Location: Cobra Lounge
Price: Nada
Things I missed to see it: Cartune Xpress at Green Lantern, In One Ear at the Heartland
Reason I went: I was coming from the southside and it was the southernmost thing I knew of
One of the problems with writing is that it's far easier to pan things than it is to make an interesting case as to why one thing or another is worth your time or money. Tonight I'm drunk and there's nothing I'd like to do more than slag a band I used to appreciate, but that's not why I started this blog. Still, I can't do the positive without the negative so I'm gonna start with two ways I could have written a pussy column, followed by three things that made it worthwhile.
The glass is half empty:
1. They won't say it now, but when the Cobra Lounge was still working out their licenses, they describerd themselves as an "Upscale Rock Bar" which is nothing more than an oxymoron. I don't care how many punk-damaged DJs they have playing Mission of Burma and Youth Brigade tributes every night, there's a velvet curtain outside the door and that's not very punk rock.
2. A few years back, my friend Ben's band shared a practice space with Deals Gone Bad. It was an unassuming factory spot in East Rogers Park, and many a night was spent there consuming whiskey and late-night tacos. It was a center of debauchery, to be sure, but it was also a stepping stone for the band. They shared a space with Deals Gone Bad, a real band. Deals Gone Bad had appeared on all of the Jump Up! compilations and by the time we actually saw them, we had their set pretty well mnemorized. Then all of a sudden, things had changed. Deals Gone Bad weren't at the head of a reggae skapunk revval, they were just a bunch of old white men who couldn't adapt, and when I saw them tonight, they didn't sound like a band with strong roots in British and American soul music, they sounded like a Blues Brothers cover band.
The glass still has beer in it:
1. One of the dudes in the band looks like Brian Posehn.
2. Skinheads. Chicago used to be crawling with them. Northside factions, Southside factions, racist skins, anti-racist skins, trad skins, throwback skins, Chicago Mafia Skins. Cafes used to be full of young girls with chelsea cuts that I could fall in love with. Now I only see them at shows.
And I don't see them at most shows. I see them at reunion shows. I see them when the Subhumans come to town. I see them at old Chicago shows. I see them at Southside shows. Not like Pilsen or Bridgeport but reeeeal Southside shows where Blue Island bands like Fear City are playing. A lot of the throwback boys have a thing for soul music, and there's not a lot of game in town for soul that isn't totally mod so these guys flock to Deals Gone Bad who at least put an effort into throwing soul in with the ska. Maybe there are other reasons. I don't know, because I've never been a skinhead, but it's still nice to see the boys around.
3. Burning Angel Girls. Back before there was a huge market for punk rock pornography, I had to download homemade photos like this (which I still have leftover from a set of topless skinheads I got off a high school dial-up connection):
identity protected because she probably didn't receive money to have this circulated online her whole life
Now I can go to a place like Burning Angel and watch girls like these...
...take it up the ass in mid-res downloadable video to the full contentment of my heart. And there are hundreds of them. Thousands even. Acording to Myspace and Friendster and Suicidegirls and Supercult and whatever the fuck webjag phenomena is gonna come next, the whole country is full of them...but where are they? Where are all of these beautiful women when they aren't getting tattoos or doing porn or roller derby?
I rarely see them at shows, or the supermarket, or on public transit. There were some at art school but not enough to account for all of them...
They're here, at the Upscale Rock Bars, where they can be sweet-talked by rawk-by-night day traders over PBRs and Cosmos, and the show tonight was full of them. It's enough to make me want to get a real job.
Verdict: The show was alright. The crowd was fun. The beers were bought for me by friends. The band wasn't particularly great, but they were never groundbreaking to begin with. As usual though, I'm probably wrong, because the crowd loved their asses off on that show.
No comments:
Post a Comment