One Month Waiting, One Week in the Making

FREEDOM.

I'M DRUNK. HERE WE GO.

So much freedom this summer. I graduated from school. 'Nuff said. Part of me wants a girlfriend but part of me is glad I don't have one. This time last year I was spending my days off sitting in air conditioned bed rooms at the whim of somebody that wasn't me. Now I'm out every night until at least 12 with my best friends making amazing memories/music/love. That's what I did today.

I've always wanted a fourth of July celebration of my own. The Kalmbachs used to throw the best barbecues at their gorgeous near-estate in the countryside but now, they go away every year. Last year I got close: great friends and I went to the Laurels on a rainy day, swam in the creek and partied at Jeff Daman's. I thought Kelly and Trey were going to hook up.

I've always wanted to host a big game of capture the flag. When I used to talk to Shelby, we would make plans to do it. Her mom was in real estate, sold off a lot of Somerset Lake, and had maps of the whole place. We were going to plot out the shebang... make teams and shit. This is when I was almost popular again, freshman or sophomore year. There was that time by the rocks... but I don't kiss and tell, I digress. Needless to say, the maps and the game never materialized and it's probably been drilled out of her memory by now by all the alcohol.

Today I did both. The CTF wasn't as large scale as I might have dreamed, but it was fuckityhellofa-time. Christian dove over pines into the neutral zone giving us, the red team, a disputed second win. I was really glad he was there! Plus he was an insane advantage. Lots of people came, maybe I can post pictures.

There were wonderful females from Coatesville. I feel like my knowledge of them lies on a string. By that I guess I'm saying first, I know them by total chance and second, do I even know them? I'm getting to.

Like we had been talking about all day, we made our way up to the orchard after dark. It looked "very Harry Potter" according to Mimi. We tied two of my shirts to trees and fumbled around the mist and carried each other barefoot over stinging nettles until we just gave up and watched Longwood's half-fireworks show from the top of the big hill. Usually they go all out, but this year, I guess because of all the rain, it was kind of muted.

We finished as we do with most wonderful nights: watching videos on YouTube. It works like this: someone jumps on the computer, peruses, finds and then we become amused. They get a couple more rounds (all day: honors system) then someone else gets a genius fucking idea of what everyone else wants to see. It almost never goes badly. You know the standards: "Unforgivable," "Tourette's Guy," "Charlie Brown," those G.I. Joe overdubs...

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Allison's LJ let me know it was okay to post a fourth of July entry a week late.

Most importantly, I saw No Age last night.

Segue: I'm coming over to the side of the musicians/critics calling for an end to amateur digital photography at shows. When I heard about the dude from Band of Horses that wishes he were James Mercer flipping out about cell phone cameras at a show I thought it was kind of stupid. Let us do what we want, art is free. But then, Mimi told me about this thing Billie Joe Armstrong said at one of the secret Pinhead Gunpowder shows that went down in March... Calling for people to put their fucking cameras away, let loose and rely on your memories of the show to share later on. After that, thinking back to when I saw Cat Power and she had to fucking stop the show to say hey, cut the fucking flash photography it's driving me nuts, it made so much sense. Fuck your Flickr account. The show is never going to look as good as it does right now, in front of your face. Why spoil it?

I came with low expectations. On last.fm, I was reading horror stories about long setup times and a lack of engagement with the crowd. Abe Vigoda were pretty much what I was expecting. I want their record. Plus Juan, their fey guitarist/vocalist, seems like a really nice dude. And their drummer was awesome. I'm sick of this whole High Places/Yeasayer/(to an extent) Animal Collective neo-primitivism thing, so I didn't really want to see High Places. There was nothing to do because everyone was trendy and brown bagging... so I ended up seeing High Places. They're like the best parts of A Sunny Day in Glasgow with the worst parts of A.C... you get sunshine-gorgeous, reverb-drenched female vox on top of no-destination-in-mind, synthetic-like-duPont and supposedly "tribal" beats. My impression of their sound (which did a pretty good job of entertaining Mimi) is something like: boom boom boom. Coo cooooooo coo. Boom. Coo coo. Like I said several times, it was good for three things: browsing records, sleeping and if you were to take three percs and then smoke a bowl.

So the rumours were just a teeny-bit true. Their setup, for two dudes, took way too long. I know they make a lot of noise and have lots of effects but Randy's were arranged tidily on an enormous pedalboard he simply carried out onstage and Dean's on a small rack above his snare. There was lots of socializing going on onstage, dudes from Pissed Jeans were there I DUNNO WHAT DO I KNOW about the innerworkings of sort-of-noisy punk bands. I started to get really excited though and the question was constantly on my mind... No Age are kind of in this void between punk and trendy indie. Even though their music is absolutely meant to be a full-stage-press, pump yr fist n stage dive affair, something told me that sort of thing wouldn't go over well with the crowd. The people up front - a few of those amateur photographers, obnoxiously F.R.C., some other serious types - did not seem down. In short: would I pogo like it was 1977, would I be able to jump into a commotion-ridden crowd with an enormous grin on my face, would people be fun?

The answer became clear in the middle of opener, "Miner" (TATATAT, DOOODOOO DOOODOOO DOOOODOOOO.. gahhhhh), when some like minds behind me clearly wanted to move. After about ten minutes, the better part of the floor of the church was bodies gently pushing bodies, my shirtless dumb ass making lots of friends and the occasional dive. I mean on one end, this is not what the show is about - some moshpit glorystory - but in another way, it is because No Age is a band to be experienced, not just heard. They demonstrate it all the time through their total involvement in L.A.'s Smell punk scene. They want to be slamdanced to and I think that's the point a lot of their new fans miss. Anyway, Dean and Randy seemed ecstatic. At one point, Dean was just like "You guys, you guys..." thanking us for "killing it," and so on. So yeah, crowd/band involvement was at a high. Their set was perfect: most of Nouns, a few from Weirdo Rippers, a couple of rarities and an obscure cover (The Urinals' "Male Masturbation").

So let me tell you why No Age are an important band. Like I said, they're filling a really cool void between punk and indie. They sing about having passion. Their sound is a perfect balance of noise, pop and punk. They're like our Sonic Youth. They cater to the youth. They like all ages shows. They want you to have a good time. They're original and fit for our time because they're kind of like this bastardized punk band singing about just ignoring the bad and going up and down and loving every single minute of it because that's what humans do.

I just updated my blog for the first time in a month so now I can go back and read everyone's backlog of entries. <3