The un-Killers
K asked me some time ago if I wanted to see the Killers... I think I must have been feeling amenable that day, so I agreed. Wait, that makes me sound curmudgeonly, oh but who am I kidding, I am. Curmudgeonly - bum ankle and bum kneed. But I was willing to be game.
So this afternoon I tarted up, lipstick and heels, the nine. That's what you do for a show, to gawp and to be gawped at. I hadn't seen a show at Bill Graham since Radiohead, which as I recall through the haze was exceptional.
Before that was during the way back days - Jane's Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual tour (K and I tonight in the tiers, nothing sacred? no that's not right.... not the one with the twins on fire, but the other one. fuck. do you think there is any liquor in this seven dollar drink? no, no the other one... with three of them in the bed, on the cassette cover, yeah, awesome to fuck to, but we all did in those days. Nothing Shocking! But not that one). (I admit I had to google it) maybe 1990? I was still a country mouse in those days, trying desperately to be urbane, we came into the city in our finery for the big show of the seminal band, in those days of waning big hair and the first big gulps of independence. San Francisco was my Nirvana and my Gomorah. Such decadence, everyone was flying their freak flag, but fiercely, it was fierce. In those days you could still smoke inside the venues, the air was thick with cigarettes and joints, everyone was beautiful and hung back with an affected desultory disaffectation. I was too young and too green to understand that these were only poses, also I had eaten mushrooms so everything was dusted in sparkly devil dust, I recall that I was filled with lust - for that life, sexdrugs and rockandroll, darling.
We fought our way towards the stage, fighting back my nascent claustrophobia, doused in the sweat of others, heaving with the crowd, make-up melting, completely exhilerated. God, and the ladies room in those days... vintage heels and the reek of aquanet, jostling for space in the mirror to repair lipstick and eyeliner, the things that came out of purses were astonishing for ingenuity, how in god's name did you get your hairdryer into that bag.... this was before security, girls puking and girls gossiping and girls fighting and girls squeezed into stalls doing lines, all the girls all done up. I had waist lenghth hair in those days, I was always fighting with it's cumbersome weight, it was always coming undone and no amount of product could tame it. I felt I couldn't measure up, that chic would always elude me....
K was at that show, so were several other people who would be important to me in this life. I wonder had we seen each other in those days, if our gazes had crossed, would we have summed up and dismissed, dress not vintage-y enough, hair wrong, wrong drug. I was only twenty. Or maybe I was nineteen.
I met K and his boyfriend R for Brazilian at six, as we are no longer quite so feral we require sustenance before our eardrums are assaulted, that and civilised cocktails before we pay a premium for the two ounce swill we pay for at the show. You know things are not as they were when you kvetch about price gouging. In the old days, even had I been legal, I would have done my drinking before hand -- I simply could not have afforded it. These days we sit in the tiers and talk economics between thorax rattling sets.
And everything has changed.
In lieu of the dense miasma of cigarette and illicit smoke they pump some kind of equally heinous, if not more so, sweet chemical air freshener, my nasal passages are still inflamed. Nobody dresses anymore. In the ladies room the ladies are applying lipgloss, feets in flip flops and a sea of denim. I feel almost heretical in my red lipstick, and don't even get me started on the menchild in the goddamned ironic t-shirts, christ am I tired of the ironic t-shirt. I liked 'em better when they were dangerously earnest, at least in those days the asshole cards were all out on the table and nobody could get by with just a self-deprecating shrug.
And the band. OK, fine. I can get that we are in the great age of derivation and recycling and global warming, haha, but I think my head exploded a little tonight. As K said to me during one of their songs and they are singing about Indie music to their million dollar light show, I think we are witnessing them jump the shark.
It's pop music and it's manufactured straight down to their ironic creepers, scripted, joyless. I found myself yearning for the days when there was a slugfest on stage, or the great guitar virtuoso solo. Instead it's just the mormon creeper boy show and really fancy lights... and glitter... I really liked the glitter, but I am sucker for shiney.
We hit the floor when we got in, but both opening bands were so awful that we quickly repaired to the tiers. I am long past the days when I am willing stand and be sweat upon in heels, plus I like watching the floor even more than I like watching the band.... and here I am losing my train of thought, plus I am listening to New Order to erase that crap pop I absorbed tonight..... oh I know.... I turned to K, because I was momentarily perplexed by all the lights in the crowd, my experience was hard wired to the lighter in hand swaying to the favorite song, and then he pointed out that it was camera phones or text messaging, and then my head exploded a little more. Is no one present these days.... and then I thought had I had my lap top would I have live blogged the fucking concert - answer - definite maybe. Also, white people and brown people can't dance and should just stop trying. Your ass is blocking my view of the pretty, pretty lights.
That is all.
K asked me some time ago if I wanted to see the Killers... I think I must have been feeling amenable that day, so I agreed. Wait, that makes me sound curmudgeonly, oh but who am I kidding, I am. Curmudgeonly - bum ankle and bum kneed. But I was willing to be game.
So this afternoon I tarted up, lipstick and heels, the nine. That's what you do for a show, to gawp and to be gawped at. I hadn't seen a show at Bill Graham since Radiohead, which as I recall through the haze was exceptional.
Before that was during the way back days - Jane's Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual tour (K and I tonight in the tiers, nothing sacred? no that's not right.... not the one with the twins on fire, but the other one. fuck. do you think there is any liquor in this seven dollar drink? no, no the other one... with three of them in the bed, on the cassette cover, yeah, awesome to fuck to, but we all did in those days. Nothing Shocking! But not that one). (I admit I had to google it) maybe 1990? I was still a country mouse in those days, trying desperately to be urbane, we came into the city in our finery for the big show of the seminal band, in those days of waning big hair and the first big gulps of independence. San Francisco was my Nirvana and my Gomorah. Such decadence, everyone was flying their freak flag, but fiercely, it was fierce. In those days you could still smoke inside the venues, the air was thick with cigarettes and joints, everyone was beautiful and hung back with an affected desultory disaffectation. I was too young and too green to understand that these were only poses, also I had eaten mushrooms so everything was dusted in sparkly devil dust, I recall that I was filled with lust - for that life, sexdrugs and rockandroll, darling.
We fought our way towards the stage, fighting back my nascent claustrophobia, doused in the sweat of others, heaving with the crowd, make-up melting, completely exhilerated. God, and the ladies room in those days... vintage heels and the reek of aquanet, jostling for space in the mirror to repair lipstick and eyeliner, the things that came out of purses were astonishing for ingenuity, how in god's name did you get your hairdryer into that bag.... this was before security, girls puking and girls gossiping and girls fighting and girls squeezed into stalls doing lines, all the girls all done up. I had waist lenghth hair in those days, I was always fighting with it's cumbersome weight, it was always coming undone and no amount of product could tame it. I felt I couldn't measure up, that chic would always elude me....
K was at that show, so were several other people who would be important to me in this life. I wonder had we seen each other in those days, if our gazes had crossed, would we have summed up and dismissed, dress not vintage-y enough, hair wrong, wrong drug. I was only twenty. Or maybe I was nineteen.
I met K and his boyfriend R for Brazilian at six, as we are no longer quite so feral we require sustenance before our eardrums are assaulted, that and civilised cocktails before we pay a premium for the two ounce swill we pay for at the show. You know things are not as they were when you kvetch about price gouging. In the old days, even had I been legal, I would have done my drinking before hand -- I simply could not have afforded it. These days we sit in the tiers and talk economics between thorax rattling sets.
And everything has changed.
In lieu of the dense miasma of cigarette and illicit smoke they pump some kind of equally heinous, if not more so, sweet chemical air freshener, my nasal passages are still inflamed. Nobody dresses anymore. In the ladies room the ladies are applying lipgloss, feets in flip flops and a sea of denim. I feel almost heretical in my red lipstick, and don't even get me started on the menchild in the goddamned ironic t-shirts, christ am I tired of the ironic t-shirt. I liked 'em better when they were dangerously earnest, at least in those days the asshole cards were all out on the table and nobody could get by with just a self-deprecating shrug.
And the band. OK, fine. I can get that we are in the great age of derivation and recycling and global warming, haha, but I think my head exploded a little tonight. As K said to me during one of their songs and they are singing about Indie music to their million dollar light show, I think we are witnessing them jump the shark.
It's pop music and it's manufactured straight down to their ironic creepers, scripted, joyless. I found myself yearning for the days when there was a slugfest on stage, or the great guitar virtuoso solo. Instead it's just the mormon creeper boy show and really fancy lights... and glitter... I really liked the glitter, but I am sucker for shiney.
We hit the floor when we got in, but both opening bands were so awful that we quickly repaired to the tiers. I am long past the days when I am willing stand and be sweat upon in heels, plus I like watching the floor even more than I like watching the band.... and here I am losing my train of thought, plus I am listening to New Order to erase that crap pop I absorbed tonight..... oh I know.... I turned to K, because I was momentarily perplexed by all the lights in the crowd, my experience was hard wired to the lighter in hand swaying to the favorite song, and then he pointed out that it was camera phones or text messaging, and then my head exploded a little more. Is no one present these days.... and then I thought had I had my lap top would I have live blogged the fucking concert - answer - definite maybe. Also, white people and brown people can't dance and should just stop trying. Your ass is blocking my view of the pretty, pretty lights.
That is all.
posted by emma at
11:29 PM
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