I’ve told the story before in this space, about how I went to shows and then I stopped, and then I started again. Now I go to many shows. The band that sealed the deal on starting again is this Canadian “death country” group called Elliott Brood. I don’t know what makes them “death country.” I don’t know why I went to that show. But I know why I keep going to see them, and it’s because there’s something in that melancholy that makes me achingly happy.

elliott brood @ schubas tavern, 2012-02-24

youthful hearts / get stressed along the road / and buried under all they come to know

They have a new album out, Days Into Years. It’s been out in Canada for a while (and, in fact, made my best-of 2011 list), but it comes out in the States next week. Their U.S. tour just started. Check the dates and check them out.

Sorry this isn’t much of a writeup, but I love these shows too much to talk about them.

Oh, but here — they had some kind of contest on their site for people to pick their favorite live videos. I didn’t see the contest; only the results, but this video was one of them.

My own memory of that show (that song, even) looks like this:

elliott brood at ontario place, vancouver olympics, 2010-02-17

ANYWAY. The opener last night was a lovely guy named Curtis Evans. I’d seen him before, with Dave Hause and Cory Branan, and I enjoyed his set enough that I walked over to him at the bar and told him so. He was kind enough to give me a free CD, and I wanted to listen to it and tell you how it was, but so far I haven’t managed to turn off the Elliott Brood. Alt.country and Americana fans, check him out.

All photos from that show.

I don’t know when I started listening to the North Mississippi Allstars, but I know why (my friend C told me to), and so when one of the many (many, MANY) emails I get about shows in Chicago said they were playing, I bought a ticket. My father used to tell me “you can take the girl out of the south, but you can’t take the south out of the girl.” I thought he was full of shit, but listening to the North Mississippi Allstars makes me rethink that opinion, that dirty bluesy sex-drenched racket that somehow brings up those frayed lawn chairs on my grandma’s carport on a too-hot day, sweet tea sweating in my hand and an ill-advised boy sprawled on the burning concrete.

So off I went to the Old Town School of Folk Music, where, once again, I decided that place drives me totally crazy. It is such a lovely room, and the sound is so fantastic, but fuck me I cannot handle sitting through a show like this one. It was just two of them, the guitarist/vocalist and the drummer, though sometimes they were joined by a mandolin player whose name I didn’t catch (sorry, mandolin player, you were fantastic!), and their opener, Alvin Youngblood Hart. At one point, the drummer was drumming, playing guitar, and singing. Well. Sometimes he drummed with giant red plastic baseball bats.

It was SO GOOD, but listen — this is a band that has like 27 songs about shaking your ass. And you want me to stay seated? RAWR. RAWR. I need to only go to shows at the Old Town School when they are sitting-down shows. Great Lake Swimmers, they are a sitting-down band. Possibly a bring-a-pillow band. I would totally see them at the Old Town School. I am going to see the Cowboy Junkies there in April, and I expect I will probably be sobbing too hard to stand up, at which point a seat will be appreciated.

Anyway. I have no pictures (again: RAWR), but go watch this video of them doing ‘Shake’ and then commiserate with me about the cruelties of the fates who kept me from shaking what my mama gave me. Then go see this band.

According to the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, “the function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.” And I don’t know about you guys, but my conscious thoughts have been sort of over-the-top tyrannical lately. I spend a lot of time these days trying to get out of my own head, not only because sometimes my conscious thoughts are unpleasant, but also because my subconscious thoughts are way more interesting.

And so, in search of oblivion (or at least some respite), off I went to see Flogging Molly, where I assumed the crowd would be full of drunken Irish punks good-naturedly singing along to songs about booze, hard times, and getting fucked over by The Man. I am happy to report that in this, I was entirely correct. I didn’t quite manage to get out of my own head, though, partially because I forgot my phone at the house and was supposed to meet people at the show and I was really, really twitchy about being so disconnected. WHAT IF THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IS HAPPENING WHILE WE’RE SHOUTING ABOUT DRUNKEN LULLABIES??? Lesson: Maybe I should leave the house without my phone more often.

the devil makes three @ the aragon ballroom, 2012-02-18

First open was The Devil Makes Three, a folksy three-piece with a lady bassist and a hirsute banjo player whose machine annoys fascists and caused the kids next to me on the rail to ask me really earnestly WTF, so I told them about Woody Guthrie and they promised to go home and look him up. Well played, punks. Anyway, I liked the band enough to stand in the ridiculous merch line after the show and pounce on their merch girl as she was tearing down. I bought one of their records and listened to it for two days. Good stuff.

At a different show, I would have really liked the next band, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, and I don’t think I’ve laid eyes on a bari sax since high school, but their more blues-based music seemed a few degrees off for the evening. Enjoyable and energetic, for sure, but maybe not quite there.

As for Flogging Molly, it was everything I’d hoped. Fun-loving and hard-rocking, with a similar vibe as the Pogues show but not nearly so fucking brutal. It gets hot in the Aragon, but it’s no Congress, and the all-agesness of this show meant it wasn’t as sloppy fucking drunk as the Pogues show. Also, I took this picture, which I am kind of in love with. Punk noir!

flogging molly @ the aragon, 2012-02-18

I would also like to point out that every show I’ve been to in 2012 has, so far, involved a mandolin. How is that possible? You tell me.

Anyway, you guys. Flogging Molly had the best outro I have ever seen. They put on Always Look On The Bright Side (yes, the Monty Python song), turned the mics to the crowd, and skipped around the stage with their arms around one another until they all collapsed with sheer goofiness. They passed out setlists and picks and drumsticks and whatever else they felt like, leading the crowd in this stupid singalong, and everyone was so happy. It was perfect.

All photos from that show.

The last time I posted, it was to share my awesome rock & roll lifestyle report from 2011. I was like, 2012 is going to be even better for live music!

Then I moved.

I’m not going to say it was totally unexpected. I had been idly looking for a new place for a while, but it was definitely an impulse and it happened very quickly. I didn’t move because I was unhappy; I moved because it was time to move. Happily, I didn’t go very far. I’m maybe a 20-minute bike ride from work instead of a 7-minute bike ride. (But note that when I attempt to take public transportation a grand total of 2.5 miles, it takes HOURS. Fuck you, too, CTA.) I’m still pretty close to my friends. It’s a little weird, though. I now live alone, which is a thing I haven’t done in 15 years. Sometimes I get home after work and the silence is so deafening I want to scream.

I’ve moved many times in my life. I’d put a number on it, but I’m not sure how. Those weeks I lived in my car, do they count? That summer we went from fleabag motel to fleabag motel — is each hotel a move? Or is that just one big summer of suck? Beats me. I asked on twitter how many times people had moved, and the highest number I got back was 25. I’m definitely higher than that, even if I only count places where I got mail in my name (and there were more than a few where I didn’t, for various reasons). But the eventually relevant part of that story is that two moves ago, I went from a friend’s pull-out couch to a room in a Zen Buddhist temple. I was not much of a Zen Buddhist at the time, really, but the second I walked into that place, I knew it was the right place. That particular instinct is one I follow, and I followed it to the apartment I’m currently renting.

Instincts aside, when I moved to the temple, I got rid of almost everything I owned. When I moved from there to the townhouse, I bought some bedroom furniture, but everything else was my roommate’s. So for the most recent move, I basically started from scratch, meaning I dropped a lot of money in a short period of time on things like an antique icebox. Because everyone needs one of those! I also purchased what used to be the wine cabinet at the Mambo Grill, a couch from a dude on Craigslist who has a recording studio on the fourth floor of his house and offered to record my debut album for free (I’m not even kidding), and a turntable.

[True story about the turntable: I didn't know which one to buy, and every time I tried to research the question I got increasingly enraged by the pedantry of the internets, and so I wrote to Henry Rollins and asked him to tell me what to do. He told me, and I did it. I hope to continue solving my problems this way in the future.]

What that means is that I haven’t had the time, the energy, or the cash to get to many shows. Plus I have other considerations, like stalking Chuck Ragan, and the fIREHOSE reunion tour that might be the death of me, even if I only go to one show. But I digress. Thus far, in 2012, I have made it to three shows. I will now attempt to tell you about them, but I’m not going to do a very good job. You might want to just close the tab.

First up was The Lawrence Arms, at the Metro. Some band I didn’t like was the first opener, followed by the Holy Mess, except they were standing in the wings and I kept being like, “that looks like the dude from Elway” and being super confused, until he came out and said, “hi, I’m from Elway, and the Holy Mess don’t have enough songs to play a whole set, so I’m doing a few because they’re fucking unprofessional.” Or something to that effect. So he did some songs — I think there’s a split involved — and then the Holy Mess came on and the people around me started shaking me. Like, someone would grab my shoulders and jump up and down and be like OH MY GOD I LOVE THE HOLY MESS DO YOU LOVE THE HOLY MESS???!!! I felt duty-bound to say yes. And the woman next to me kept kissing my neck. Okay, then. Happily, the Holy Mess were good times and I would gladly go see them again and allow myself to be licked by their more attractive female fans.

the holy mess @ metro, 2012-01-07

As for the headliner, I spent a lot of the Lawrence Arms’ set wondering why the singer looked so familiar, and I finally googled him and it turns out we were at college together. Same years and everything, and I had a bunch of friends in his program. I don’t think I know him, because NU may not be a state school but it’s not tiny, either, and anyway, it’s not like I went to class. But still. Maybe I saw him at the BK. Who knows. That don’t-I-know-him distraction aside, I had a great time. It’s been more than a month, and so I can’t tell you anything about what they played, but I walked out more of a fan than I had been when I walked in, which is always a good sign. Then I found a shirt on the sidewalk, and now I wear it. A disturbing percentage of my wardrobe consists of clothes I found on the sidewalk.

Next up was Hannah Georgas and Kathleen Edwards at Lincoln Hall. I was familiar with Georgas after having seen her play during a live taping of Wiretap, a popular Canadian radio show that we can sometimes get south of the border. Or, you know, worldwide on the internets. But anyway, I liked her stuff a lot and I wanted to see her, but I ended up missing most of her set. I’d been unpacking and I was tired and aching and I considered skipping the show entirely, but twitter talked me into going. Twitter knows the answer is always to go to the show. So I did, and I’m so glad. I stood at the back, which is not a thing I usually do, and I don’t usually like it, but this time it was fine. It was more than fine. Edwards is charming and awkward and funny and a hell of a songwriter, and I clutched my beer and closed my eyes and thought of Canada.

in a dress to kill and a glass to fill / i wasn’t ready but i didn’t fight

Indeed.

Her new album, Voyageur, goes exceedingly well with a glass of wine and an empty apartment. I play it often.

This past Saturday, I decided it was time to get back on the horse, and so I went to Reggie’s to see Mad Bread, my friend’s bluegrass band. That was a long, weird night — at one point I ended an email I was writing with, “a stranger just sat on my lap. I guess I should deal with that.” — but I enjoyed myself thoroughly. And! I took my new camera and determined to use it. I’m weird about carrying that thing around because I have no idea what I’m doing but when you whip out a camera like that, there are suddenly expectations about who you are and what you’re doing. It’s a midrange camera, yes, but it’s still a big, fuck-off shiny one that looks pretty impressive. To me, anyway. And also to most people who go to shows in dive bars.

But anyway, I figured the bar side of Reggie’s with a band full of people I know was a good sandbox, since I hadn’t really ever used the camera before. I’d tried to read the manual, but I only got to the part where it said that portrait mode was good for pictures of women and children because you get “good skin tones.” So I have a lot of hilariously terrible shots of the ceiling or something, because I’m used to shooting through the screen instead of the viewfinder, and I can’t do that anymore, and my glasses are sort of pointy and kept getting in the way. I also have no idea how to use the lens, and so sometimes it would pick something totally random to focus on, and just. I will get better with practice, I know. And I can already tell the light is going to be so much better. I probably wouldn’t have even bothered trying to take pictures with the Lumix.

But whatever, experimental photography aside, it was actually a very good show! The first band, the Northside Ruckus, were excellent, some kind of garage.country band (I think garage.country is my new favorite thing) who played a lot of trashy country covers. The second band, the Hard Wood Boys (…) were fun and their singer was strangely compelling, probably because he was so into it.

hard wood boys @ reggie’s music joint, 2012-02-11

That is maybe the best picture I took all night.

The next band, the New Old Cavalry, are a bluegrass band from Bloomington, and there were actually a fair number of people there who’d driven into see them. Their set went over well. There may have even been some dancing. Mad Bread, the band I was actually there to see, didn’t go on until a few minutes after midnight, and I enjoyed them a lot, as I always do. They do a Pink Floyd cover! And a Velvet Underground cover! And if I remember to request it and they’ve had a lot to drink, a song about the Hulk! But mostly, they have a good time, and that’s my main requirement for a show. If the band’s loving it, I’m probably loving it.

Despite the slow start to the year, there are a fuckton of shows packed into the latter half of February that I’m planning to make it to, so here’s hoping I’ll get back to my less-infrequent posting schedule.

I think maybe I mentioned my Secret Project. The time has come!

The 2011 Rock and Roll Lifestyle Report
by pam, aged mumbledy-something

I want to make a really long post explaining myself, but the explanation is that I like going to concerts and I like data collection and analysis and visualizations. There is this guy, Nick Felton, who puts out an annual report every year. It is this beautifully insane, beautifully rendered look at all the minutae of his life: how many dinners he had, where, with whom, what he ate and drank and how much it cost. On and on it goes. It’s amazing. For a few years now, I’ve been thinking I’d like to do something sort of similar, except you really have to work up to that kind of thing. It would be easy for me to get so consumed logging my activities that I didn’t actually do any activities.

At any rate, I figured that since I already keep track of the shows I go to, it would be pretty trivial to collect a bunch more data. I’m pretty pleased with the results, if I do say so myself.

check it out!

download the pdf.

It’s two pages. Mostly it was done using google spreadsheets / charts, Photoshop, and then InDesign. I also had some help from wordle. I think it is self-explanatory, but let me know if you have any questions. Or comments, for that matter — let’s make next year’s even crazier!

I didn’t start out 2011 intending to see Social Distortion so many times. In the fall of 2010, I’d seen them play a fantastic show in Chicago, and shortly thereafter, they announced a west coast tour in February. February, for whatever reason, is a month in which I tend to go pretty batshit insane. Mostly that’s related to insomnia; one year, I added up all the sleep I got that month and the total clocked in around 50 hours. That’s less than most normal people get in a week. I can function very well for a very long time on very little sleep, but that kind of insomnia wears me down pretty quickly. I start to look at sleep like I look at time travel: as a fantastic impossibility that only happens in books and movies.

Now, I do have a full-time 9(ish)-to-5(ish) grown-up day job. I’m sure you can imagine how useful I am at that job during the month of February. It’s really best for me to be elsewhere, which I’d discovered the year before when I took most of the month off and hung out in Vancouver. It was the best thing I did for my mental health that year. So I thought, oh, they’re touring the southwest in February, I’ll take ten days and go somewhere warm, see some friends, see some shows, relax in an environment where my sleep-dep isn’t going to fuck me up too badly. Off I went!

That was the winter tour. The next tour, in May, they played Milwaukee but not Chicago, and my roommate and I drove up. It was my fifth Social D show of the year, and so things were averaging out nicely to one show per month. But then they went off to Europe and Australia, and although I have followed bands out of the country before and will do it again, I won’t do it for outdoor festivals. I hate outdoor shows of all kinds. So then it was announced they were playing Riot Fest, followed by a fall/winter tour that fell right around Thanksgiving. That’s usually a pretty good time to follow bands around because I can see a lot of shows without taking many vacation days. And I looked at the tour dates and thought, hmmm, I have friends in those towns, I have airline vouchers from getting bumped on a regular basis, I have seven shows to see if I want to meet my totally arbitrary goal of seeing them once a month (on average). Let’s give it a shot!

social distortion at hob san diego, 2011-02-20

I didn’t consider any of these shows for my best-of 2011 lists because when you see a band so many times — especially a bunch of times in a row, which does weird things to your head — you judge the shows very differently. But here’s the full list, ranked as well as I’m able to do it.

tier one

• denver 3 (2011-12-04): Look, I’m not one to complain about setlists when I see a band so often. The whole reason I’m willing to do it is that I don’t care what they play. It’s all rock & roll to me, you know? But sometimes it’s the last show of a tour and Mike’s in a great mood and the setlist seems to have a little something extra. In this case, it was the latter half of the main set: Untitled / Dear Lover / Sometimes I Do / That’s Alright / Nickels and Dimes. The first two are dark pieces of bitterness off White Heat that I love and rarely hear, I’d never heard “Sometimes I Do” and I love it to pieces (although the best part of that song is watching every live recording of it on youtube to find the one that’s least coherent. I love Mike, but the man is a mumbler), “That’s Alright” is a totally ridiculous blues number that they break out a handful of times every ten years or something. “Nickels & Dimes” has no special amazingness for me, but it’s a good set closer.
• denver 2 (2011-12-03): Good friend, good crowd, good mood, good beer, “Untitled” into “Ball and Chain,” which is the only time I heard “Ball and Chain” on that tour. I know people get sick of that song, but if there is one moment I love in a Social D show, it’s when Mike rears back and lets the crowd take over singing the final verse. I’m born to lose, and destined to fail. That song is why I have so far resolved not to tattoo any song lyrics on myself. One thing will lead to another, and I’ll end up with an elaborate neck tattoo that says TAKE AWAY THIS BALL AND CHAIN.
• madison (2011-11-29): When the worst part of the evening was the part where I met the band, you know the evening was pretty great. Was it the “My Sharona” cover? The bag of chalk someone threw? The cheap drinks? The impromptu jam they threw in that I’d never heard before? Listening to them soundcheck “Drug Train”? Whatever it was, the whole evening was fantastic.
• buffalo 2 (2011-11-23): the first night was rough going, but the second night was great. The crowd was better, the band was in a better mood, and it was the first appearance of “That’s Alright.” Turns out that Mike is actually 12 years old. He spent so much of this show laughing.
• fresno (2011-02-16): Gord is always saying that for a show to be great, something has to happen. This is the show everything happened. The blizzard in the Donner Pass. Social D opening for themselves. An ex-con named Todd and a late night at Denny’s. A fight, a nightstick to the face, too much red lighting, “Motherfuckers, don’t make me come down there,” “Ring of Fire”: it was the quintessential Social D experience in 20 seconds flat.

tier two

• chicago (2011-10-06): a short festival set (for Riot Fest), but a great one.
• grand rapids (2011-11-27): weird venue but a great crowd. I forget how much energy I spend dealing with crowd surfers until I go to a show where there aren’t any.
• reno (2011-02-15): everything about this show was nasty. The flight was bad, I had problems getting my ticket, casino shows are always clusterfucks anyway. The pit was ugly and Mike was in a bad mood, but those two things put together made the show really, really intense.
• san diego 1 (2011-02-19): I got beat to hell in the pit because I was trying to keep the crowd off the kids next to me — eight years old, I believe — and Mike gave me a pick for my trouble. This is the first time I saw the background singers, too. I don’t like those songs much on the record, but I like them live, and the two women on background vocals add a lot.
• san diego 2 (2011-02-20): I have nothing special to report about this one either way, except it’s one of the few that was not all-ages, meaning I had only myself to take care of. Often there are kids around me on the rail at all-ages shows, and I’m just not the sort of person who’s going to leave them to fend for themselves in that sort of situation. It’s tiring and it can be frustrating, but there it is. It’s also the first show I took my camera to, thus starting me down the road of taking pictures at concerts.

tier three

• milwaukee (2011-05-07): I wasn’t in the pit for this and I hated every second of it. I can’t really complain, though. The show wasn’t bad, it just killed me to be so far away.
• stroudsburg (2011-11-20): god save me from an incompetent crowd at a punk show. They wanted to have a pit, but didn’t know how. A few people tried crowdsurfing, but there weren’t enough people, and the people who were there just ducked and covered. “There’s no room for racism at a Social Distortion show,” Mike told a room full of white people, at which point three bare-chested boys in the pit with their t-shirts around their heads started chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” It was very, very weird.
• buffalo 1 (2011-11-22): I don’t know, the crowd was bad, something was off. I just wasn’t feeling it.
• denver 1 (2011-12-02): I’m still mad at the big drunk guy in the black shirt who crushed me for no reason. Like, really, really mad.

And that’s it! Who should I follow in 2012? I need a band that’s touring somewhere warm in February. Oh, look. Social D fits that bill. …dammit.

Best ten sets of 2011, in no particular order. All of these were in Chicago unless otherwise stated.

Larry and His Flask. Congress Theater, 2011-10-08. Riot Fest. Jesus Fucking Christ. Music should be played this way every single goddamn time. They’re going to be opening for the Reverend Horton Heat in March, and everyone should go. Everyone in the whole world. We’ll fit if we can get a TARDIS installed in the Metro, so there’s no problem.

The Menzingers. Subterranean, 2011-06-16. My morning-after post still sums it up as well as I’m ever going to be able to.

t.s.o.l. @ reggie’s, 2011-05-14

T.S.O.L. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-05-14. Perfect for the Code Blue singalong alone. (Full writeup.)

Unnamed impromptu group of musicians. Rainbow Ballroom (Fresno, CA). 2011-02-16. The actual bill for the evening was Chuck Ragan, Lucero, and Social Distortion. Everyone had played Reno the night before, and there was a blizzard in the mountains early that morning. Do you know what’s between Reno and Fresno? The Donner Pass. Anyone who left Reno after ~0700 didn’t make it to the show, and that group included Lucero and Jon Gaunt, Chuck’s fiddle player. (I have seen all of them since, so although they did not make it to Fresno that day, neither did they resort to cannibalism to survive.) So the members of Social Distortion, minus Mike, opened for themselves. Brent and Jonny traded vocal duties. They played a bunch of country covers and some stuff they’d written themselves and they had a great time doing it and I had a great time watching it happen.

peculiar pretzelmen @ reggie’s, 2011-09-08.

The Peculiar Pretzelmen. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-09-08. I’ve said this before, but allow me to repeat: Imagine, if you will, Tom Waits doing a lot of drugs and finding himself in Appalachian coal country and he has to do a concert consisting entirely of Loony Toons theme song remixes and so he goes to the junkyard and makes up some instruments for his show. Weird and riveting.

The Dwarves. Bottom Lounge, 2011-08-20. If I hadn’t actively loathed one of the openers, this would be on the best-show list instead of the best-set list, because Nashville Pussy were also excellent.

Made By Man. Cobra Lounge, 2011-09-27. A local band I’d never heard of, but the frontman is terrifyingly charismatic and he freaked me out in the best way possible.

Trenchtown. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-10-13. Some sort of surf.punk reggae band that I swear is from California, except they’re from Michigan. They covered ‘Maneater.’ Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Tracer Bullet. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-12-16. The first time I saw these guys, I spent half the set wondering where the hell I know the singer from and the other half drooling on the half-naked saxophone player. The second time, he also took his pants off, and normally I would probably like that less, except that he was wearing Batman briefs. Batman briefs get a pass. Oh, also, their music is good, punk rock mixed with a Detroit oldies station.

Chuck Ragan. Ogden Theatre (Denver, CO). 2011-12-03. I picked Denver 2 as my favorite Chuck Ragan set of the year, but I never saw them do a bad one. This one sticks out in my head, although I’m not sure why. The “Coal Tattoo” cover, maybe? (Link to the Hazel Dickens version, which isn’t the original, but it’s very good, and it’s the one Chuck namechecks when he intros this song.) All three nights in Denver were great, actually.

Live music is the best music, guys. Here’s to another year of it.

Last year, I put up a list of the five best shows I saw in 2010. Allow me to quote from that post: I don’t know how many shows I saw in 2010; somewhere between 25 and 30. … I actually think 25-30 is the right number for me.

Now allow me to laugh hysterically: AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

Ahem. As you may have surmised, the number is much higher this year. I went to 82 shows in 2011, and the number would be higher still if I broadened my definition of “shows.” However, what I mean when I say that “I went to a show” is that I got there early enough to watch all the opening bands and I stayed through final teardown. I saw 224 sets by 156 different artists playing 40 venues in 10 states. There are a few more on the calendar in the dying days of 2011, but I honestly feel like if I have to talk to another stranger I’m going to say avada kevadra, which is either going to get me a very confused look or a punch in the face. Best not to risk it.

I still don’t really know what makes a show good. Some magical combination of the music, the sound, the crowd, the venue, my mood, my memory, my expectations. Who I’m with, if anyone. How long I’ve spent in line. How hungry I am, how many vodka-and-red-bulls I’ve thrown back, what the weather was like. What I am saying is that this is not a precise science and if you ask me tomorrow, you might get a different answer. With that in mind, here are the best shows I saw in 2011, with pictures when I’ve got them. (And not including Social Distortion. When you see a band 14 times in one year, that band goes in its own category.)

7. The Damned. Metro, Chicago. 2011-10-25. With The Legendary Shack-Shakers.
For their 35th anniversary, the Damned played Damned, Damned, Damned (1977) and The Black Album (1980) and at one point I put my hands over my heart and I looked at the woman next to me and said, “oh my god, I’m so happy right now,” and it’s possible it was kind of dusty in there and she put her arm around me and said “me too” and shared her whiskey and now we’re friends on Facebook.

6. Koffin Kats. Reggie’s Rock Club, Chicago. 2011-04-29. With Pearls Mahone & the OneEyed Jacks, The Venom Lords, nothing to gain, and The Ugly.

koffin kats @ reggie’s, 2011-04-29.

I didn’t know what to expect from this show. I seriously had no idea. I’m not much of a psychobilly person, I’d never heard of any of the bands on the bill, I thought people playing an upright bass on stage were pretty limited in terms of on-stage shenanigans. I was utterly blown away. One day, I will follow the Koffin Kats around on tour, and I will write you something about the trainwreck that ensues.

5. Detroit Cobras. The Bottom Lounge, Chicago. 2011-06-02. With Girl in a Coma.

detroit cobras @ bottom lounge, 2011-06-02

Three things. One, the music was fantastic all night long — Detroit Cobras are this raunchy garage.rock act and the woman who fronts the band has that terrifying charisma I can’t handle. Two, I’d never heard of Girl in a Coma, and now I love them a LOT. And three, the number of straight white dudes on the stage and in the audience was very, very small. As a friend said when I was telling him about it, “Man, straight white dudes are like McDonald’s. You don’t realize how many there are until you’re someplace where there aren’t any.” So true, my friend, and I didn’t realize how much I needed a show like that until it happened. I’m glad it happened at one where everything else was so fantastic, too.

4. The Pogues. The Congress Theater, Chicago. 2011-03-03. With Titus Andronicus. I can’t say it any better than I already did. (That’s my most popular blog post, by the way.)

3. Fucked Up. Logan Square Auditorium, Chicago. 2011-09-29. With Culo and Wavves. I worked the doors for a little while, inexplicably. I was there early and it was cold, so I let myself in and they gave me shit to do. Fine by me. The opener was a glorious trainwreck I want to see in a sweat-soaked basement with crumbling ceiling tiles and dripping walls. The first thing the singer did was kick a guy in the chest, and he proceeded to spend the rest of the set either physically menacing the front row (except for me, for whatever reason) or trying to untangle his mic cord from the kick drum. It was a hot mess.

Wavves was great, a full set of bleached-out feel-good surf.punk that really got the pit going and ended when the crowd — mostly kids — crashed the stage. The band tried to keep playing and the kids tried not to fuck with their gear, but the whole thing fell apart spectacularly. Their latest album, King of the Beach, was one of my faves last year.

Aaaand then there was Fucked Up, who made one of my faves from this year, David Comes To Life, and I am never sure what to say about their shows. I love them. Here is a picture.

photo by jeremy larson, for consequences of sound

That’s a different show (from earlier in the year, at Lincoln Hall) and I did not take that photo, which should be pretty clear given that I’m visible on the left, yellow mohawk and orange earplugs. The shows are a sweaty, pulsating mess of bodies and noise, and I hurt so good for days.

2. OFF!. Bottom Lounge, Chicago. 2011-04-02. With Trash Talk and the Brokedowns.

keith morris with off! bottom lounge, 2011-04-04. full set here.

Just when you think you’re out…

Regular readers will be aware that I spent roughly ten years not going to shows at all. Those were grim years in a lot of ways that I’m not discussing, but even before I stopped going to concerts, I had stopped going to see hardcore. I had largely stopped listening to hardcore. But then I heard that Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks) had a new band with some other dudes I’d heard of. I got curious. I listened to their EPs. I went to their show. Some part of me snapped back into place.

1. Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg. AAA, Chicago. 2011-10-09. No support.
This was the final show of Riot Fest — for me, anyway, and I believe in general. I’d been fighting pneumonia, I was taking steroids as treatment and so I hadn’t slept in days, and when I’d tried to get up and take a shower that morning, I collapsed in the hall and stayed there for a long time, unable to summon the energy to stand under my own power, without a rail at my front and a few thousand people at my back. I was in no shape for a show. It took me hours to leave the house, and I promised myself I wouldn’t go anywhere near the stage because I couldn’t take another beating. Yeah, guess where I ended up.

AAA is a tiny, nondescript club in Wicker Park that is impossible to google and difficult to find. The ceilings are unfinished and the stage is made of plywood, and that night, they packed us in like sardines. It wasn’t just me who was in no shape for a show, either. That place was full of aging punks with aching backs, people who’d been staggering from venue to venue for a week straight, closing down the neighborhood bars and starting over again the next day. We were exhausted and punchy and almost certainly drunk on something, and when the band came out, we laughed and danced and sang and loved every second of it.

Marky Ramone isn’t one of the original members of the band, but he is the only surviving member of the longest-lasting lineup. He’s the drummer and didn’t say much, but then again, neither did Michale Graves, who was providing vocals. He’s a little guy, but the stage is tiny and Marky’s drums take up a lot of room. Graves had the space to jump up and down in one spot, and so that’s what he did for 90 minutes straight. The stage was slick with sweat three songs in, 1-2-3-4! and they didn’t let up for a second. It was like getting run over by some kind of contentment truck. They might as well be a Ramones cover band, but I am rarely in a room so full of unadulterated joy as I was right then.

Other fantastic shows were:

• Okkervil River, the Felice Brothers at the Vic
• Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard at the Chicago Theater
• Stiff Little Fingers, Flatfoot 56, Rambos at the Double Door
• Dayglo Abortions, Verbal Abuse, I Attack, Eske at Cobra Lounge

Next up: Best sets of 2011, and probably something about my feelings re: Social Distortion. Because I know you’re all waiting for another post about that.

Quick round-up of shows I have seen in the last few months but, for whatever reason, didn’t get around to writing about. So behind the cut: The Damned, the Meat Puppets, the Koffin Kats (part III) and John Doe.

the damned’s captain sensible and dave vanian, metro, 2011-10-25

I love the Damned. Like. A lot. They were celebrating their 35th anniversary by playing 1977′s Damned, Damned, Damned and 1980′s The Black Album back-to-back. The former is one of the greatest albums of all time ever, the latter is not far behind, and there was no way in hell I was missing this show. The band came out and waved and Dave was in his dark suit and sunglasses like one of the original gothboys that he is, and Captain Sensible looked like a guy wearing a Captain Sensible costume, and the bassline of “Neat Neat Neat” kicked in and I smiled and danced for hours. I knew I would enjoy the show, but oh my god, I had so many Feelings. It was actually a bit overwhelming! I tried for weeks to write about this show and couldn’t do it, but it was one of the best this year.

Support was The Legendary Shack Shakers, as kickass a rockabilly band as I’ve seen. I’ll definitely be trying to see them again. Full photo set.

curt kirkwood of the meat puppets. double door, 2011-11-11

Confession time, you guys: Sometimes I get the Meat Puppets confused with the Meatmen, the Marked Men, the Mustard Men and Mustard Plug. None of those bands have anything in common, though, don’t worry. There is no need for alarm. It’s just a name thing.

Anyway. When trying to tell people about the Meat Puppets, I always forget that they were sort of popular in the 90s (thank you, Nirvana), and I fall back on describing them as one of the “big” SST bands from back in the day, when SST signed weird hardcore bands and a handful of them got popular (for some punk rock version of popular) by mixing hardcore and something else. Black Flag went metal, Hüsker Dü went pop, the Minutemen went funk, and the Meat Puppets went country. But whatever, I love hardcore!Meat Puppets and alt.grunge!Meat Puppets and I’m not super wild about contemporary.country!Meat Puppets (which seems to be what they are doing now), but this was a good show. Those dudes can really fucking play, and they were having such a good time up there doing it. They played old songs and new songs and the Kirkwoods might be looking rough, but I like my people with some edges.

Support was a local band called the Sweeps that I can’t really tell you much about (except for, “My name is Santiago, and that’s Bob.” The juxtaposition of those two names cracked me up) and a Belgian garage.grunge band called Black Box Revelation. I was not really in the mood to listen to drawn-out noise jams (which means I was also not in the mood that would’ve been most receptive to the Meat Puppets), but I thought these guys were worth checking out.

The light was shit that night, and so the photos are terrible. They are here, nonetheless.

koffin kats @ reggie’s rock club, 2011-12-16

You guys know how I feel about Koffin Kats shows. Fantastic good times all around. They are hard as hell to photograph, but whatever. Let’s just look at more pictures.

vic victor zooooom. koffin kats @ reggie’s rock club, 2011-12-16

tracer bullet @ reggie’s rock club, 2011-12-16.

That’s Tracer Bullet, the band that drives me completely insane because I swear to god I know those guys from a different life. Which life? I have no idea. If you like your punk rock mixed up with the oldies station I listened to in Michigan (50s rock, early early r&b, motown, some soul), you should check them out. Also because Chris tends to take his clothes off. As you can see, he is a fan of Batman. I approve this message.

Full set here.

john doe, old town school of folk music. 2011-11-26

Took a break from Social D to go to my second John Doe show of the year. The first was with Jill Sobule at Lincoln Hall supporting their album, A Day at the Pass, and this time he was at the Old Town School supporting his own new one, Keeper. His backing band includes Maggie Björklund on pedal steel, which is completely aces, and Dead Rock West’s Cindy Wasserman on supporting vox. Which is to say that the people behind him are fantastic. Anyway, I love John Doe so much that I walked up to him of my own volition and told him so. His shows are fantastic, but he doesn’t belong at the Old Town School. He has too much energy for that place, or a different kind of energy, or something. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic venue and a great place for certain kinds of shows, but there was something off about it in this case. All that sitting, sipping your wine while John Doe is rocking out a few feet away? I can’t even deal with that.

Also they irritate me with their no-photography signs, which say “per the artist’s request,” as if they ask each individual artist and go from there. Lies! They do not allow photography and they should just say so. But whatever, I heart John Doe and I will go see him every time, even playing venues I feel are not kickass enough for him.

I added a new thing to my show-going this year: I started taking pictures. Not because I particularly enjoy it (I don’t) or because I want to be a rock & roll photographer (I don’t), but because I have some kind of weird hangup that is almost certainly leftover from journalism school. I do not like to post things without any art. So I decided I’d take photographs.

I have a Panasonic DMC-TS1 Lumix that is about the size of a pack of smokes. It fits in my pocket, and I bought it during the 2010 Olympics because my last digital camera broke after I’d dropped it on the ground in the rain one too many times. It is water-resistant and shockproof, and it now goes almost everywhere with me. I can put it in my boot to sneak it into shows if security is lax (Danzig) or in my pants if security is somewhat tighter (also Danzig) or wrap it up in a handkerchief and put it in an empty coffee cup under a dumpster in an alley if security is AMAZINGLY DOUCHEY (Puscifer). With this point-and-shoot, I set it to high-speed burst, turn off the flash, stand in the pit, and lay on the shutter. I take an average of 847 photos per show. If I am very lucky and no one has pushed me and the musicians aren’t too jittery and the light is exactly right, I will get a good photograph.

Here are the ones I like best from this year.

Black Box Revelation at the Double Door. Belgian two-piece garage.grunge act, opening for the Meat Puppets. The light that night was fucking terrible, all red gels and fog machines. So, for the first time ever, I messed around with my camera enough to discover its black & white setting. It also has a lot of manual settings that I don’t understand even a little bit (despite having read the manual a lot). I fucked with all of them. Somehow, despite my incompetent flailing, there is something about this picture that I am madly in love with.

Nashville Pussy’s Karen Cuda. Bottom Lounge, 2011-08-20. Sheer luck of the light on this one.

Social Distortion. Buffalo 2, Town Ballroom. I have a hard enough time taking photos, and taking photos of the same band night after night is very hard. They start to look the same, and the whole enterprise is just a boring slog. I’m really happy with this one, though.

Dead Superheroes Orchestra at Reggie’s. I actually took this with my phone as they were setting up, and not only is it one of the best photos I have taken with my phone, it is maybe the best photo I took of this band. They are a 10- or 11-piece chamber orchestra with a skinny gothboy singer and given their name, I was hoping to learn that they play in the skull makeup all the time. Sadly, they do not; this was the Halloween show, and so they were dressed up.

Amon Amarth at Bottom Lounge. My roommate decided it was time for us to see some viking metal, so off we went. The hair. The horns. The synchronized headbanging. Incredible. Most of those photos turned out pretty well.

Koffin Kats at Reggie’s. Just go see them. Hard to photograph but fantastic to watch.

The rest of my personal favorites from 2011 are in a cleverly named photo set, and you are free to check them out. In the meantime, I bought myself a “real” camera for Christmas this year. Don’t ask me to tell you about it, because I don’t know. It’s a Canon. I could very easily check to find out what kind of camera it is, but it’s perhaps more telling that I have been trying to remember for a good twenty minutes, and I failed. I won’t be able to take it with me to all the shows I go to, but if my 2011 numbers hold, it will go with me about 60 percent of the time. Stay tuned.