people there but I swear if it was NY, LA, or SF it would’ve been a big deal.

50. Gogol Bordello, Revolution in Fort Lauderdale, 2009. Had to dust off some very rusty mosh pit techniques for this one and came out drenched in sweat. Talking Marxist theory with Chris Robe and Carol before the show while trying to hold my ground against a bunch of smelly gypsy punks has to be one of the most surreal moments in my recent life.

Zombies! Organize!!

Whereas my last adventure in live music took me to the depths of North Miami’s ghettos for the International Noise Convention, this weekend found me in the upscale consumer’s paradise of West Palm Beach for the politically radical 80s kitsch techo/rap of Zombies! Organize!! and Freeze Pop. Full disclosure: one of the members of Zombies! Organize!! is my student Laura, who was one of my undergraduates and has since enrolled in our Master’s program and taken two graduate seminars with me. I had no idea that Laura was even in a band until a few months ago, but I’ve since discovered that they have quite the following among hipster kids in South Florida.

I’ve never had any reason to visit West Palm Beach’s downtown shopping district, so I don’t know my way around. I find myself stuck in the Saturday night traffic of something called CityPlace, which in truth is neither a city nor a place (discuss!), but instead an expanse of lame high-end boutiques and shitty mid-priced restaurants. Then again, while crawling through the Manhattan-paced traffic I watch some cops maliciously eyeing a handful of black teenagers who are aimlessly loitering in front of one of these stores, and I think to myself that maybe that this is a city after all.

The cover charge tonight is 15 bucks, and I’ve driven over 50 miles to get here, so this better be a good fucking show. I chat for a while with Laura, who is outfitted in a black tank top and a pink tutu, and she introduces me to the other band members, who as it turns out are her sister and her sister’s husband. Yes, this is a family band.

Zombies! Organize!! take the stage and all the hipsters rush in from the bar to start dancing. Their sound is composed of rudimentary keyboard beats and deadpan white-kid raps of the sort I haven’t heard since Lambda Lambda Lambda’s triumphant performance at the end of the first Revenge of the Nerds movie. I am filled with a teacher’s pride when I listen closely to the lyrics that sound like snippets of Marxist theory and Situationist sloganeering being rhymed at a high school pep rally. It’s like Judith Butler became a member of Devo. No wait, it’s like Le Tigre schooling Grandmaster Flash in queer theory. I mean how could you not love a band that uses “hegemonic masculinity” in a chorus or rhymes “Spartacus” with “lick my robot clitoris”? Adorable!!! Now I got it: It’s as if the little girls who once comprised the Shaggs had been abducted and forced to bear children for the benefit of a techno-socialist cult led by the members of Kraftwerk, and then said cult decided it was now time for their children to form a band that could de-program the exploited and pacified masses of late capitalism and its culture of the simulacrum with hypnotic retro hip hop beats and mallrat accents.

Freeze Pop are the main draw tonight, but it’s a tough act for them to follow. They are a more grown-up band featuring a sexy female singer and two guys who are masters of the key-tar (you know, a keyboard that is slung over the shoulder and played like a guitar with an extraordinary amount of ironic posturing). It’s a good show finished off with some totally bitchin’ covers of “The Final Countdown” and “Don’t Stop Believin.’” I stick around for a while longer because I am inexplicably struck by the urge to keep dancing with some friends I have run into at the show. It’s almost 2 AM now and time to go home. On the way back to I-95 CityPlace is deserted with the exception of security guards and police officers. I indulge the fantasy that they are there to restore order after all the consumers have had their brains eaten, or better yet, decided to go get organized.

The International Noise Festival

In Noise: The Political Economy of Music, the French theorist Jacques Attali wrote that “What is noise to the old order is harmony to the new.” It’s Friday night and I’m driving with two film professors and one of their girlfriends through one of the deepest and darkest ghettos I’ve ever been to in North Miami. The nearest exit ramp has been closed so we’re driving through the neighborhood known as Little Haiti, where there are no street lamps and few street lights, long stretches of warehouses and storefronts protected with wrought iron, and the occasional cluster of gangsters lurking ominously on street corners. We arrive at our destination, a punk rock club called Churchill’s, and suddenly there are nothing but white hipsters with chopped hair and tight pants who look like they’ve stepped out of a Hot Topic catalog.

We are here for the International Noise Convention, an annual event at Churchill’s which I have heard much about but never attended. The club is small, dank, and filled with the familiar scent of sweat, spilled beer, and stale cigarette smoke. About 50 kids are standing in a semi-circle around a young woman who’s on a slightly elevated stage and looks to be plugging various chords in and out of some kind of machine while popping cassette tapes in and out of a tape recorder. It’s a surreal, post-apocalyptic scene like something out of Blade Runner or Mad Max, with all these kids attired in tribalist and retro styles hypnotically bobbing their heads to sounds that can’t really be called “music” but are undeniably entrancing. I close my eyes and allow myself to be overwhelmed by the noise, which I can only try to describe as the rhythm of an old dot matrix printer periodically interrupted by the chirping of birds.

She finishes, and almost immediately a band starts playing in the center of the club on a stage that isn’t elevated at all. Churchill’s is so small that I don’t even need to move, I just turn my body to the right and find myself uncomfortably close to the band. A guitar player produces a few solid minutes of feedback, and then the drummer begins pounding out some beats and the place erupts into a mosh pit with bodies flailing and pushing in every direction, including right back into the drumset and amplifiers. It’s one big mess of piercing sounds and pierced bodies, and I’m totally digging it. Some kid next to me is smoking a joint and later in the night he walks by and whispers that he’s selling doses. I shake my head no and then spend the rest of the night debating whether this would be the best or the worst of all possible places to drop acid. Since I wasn’t fortunate enough to be at the Masque in 1978 or Cabaret Voltaire in 1918, this is probably as close as I’m going to get to seeing the decline of western civilization in all its glory.

Some of the performances were unspeakably terrible, like the wannabe Jesus guy who kept chanting and moaning into the microphone or the dorky kids with all the good equipment who thought they were New Order or the drummer who stuck his fingers and his drumstick down his throat to induce vomiting on his cymbal. But on the whole it was so refreshing to see the spirit of anarchy alive and well as a succession of unknown kids took the “stage” with the confidence that the rules don’t matter anymore because any piece of technology can be a musical instrument because any noise can be considered music. Jacques Attali was writing about this sort of noise more than 25 years ago: “Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible.” And so on that note we stepped out of the club and back into America’s Third World, a warzone of disorganization in the moment of our global economic meltdown, and I prayed not to get lost on the way back to Interstate 95 (we did get lost for a little while, but obviously did get back safely enough for me to tell you this story).