i went atp, a second time

this time justified by financial transactions, but i’m still damn lucky. doesn’t everyone look lovely at dawn on the beach?

no-one said that posing was the point. the point, i seem to recall, was dancing. a good many people present understood this, especially the dj who played ’sabotage’ on sunday night. the boredoms understood that once you have arrived on stage, dropping jaws all over the room with your hitherto-unheard-of ability to conduct tidal waves of noise with a small stick of light, you let your three drummers loose and don’t let em stop.

eleanor freidberger and the rest of the fiery furnaces understood that just cos your recorded output consists mainly of sparking synth-littered electric pop, you can and should play a 45minute show of garage-metal versions without stopping once. well maybe once. but only once.

they even explain themselves on their site:

Given that both Rehearsing My Choir and Bitter Tea were tack-player-piano records, Matt thought it best to play only guitar on tour, at least through August. He feels this quite simple change is needed to give the songs the necessary different cast. We don’t like bands that attempt to replicate– or accidentally replicate– their records at their live shows. And we feel well justified in this aversion to that sort of un-natural, un-necessary, mutant-izing or cloning. Eleanor will be playing her relatively new Stratocaster on this trip, not Matt’s old, green, Japanese Univox. That guitar gets to rest at (someone’s) home.

dinosaur jr certainly got it too. i always quite liked them on record, but live they were incredible. by which i mean incredible and incredibly loud. an elderly punk sitting next to me atop a speaker stack just fell the hell off. he wandered off at an astonishing speed before i could convince him to seek medical attention. i hope he’s ok. lightning bolt almost got it, but despite them playing three sets over the weekend, technical hitches in the equipment and the cognitive functions of the security guards prevented me see them play for more than five minutes. man is that a shame. but only in the same way that it’s a shame electrelane, sleater-kinny and destroyer played plodding, lacklustre sets when i know they are capable of so much more. i.e., a bit of a shame, but a shame overshadowed by a hell of a lot of dancing. i am particularly grateful to herman dune, whose fantastic songs about naked violin-players coming of age and other joyful sundries kicked off the weekend in style. mt. eerie was unspeakably wonderful.

the real shame is i’m writing this on the same day desmond dekker passed away. they are all dying in the wrong order.*

*copyright oneravingant