crocodiles & wymond miles

on friday night i headed into philly to the boot & saddle to see crocodiles. i've seen them once before, which i wrote about already.

so i was really excited to see them again because i love them so much, and every album they've put out has been fantastic, and they were amazing live the first time i saw them. the opener was wymond miles and the name sounded vaguely familiar but i didn't know what to expect. he ended up becoming my new favorite person.

you know when you hear something and it just hits you a certain way and you feel like your heart is going to stop beating? that's what he did to me. something about the ethereal music he creates and his haunting voice...i don't know you guys. but it made me feel a lot of feelings. the songs were soft but heavy, loud but gentle, and i just wanted to stay there forever. i would go see him again in a heartbeat. in fact, i was so impressed that the first thing i did when i got to work the next day was look him up in our computer and purchase the one album of his we had in stock and then order everything else for myself. and i played him in the store all morning on spotify. like, went through his catalog at least twice before my boss was like "you have to listen to something else now." and apparently he was the guitarist for the fresh & onlys, who i have now started listening to and they are really fucking good too. this is what i get for ignoring new music...better late than never, i suppose.

so, you get it. i was super impressed by him. fucking christ. alright. moving on.

crocodiles!

they opened with my favorite song ("hearts of love"; i think i mentioned before that i want this song played at my funeral. that still hasn't changed) and i was really happy they played it even though i didn't have my favorite song to look forward to for the rest of the night. it's cool, they still delivered. and they have 2 more albums worth of songs to choose from now than from the last time i saw them, so i got to hear all kinds of good stuff. ahhh it was wonderful. just as wonderful as i remembered. if you haven't listened to them yet, fucking do it already! and the albums are basically what they sound like live, just a lot louder and a little dirtier. and with more feedback. they're absolutely mesmerizing and they write these perfect pop songs and everything about them is just wonderful. maybe i'm easily impressed? or maybe i just know what the fuck i'm talking about. 

so yeah. i didn't get any good pictures because it was way too dim in there, even though i was right up front. everything looked black so i stopped trying and just enjoyed myself. 

go listen to these bands. now. i command you.

jonathan richman

i was first introduced to jonathan richman by way of the modern lovers. but then, probably everybody was. when people say they don't know who the modern lovers are, i'm like "yes you do. you just don't realize it." because everybody knows this song. well, everybody except for my friend i saw after the show. i played the song for him and he was like "the christmas song? is he saying run run rudolph?" SIGH.

i've been wanting to see the man for YEARS and never got the chance, for whatever reason. i don't even know why, but i've just always missed him. stupid on my part because he's fantastic. i wasn't sure i was going to go tonight but i was at work and i was thinking about it and my boss said "if you want to go, then go." and i thought about how i would feel if i missed him again and i knew i would be mad at myself. so he let me leave early. he really is the best.

got there just in time for doors to open; he was the early show. there was another show after him: sleigh bells. ew. really? ew. so he played from about 7:30 to 9:00. and it was absolutely perfect. he is adorable and friendly and engaging and funny and charming and talented; like i said, perfect. i couldn't help being mad at myself for not seeing him before but at least i got to see him tonight. and he played all solo stuff, no modern lovers, which i was expecting. when you've moved so far beyond where you've started it must be annoying to have to keep living in the past. some bands, it works for them; most bands i go to see play old stuff and that's totally fine, and what everyone wants. but for jonathan, you want him to play his solo stuff and keep moving along and keeping it fresh. because that's what he does.

aside from all that, all i have to say is that if you haven't seen him yet, you should get on that. it's a one of a kind experience and i guarantee you will love him.

in case you were wondering: i love his album because her beauty is raw and wild. and i love this song the most. he didn't play it tonight. but that's ok. because look how adorable he is.

cherie currie

you know what's awesome? i got to see cherie currie last night in philly. i'm still really glad i saw the dickies the second time, even though it meant missing her show at the brighton, but it was cool that i got a second chance. i went with my friend ryan - the one who buys me too many drinks. so that happened. but it was cool. we had fun. cherie sounded fucking great and everyone was dancing and it was great.

then it was a dance party after with the greatest dj in the world because he played so many awesome songs. i'm in so much pain today (hangover + way more dancing than i'm used to = ouch) but it was totally worth it.

so i was at work today and this lady was asking about runaways records for her 14 year old granddaughter. she said "she's a freak about joan jett." my friend was there hanging out and had actually brought the joan jett autobiography with her to show me, and she held it up and said "we love her, too." so i was ordering some stuff for this lady and i said "i just saw cherie currie last night..." and she said "i have no idea who that is." so i said "she was the singer in the runaways." duh. she walked away and came back, and must have talked to the granddaughter on the phone or something because she told me "she said 'ew' about that singer you just mentioned." what the fuck people. ok, so you're a 14 year old girl, i'll give you that. but don't be an asshole. i love joan jett, too. she's amazing. every time someone tells me i look like her, my tiny grinch heart grows a size. but it doesn't stop me from loving cherie, too. you can't just blindly hate people, you know? what the hell. i wished the granddaughter was actually in the store with her grandmother so i could set her straight.

i got to see her sing "cherry bomb" and watch a room full of people just as enthralled as i was sing along with her and jump around like the crazy assholes we are. how can you hate that?

dickies (again) plus a psa

today was difficult in a very first world problem kind of way. i had been planning on seeing cherie currie at the brighton bar tonight for some time now. but the dickies were playing in bordentown tonight too. WHAT IS A GIRL TO DO???? well, i decided to see the dickies again. why?
1- because i've listened to them more than i've ever listened to the runaways
2- the amount of joy that dickies songs bring me is unparalleled
3- bordentown is a hell of a lot closer than long branch
4- stan lee put me on the guest list, and free is better than paying money, duh

there was a meet and greet at randy now's man cave before the show. i left work super early today to go to that. i walked in and saw stan almost immediately and he hugged me and was glad that i made it. and then leonard started to walk past us, and stan told him to hang on a minute and introduced me to him. he said "this is the good chloe."
this is news to me. i'm the good chloe! the good one. i felt pretty special.
leonard goes, "ah the good chloe. nice to meet you. put 'er there." and he shook my hand.
i don't think i said anything, just smiled like an idiot, and he walked away. oh that leonard. the one thing i would have said if my brain didn't drop out of my head at that moment? "i love your dance moves." that's it. that's all i wanted to say to him. and i blew it. oh well.
anyway, so me and stan talked a little bit. he thought i was crazy for wanting to come to the meet and greet and then go to the brighton for cherie because that was what i was thinking about maybe doing, to get the best of both worlds. maybe i am crazy, but i didn't do it so whatever. anyway, he was trying to get me to stay for the show and said "if i put you on the list would that change your mind?"
"uh...probably."
and he walked off to find whoever he had to tell to put me down. so the roadie guy came over to me with his notebook and wrote my name down. they both seemed to find it amusing that i share my last name with the first name of a well known penis puppet. which is pretty hilarious, i will admit.

the show was great. the opening bands were good. (one of them was absolutely insane, and stan loved them but was afraid they'd been upstaged by those guys, which is silly. i mean, HELLO YOU'RE THE FUCKING DICKIES. it'll be fine.) so yeah. the set list was mostly the same as the other time i saw them, same leonard jokes, same silly antics, etc. but no less fun than the last time. seriously, if you haven't seen them yet, you fucked up. i smiled the entire time they were playing. my face kind of hurts now. they're just so much fun, and the songs are funny and really good and they're all fun to watch...there is nothing to not like.

then afterwards i watched stan sign things for people and got told i look like joan jett by one of the girls talking to him, and stan butted in "cuter than joan jett." aw shucks you guys. he introduced me to the bass player and drummer as "the good chloe." apparently there is a bad one. i didn't get the story on that. when i told him i was leaving, he gave me a big hug and said he hoped he'd see me again. i hope so too.

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and now, for a public service announcement:
i have one complaint about this show, which has nothing to do with the band or the venue or anything. just this: i went to the show by myself and some nice gentleman thought that meant i needed some kind of friend/bodyguard for the night. i know you mean well, guys, when you do this. but please: don't. the hovering over me all night made me feel weird. he kept sitting next to me, but that empty seat was for stan when he wasn't off doing other stuff. at first i didn't mind. but it just didn't end. and then, because i'm too nice, i can't just tell them to beat it. so i'm stuck standing around with some dude that i don't even know that well. and when someone i don't know is just hovering behind me during the show, it makes me really self conscious. and when guys are moshing in front of me, and bumping into me? i don't need you to reach out and protect me from them. i mean, if there's a gorilla of a guy hurtling towards me, sure, jump in, because i'd go down like a wet noodle in that case. seriously though, i'm small but i can take care of myself. that's why i do this shit BY MYSELF in the first place. i got stuck standing in a place where i couldn't really see and felt like i was being watched all night. really uncomfortable. so that's that. if you're at a show and see someone by themselves, remember: that might be how they want it to stay.

the dickies

i said somewhere on here before that i was going to see the dickies at the brighton bar on november 1. i took off of work, had the whole thing planned out, etc. and then i woke up that morning in pain. and the pain was so bad that i kept barfing. lovely. aren't you glad you're reading this?  i shook it off (ie, took a vicodin and then barfed about ten minutes later) and went and took care of the dogs i walk but it was clear that something was definitely wrong. i had to call out of my other job because i was in so much pain i couldn't do anything anymore. so this thing used to happen to me years ago and at one point it was so bad i had to go to the emergency room. they ran a bunch of tests and basically told me nothing is wrong with me. awesome. it just feels like raccoons are eating my intestines for no reason. i slept for a few hours but then i couldn't sleep through it anymore and i knew at that point that i was not going to be able to drag my ass to the brighton. i was sad. and in barfy pain. it was terrible.

today i woke up and wasn't feeling the pain anymore but it felt like someone had been punching my stomach all night. i went to work and decided to go see the dickies in west chester tonight. people kept telling me to take it easy, just go home and rest, blah blah blah. that is not me. i don't go home and rest. and also i felt fine. the pain thing attacks with no rhyme or reason, so why bother trying to work around it when i never know if it'll happen or not? i might feel fine for a year before it hits me again. so i went! i did "take it easy" in my own way, which just meant no drinking and no dancing. easy peasy. the note in west chester is considerably closer than the brighton bar so that was kind of nice. but it was a weird place.

i saw my friends there that i see at all the shows i go to, and they were at the show last night and said it was KILLER. which is great, but also made me feel worse about missing it. oh well. at one point we were standing together and my friend goes, "oh did you meet stan?" pointing to stan lee. the guitarist for the dickies. who i had seen sitting near where i was standing but was too shy to talk to.
UM NO.
"stan, this is my friend chloe. let me get a picture of you two together."
so stan lee put his arm around me and we got a picture together and then he was looking at the buttons on my jacket.
"what's that say, the vibrators?"
YEAH!
"oh did they play around here?"
so i said "yeah, they were here earlier this month."
and he was like "yeah, we do a song on their new record."
OH MY GOD YES I LOVE THAT SONG. (they're on whips n furs) (also i wrote about this before)
then he was telling me how he was just messing around and not really trying but they recorded it and that was the take that they used. ha! pretty neat. i said that the whole record is great, and he said he agrees, and he really likes the one chris spedding plays. he was so nice! then he was sitting with some other people, my friend left to go watch the band that was playing, and eventually stan came back over to me and said "did you come here by yourself?" so i said yes, and he said "come sit with us!" so i did. he asked me how far away i live, so i said it took about an hour to get there, and he said i'm really brave to do that alone. i never even thought of it that way. it was sweet. then i told him about the only other time i'd seen the dickies, when they did the fiend fest with the damned and the misfits, and he said he remembered that tour, and that it was "ok." haha. i asked him about touring and stuff, then for some reason we started talking about facebook and twitter. he says he understands facebook but not twitter. i asked him if he has twitter on his phone, and he said yes, and it's an iphone which is what i have, so i knew what i was doing. i showed him how twitter works, kinda, and tried to explain it which is difficult because twitter is actually kind of pointless in a way. i was in his "connect" section because i had just retweeted something of his about the brighton show so he went to my profile and followed me. and he was like "does your phone tell you that just happened?" and i pulled my phone out and it says "slee9383 is now following you!" we both laughed and marveled at technology. so, i taught stan lee about twitter. pretty fun stuff. when the band finished, he went up to get ready because they were on next.

aside from a rather rough start (leonard couldn't hear or something, there was feedback coming out of the monitors...he was a very unhappy camper from the looks of it) they sounded great. like, oh my god. fucking great. a while ago, i was at work one day, and i was in a shitty mood for some reason or another. and there was a copy of the incredible shrinking dickies in the back so i put it on. because nothing makes me happy quite like the dickies. when ''curb job" came on, that fucking squeaky toy part, holy shit i couldn't stop smiling. that is the power of the dickies. so it was kind of the perfect show to see after fending off death the entire day before.

i don't remember the exact order of the songs they played or every single song they did, but they did: killer klowns; manny moe and jack; poodle party [with the dog puppet]; paranoid [YESSSSSSSSSSSS]; rondo (the midgets revenge); waterslide [with the blow up doll hahahahaha]; i'm stan; gigantor; attack of the mole men; if stuart could talk [can we talk about how fucking hilarious the penis puppet is? i mean for real, that shit does not get old]; banana splits; going homo; and you drive me ape (you big gorilla) which i think was the first dickies song i ever heard and made me fall in love with them, so yay for that.

i didn't get any pictures :( i was back too far and didn't want to get too close because they were getting rowdy up front and i was feeling frail, remember?  and every time i would raise up my phone the guy in front of me did the same so i just stopped trying. whatever. sorry. i have the picture of me and stan though!

this is the longest east coast tour they've done in a while so you should try to catch them before it ends. if i can make it work i might go to baltimore on tuesday to see them at the sidebar (where i saw the vibrators, awwww) and they're in bordentown on thursday BUT cherie currie (yes for real) is at the brighton bar that same night. so who knows. but i would love to see the dickies again before they go back to the west coast for another five years.