Location: Lowercase Collective
Bands: La Armada, Parsley Flakes , Radical Cheerleaders, Slut Barf
Cost: Donation
Drinks: Not Allowed
Things I missed to be there: Jilt, Viewers Like You, GiGi Deluxe and Happy the Human Pin Cushion at Morseland; Totally Michael and the Sass Dragons at peopleprojects; Kid Loco, Jordan Z, and Livewire at the Sanatorium; Rat Patrol, Abrade, and Rat Bastards at Rancho Huevos; dance parties at one of the dance parties at one of the Diana's Shoes lofts and some place called Pussy
Reason for Going: Some sort of flawed reasoning that led me to believe that the hardest show to get to and from was the best one to go to
As of press time, the war in Iraq has been going on for five years and a few weeks. The official count of dead American soldiers is just over 4000, and that number increases sharply if you count every case of suicide, friendly fire, and deaths under mysterious circumstances. Conservative estimates say that over 100,000 Iraqis have died, including insurgent fighters, members of the old Iraqi Republican Army, and civilian men, women, and children (and while organizations such as the Red Cross have verified this number, our government's official toll is significantly lower and that's the figure that gets quoted on television, when it's mentioned at all).
It's been a few years since my last antiwar protest. I don't really see the point anymore. The three-word chants. The half assed street theater. The roaring sound of megaphones clashing against one another, over a steady soundtrack of bucket drums and police whistles. Nobody gives a shit. The powerful protests I witnessed at the onset of the war, where concerned Americans came out in the tens of thousands, were hardly reported on in the news, even when they got violent, and as the war surged on, people lost interest. With each passing march, the number of marches dwndles and the blurbs and the soundbites get shorter and shorter. It's a new century, with a new media consciousness, and it's apparent to all but the oldest and youngest members of the activist community that marches don't work, and no amount of hyping from, say, the Billionaires for Bush, with their cardboard coffins and plutocrat shtick will change things. It's hard to get a response. Malachi Ritcher immolated himself off the side of a busy downtown freeway, and it took months for people to hear about his death protest, not through traditional media, but through blogs and emails.
If you're a person, just a normal person with no real financial or political power, you need to do something truly outrageous just to get your song heard, and that's what the Holy Name 6 did. A couple weeks back, six activists calling themselves the Catholic Schoolgirls for Peace, arrived at Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral in their Sunday best. It was, after all, Easter. Midway through the ceremonies, they produced fake blood and dumped it all over themselves chanting anti war facts and slogans until they were arrested. The Catholic Church is against the war in Iraq, and has been since the beginning, but Cardinal George still meets with the president for photo ops, and, although he doesn't like politics to come up in his services at Holy Name, hasn't argued with the Catholic League in their endorsement of George Bush in the last couple elections, for fear that more innocent lives will be lost to abortion or homosexuality than are already being lost overseas, if a Democrat won the office.
So they covered themselves in stage blood, some of it spilling onto the pews and the carpet and even the guests, and were arrested, taken out and charged with felonies for the damage they were said to have caused. It wasn't at all a sophisticated protest, and they very well might not have considered how their actions might negatively affect the antiwar movement in the court of public opinion, but they do have some serious balls to do it.
Chicago is a shitty city to piss off Catholics in, and 2008 is a shitty year to piss off anyone. Quick google searches of the names of any of the Six will bring up myspace pages, facebook pages, and for one poor girl, her email address listed on her college's website. Before they were even bailed out of jail, their inboxes were full death threats and creepy personal information. Sympathetic cats at the Lowercase Collective decided to throw a benefit show for the Six in their basement laundry room.
When I got there, Parsley Flakes were playing their superbly awesome blend of synth punk and butts were bouncing around all over the little room, more and more with each song, culminating in a frenzied encore performance of the Genesis song "That's All." It was awesome. The last show I went to there had Milwaukee synthpunks We'rewolves end a set with CCR's "Down on the Corner", and if it ends up being a trend at the house, then I hope they open their basement up to a lot more shows as the weather catches up to the season.
The surprise of the night though, was La Armada. Despite the bands' Los Crudos patches, Condenada stickers, and dreadlocked rhythm section, they weren't playing hardcore, or even punk... they were playing METAL. Speed metal and thrash with guitar and drum solos, all in Spanish. I wish I was more well versed in metal, and could trust myself in comparing them to Creator or Archenemy or Opeth or Crom, but I haven't been lstening to a lot of guitar music lately, so the only comparison I could make is to say that La Armada is like a Dominican (and at least one Puerto Rican, if the heckling was to be believed) version of the cartoon band Dethklok.
All in all I, traveled for about two hours to get to and from a show where I ate a handful of vegan cookies, checked my beer at the door, and saw just two sets and I still feel like I won the night. Take that, dance party motherfckers.
[Parsley Flakes doin it up]
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