this shit is severely edited, believe it or not.
first, the pics:
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y10...ellsearlyshow/
"the directions say the club is 1039 Washington St.", i inform patrick as we get closer. it's almost 1 PM, and we are still 6 hours from the first of 2 Sonic Youth shows at legendary Hoboken club Maxwells. and the street on which it stands is blocked.
befuddled, Patrick parks the Accord in Central Parking which gives us 24 hours and we walk on over. banners and the processions in the street solve one mystery: today is the celebration of Hoboken's 150th anniversary. dogs ahoy, st. patrick's day floats, little league baseball teams, luckily the sidewalk pedestrians were mostly fleet of foot--oh shit, there was even a shoe store on the block across us called Fleet Foot--and we made the 10 block walk to Maxwell's heartily. sunny, slightly breezy, the kind of weather I like.
how to spend the time? where should we stand? most places I see shows at, there's a door to be in a line next to...it didn't dawn on either of us that, given this was a smaller venue, the line may actually have to start INSIDE the bar area, much like the Black Cat in DC. hmm. it took us 3 hours to find
this out, thanks to a helpful bartender. in that time, i pissed my partner off no
end with my incessant worrisome nature.
in that space, we also walked around 11th street. midway down the block, my nose catches wind of the nastiest sewage smell EVER. the noteworthy thing about this stench is that you can walk halfway down the sidewalk and your sniffer won't catch anything funky. but get to a certain point and BAM--overwhelming. take a step back, the smell is gone. it was wild, like stepping in and out of a portal of odor.
Jim and Lee exit a cab together, Mr. Ranaldo lugging the same
red Nurse satchel Patrick has, and Jim in black-rimmed eyeglasses.
Thurston walks by us in his own black-rimmed eyeglasses. this was not the funny part. he actually tripped on the sidewalk approaching us, but no, that was even the real funny part. see, Thurston catches sight of us and we all exchange little "hi"'s and indie head-nods and that was cool...UNTIL PATRICK ASKED HIM WHERE WE SHOULD BE STANDING. oh, thurston got this look...not a mean look, not a condescending one, more a look like, dude i dunno, what a weird question. the fact i couldn't hold
back my laughter made it a priceless comic moment. Thurston sees two freaks in a Snoopy shirt and Les Georges Leningrad shirt respectively (gee, can you guess which one of us in which shirt?) and probably expects autograph or photo requests, and gets THAT instead.
anyway, once we had established the bar area as the place to be we went on in and took a seat at the bar itself. i was impressed with the general classiness of Maxwell's interior, a contrast to the still-being remodeled exterior ("Now really Patrick, the 150th anniversary of Hoboken and they present THIS?"). tables for dining were set out with those "cocktail 101"-type placemats I remember seeing in my many trips to eateries in the Ocean City area. man, can you make a bad drink that has vodka in it? i don't see how that is even possible! 2 shots vodka, 1 shot cranberry juice, 2 shots yak piss? YUMMY.
i almost didn't get my bottle of budweiser, as the woman at the bar was taken aback by my state-issued Maryland ID card. "that looks so weird". i couldn't help but agree, but in a prideful way--FEAR THE CRAB! what's the state animal of Jersey, the rat?
after half the bottle was gone, we joined a guy already in line by the doors.
band members walked by us. jim is really short. i think we had both forgotten this. he had on some sweet-ass indiana jones hat, but tweed.. steve is a co-
owner of Maxwell's and so has other business to attend to as well as the show tonight.
we're in! first show. dude stamps our hand. invisible ink? forgot to take the cap off? later it hits me maybe when you go to the bar they have some light they shine over your hand and the mark would show then? eh.
we get right up front, me directly in front of kim's mic and patrick right next to.
the stage is retardedly small. at 300 people this is the smallest place i will likely ever see SY at. i like it.
first up is the opener, loren mazzacane connors and jim o'rourke. i like mr. connors. i admitted to patrick that night the main reason i took to the daggett years cd and by extension mr. connors: a man accompanying himself on guitar and uttering random sound reminded me of the times by father would get loaded, grab his acoustic and go out back in an attempt to ride the alcoholic wave by turning out some classic country tunes. i would hear a guitar riff easily recognizable as "ring of fire" or some other such, but the words...yeeeee. a drunk man with a gruff southern accent and a memory murdered by booze ain't getting too far at the grand ole opry, you know.
patrick and i were among the 10% of the crowd who dug the opening show. loren connors plays simply but it seems like even the easiest thumb-strum is something that sends him out there, and why not when jim is next to him seated, adding on touching chords and notes. jim never lifted up his head until the very end. i found the set a nice journey reminiscent of a canoe ride in the nighttime, so dark it looks like the vessel is traversing black ice.
best thing was when o'rourke took the stage and hearing the convo between 2 girls behind me. i'll sum it up thus: as much as jim has contributed to music, the
production/mixing/engineering, the instrumentation, the composing, it's just great that this guy's enduring legacy is that he wrote a song about wanting to fuck a handicapped girl.
there was no backstage, so SY had to come through the crowd to reach a step that offered easy elevation to the stage. KIM WAS NOT WEARING THE SAME WHITE DRESS AND GOLD SKIRT SHE'S BEEN DONNING FOR THE OTHER SHOWS. patrick was mildly deflated. he is
in love with that look and if she did indeed have that on, 99% of his pics would have been of kim.
started off with "golden blue". immediately after, thurston said hello and lee
announced this was their first gig in hoboken since 1988. wow. thurston beseeched us in the front to not touch the carpet on the stage since it was blessed with what steve called "jersey funk." oh, so apparently this shit is tangible as well.
"new jersey, baby," thurston reflected.
"love it or leave it!" a fan yelled.
"don't give us that option!" lee quipped back.
after "the empty page", thurston felt the need to remove the long-sleeved shirt underneath this very cool looking shirt in the style of a hardcore flyer. "stillborn christians" was a phrase that stuck out. "don't look," he begged us. so we all watched on rapt as mr. moore took off the HC shirt then the hotter one. we all hooted and hollered as steve provided the drumbeat to "The Stripper" and Lee even joined in with his guitar. thurston tossed the shirt at kim, and it landed on her bass head. the roadie behind t's monitors reached out for it, but kim quite nonchalantly threw it into the audience. "i didn't like that shirt anyway," she remarked with a grin.
"that was the first time my tits have been out on stage!" thurston screamed.
"girls gone wild", his wife offered.
"THAT'S jersey funk", jim remarked as he was kneeling on the stage futzing with his 'quip.
things slowed down with "unmade bed" and picked up quickly with "eric's trip." thurston has a hair police sticker on the Drifter Jr now. the next song on the list was "dude ranch nurse", but thurston didn't really want to play it, so they jumped ahead to "stones", which is...ahhh. you know how i feel. lee's backing vocals for the chorus are just the extra fudge on the ice cream on top of the brownie.
dude ranch now? no, "paper cup exit."
dude ranch now? no, now "pch." come on get in the car and all that. so go ahead! (thurston had some incredibly spastic, excitable-boy intros both shows: "Come on let's do it!" "Let's go, let's go!" which the band would, after staring at him in amazed amusement for a few seconds.)
best "pch" i've heard, i'm glad they're sticking with this one. kim shocked the
living hell out of me and perhaps everyone when she took a step down and decided to just sing and hang out in the crowd during the part before the breakdown and right up until she had to go back up for her trumpet part (jim handing her the horn was great). patrick, myself, and everyone around kim had some stupid dumb grins on our faces--KIM'S TOTALLY RIGHT NEXT TO US, DUDE! out of all the band, i would expect thurston to get interactive--not kim, at all. patrick got a really good shot of her in the crowd, he was inches from her, so no excuse for him not to.
so NOW dude...nooooooo, "new hampshire." thurston doing some jive talk about the aerosmith boys during the instro intro. i glanced and saw that the crowd was actually moving, which i was wondering about, with a city so rich in indie lore as this and indie lore being so filled with crowds who don't dance just put their hands in their pants (now look bored, look bored...oh christ, i'm quoting fat joe, help!)
then they left, right back down the steps. except for steve and jim who just stayed on the stage, ahahahahahhahaa. damn, wonder if an encore is imminent? as it was they did a "sister" encore, with "catholic block" and "schizophrenia". CB featured some funny/cool yowling from thurston during the buildup. "schizo" had to be restarted when thurston fucked up the intro.
more funny thurston came when they got back onstage for the encore and he proclaimed, "i just kissed jim's girlfriend, all sweaty 'n shit. i just got offstage and gah!"