Ha! It makes sense that there being two active leagues open would siphon posts from here.
I get to get my bottom wisdom teeth out tomorrow, meaning I won't be able to go see Modest Mouse at Celebrity Theater. I wasn't thrilled that they were playing a seated venue but I then learned that it's still all GA so it still would be possible to get good seats. Now I'll be done around 12:30pm and instead of heading over to wait in line I'll need to be driven home to rest.
Yesterday was Sonic Youth. Opening were xbxrx and Wolf Eyes.
xbxrx reminded me of Hawnay Troof and the Locust and maybe a little Mooney Suzuki. AMG lists them as having broken up in 2002 and mentions that their debut album was called "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2" They were wild and noisy and wild and noisy and incoherent. They lasted about 20 minutes. One person near me (remember this guy for later) commented that he had seen a lot of bands but they were the worst ever.
Wolf Eyes were rather interesting, my mind wandered around several post-rock reference points, but the music was more post and less rock than anyone I've heard before. There were three people up on stage, one eliciting mainly feedback out of a guitar - the other two working with synths, gongs, a sheet of metal, a saxophone, that sort of thing. I got into the second song and was disagreeing with the guy from before who said, audible to everyone including the band, "You guys make the first band sound good, and they sucked!" [not an exact quote] but then after the third song they got fed up and just left. They were scheduled to play from 8:45 until 9:20 but they only played for 15 minutes. I'm not even sure what the big deal was. There were a few morons who offered a few heckling comments but people clapped between songs and there were plenty of people nodding to the beat (when there was one) and such but just when I was starting to like them they left so I don't care what they sound like on CD.
So after that combined 35 minutes of music we had another 45 minutes to wait for Sonic Youth to come out (they didn't come on early due to Wolf Eyes giving up on us.) I was right up front and it was fascinating to watch Thurston Moore and his guitar. I am a huge fan of using white noise, feedback, distortion and so on within the context of a song, and for such a song I am rarely in a hurry to get anywhere so it seems like Thurston was auditioning for the position of my favorite guitarist [this has nothing to do with technical skill and everything to do with making a good variety of different and interesting and otherwise pleasing sounds with the guitar - the competition includes Jason Pierce, Andrew Prickett (no longer active), Doug Martsch, Mike Roe, Dave Lake and certainly many others I'm not thinking of right now.) Side note: wow, AMG needs to work out the bugs with their site redesign.]
As for the setlist they played just about every song from Sonic Nurse plus Schizophrenia, Bull in the Heather, Drunken Butterfly, another older, very familiar Kim Gordon song which I can't recall and Teenage Riot, though they played the extended version which means that they really closed with "Teenage Riot plus 15 minutes of guitars being rubbed/struck/rested upon/bounced over available objects." It was beautiful (well, the occasional long stretch of random noise was less beautiful than the more tuneful bits but it was all pretty cool.)
I didn't think that I'd have the guts to wear the best shirt they had there: printed on the shirt was a picture of a girl wearing a Sonic Youth shirt.
The show was at the Marquee, which interestingly no longer deals with Ticketmaster. This is imporant information to know because there's three great shows coming to Marquee, Built to Spill, Fear Factory and Face to Face.
