shoegaze

Thanks for the best tour threads.. a lot of fun

Mercury Rev & The Doves - 9:30 Club - Washington DC 2005
Smashing Pumpkins - Siameses Dream Tour
The Cramps (2-10-95)

The Cure in 1995 - they'd done a crappy festival north of Toronto and came back and did a small (by their standard) arena at the University... amazing show.

The Strokes - not a huge fan but cool vibe - they'd gotten HUGE but had confirmed a gig in a dive bar... cool venue to see them in.

Simon & Garfunkel - Old Friends tour.

Interpol - same tiny venue as The Strokes before their album was doing much of anything...

Devo - Q/A and FoC shows last year.

Yeah, Sigur Ros Takk... tour.

Also, the Dave Matthews Band always puts on some of my favorite shows.

Errr... tough one.

Sonic Youth in 2006. That was the first time I ever saw them. They were incredible. At one point, Thurston climbed up on top of his amps and starting smashing his Jazzmaster into the speaker cabs and then holding it into the air to just it feedback forever. It burned my brain. Beautiful, blissful, noise.

Deerhoof in 2006. Maybe the most fun I've ever had at a show, actually. Satomi got down off of the stage and danced with all of us up front. Also, Greg Saunier is probably the best drummer I've ever seen play. They just looked like they were having a blast and it was infectious.

Dinosaur Jr. last year. Soooooo loud. Great show. They played all my old favs.

Boris last year. Another loud one. This band is awesome. They ended the show with like a 20 minute drone jam. It shook my soul.

Ted Leo/RX any time. Every time I've seen Ted Leo he's been incredible. So much fun seeing that guy live. Everyone always dances and lets loose. It's always a good time. Go see him!


There's probably a lot more that were epic if I really thought about it, but those ones stood out off the top of my head.

I haven't been to a show in ages and ages, but there was a time...

1. The Butthole Surfers at Numbers in Houston, TX, December 1987. It was the most insane pyschedelic nightmare come to life I'd ever witnessed. It was all there; the chaotic free-form music, the strobes and fog, the 16mm films (including the infamous surgery film that made every male in the audience break into a cold seat and avert their eyes),the dual drummers, the topless dancer, the flaming cymbal, the megaphone. Gibby and the gang were a total shock to me. It was my first complete sensory-overload experience. I loved it.

2. The Flaming Lips at the Axiom Club in Houston, sometime in 1988. The Lips had opened for the Buttholes at the Numbers show, but I don't recall being overly thrilled with them that night. Doing their own show a few months later in a much smaller club was a different story. I'm not familiar with anything the Flaming Lips have done over the years, but I was really impressed with the psychedelic mayhem they presented. My clearest memory is of the bright white lights burning through the solid wall of dry ice fog from the back of the stage, turning the band members into towering, ghostly silhouettes. From center stage came a streaming torrent of bubbles.

3. The Danielson Famile at Cornerstone Festival 1999. I hardly know how to describe these folks. It was a revelaton to me that a Christian group could remain true to their beliefs and still be amazingly creative and utterly unique. They were all decked out in matching white hospital uniforms, the girls doing sorta-synchronised dance moves while Daniel himself shrieked non-stop in a shrill falsetto over cartoonish organ and acoustic guitar ditties. I think this was the last time I really had fun at a music gig.

In no particular order:
Aphex Twin at the Junction, Cambridge, '96. (I think!) He wasn't even on the stage, but boy, did he make his presence felt! Easily the loudest thing I've ever experienced, yet my ears didn't ring at all the next day. People were leaving in tears before the first tune had even finished. The gig covered the whole gamut, from brutal pounding to gentle, ambient loveliness.

The Posies, Reading Festival '93. My first Posies gig. I'd never heard anything by them before and it's the most blown-away I've been by an unknown band. I've since seen them 23 times.

Big Star, Hyde Park '09. The last time they played the UK. Everyone was on top-form and it was heartbreakingly beautiful. As Mrs Lasermonkey and I know a couple of guys in the band, we had guest passes and spent pretty much the whole day chatting with Alex Chilton. It's hard to believe that he's gone.

The Sun And The Moon, my living room, '07. The first time they'd played together in something live seventeen years. In my living room! I don't have the words to descibe how good they were.

Kraftwerk, Brixton Academy. Nuff said.

Teenage Fanclub play Bandwagonesque at the Forum, Kentish Town. The whole album, in order, original lineup, with Don Fleming, followed by a selection of other tunes. That was the first time I heard them play Broken live, and it reduced me to tears.

The Chameleons secret gig at the Barfly, Camden. So packed I thought the floor was going to collapse. They were beyond amazing.