Since I could give a shit about
Spotify and refuse to contribute to their data mining concealed as a
music service and rather than piling on with yet another year end
“best of” list that no one cares about, I thought I'd put
together some reflections on the past twelve months of me getting off
of my couch.
It's been about a year since I've been
out and about with a camera and two years since I've started writing
again. Any concerns that this is a failed experiment have been put
out with the garbage.
Blinding people with a flash while
they're trying to play music has been a rewarding experience.
Getting out to more shows in order to take pictures has partially
gotten me out of the antisocial rut that I've been in for the past
forty years.
Learning to make friends and be
appreciative of them is a really weird thing to have to figure out
when that should have been taken care of back in the early '80s. With the way things had been going since childhood, I didn't think
I'd ever need to develop the skills necessary to build and maintain
friendships. I'm still not used to people saying hello to me when I
walk into a venue. Having spent so long in my self-imposed exile, I
forgot how to handle even the most basic social interactions.
One of the other things that I'm
learning through all of this is to just do the damned thing. To put
the work in and then let the work speak for itself. Much like any
other creative endeavor, reaction to the words and the pictures are
all subjective. If I put as much honesty as I can into each sentence and hope
the pictures don't come out too blurry, the quality will take care of
itself.
My rudimentary road crew skills have
come in handy over the past year, as well. Since I'm at the show early to
stake out a spot with a decent sight line to take pictures, I'll help
set up and tear down if needed. I still have the mindset to do
whatever is needed to make the show work and it is nice to use that
part of my brain again. I do feel an odd sense of pride to know that
as soon as my hand lands on an amp, drum or road case that I can
still flip the switch that turns on the lizard brain that is in
service to nothing but making the show happen.
I feel like I'm doing what I'm
supposed to now and am finally starting to get comfortable in my own
skull after a lifetime of feeling lost or that I had missed a boat of
some sort. I still have difficulty saying “yes” to some of the
opportunities that have come my way because of an immense amount of
imposter syndrome. This is where doing the damned thing helps to
clear the obstacle of my own neuroses that I unfailingly put in front
of myself.
Things will be busy straight through
to the end of the year and 2020 will be a big year for multiple
reasons. Hopefully, I'll be up to the task at hand.
Below are some of my favorite shows and
pictures of the past year, in no particular order:
Killer Of Sheep opening for Minority
Threat up in Cleveland at the end of March. This show was stacked
with so many great bands. The lineup was For Your Health, Killer Of
Sheep, Soul Glo, MAAFA and Minority Threat. More about that show can
be read here.
Getting to see Control Top twice
within a week when they toured with Laura Jane Grace & The
Devouring Mothers. Once in Pittsburgh and then a week later in
Cleveland. I knew what to expect from Laura Jane Grace because
anything she's involved with never disappoints but I was completely
floored by Control Top. Their record, Covert Contracts,
was easily one of my favorites to come out over the last year and
they are a devastating live band with a scorched earth approach to
playing.
Seeing Le
Butcherettes twice within the same year was also a great privilege. They were quite possibly one of the hardest working bands of 2019. Le Butcherettes played Pittsburgh so many times over the past year
they could damn near qualify as a local band. They came through once
on their own tour and then again as an opener each time for Flaming
Lips, L7, Social Distortion and Incubus. I caught them on their own
tour and when they played with L7. As a lead singer, Teri Gender
Bender has that thing that Iggy Pop and Keith Morris have which is an
undeniable ability to single handedly level an audience.
The Skull Records
birthday party at Babyland was a good night. Since it was an all ages
show, I was able to take the kid with me so she could experience
Submachine and Killer Of Sheep. She always wanted to see the bands
perform after hearing their music playing in the house and hearing my
stories about the shows at the dinner table. She was finally able to
witness the mayhem of both bands and a true DIY punk show. It was
worth the price of admission to see the look on her face when I
handed her the camera so I could catch and release drunk and sweaty
punks to keep them from crashing into the soundboard.
No comments:
Post a Comment