england, part 4: going home + marc bolan

this is my final england installment. we only got to see 2 of the performers from the dumb cancelled festival. but it was 2 very worthwhile gentlemen, who never tour over here, so i don't feel too bad about it. no matter how bitter i may sound.

on the last day there, on the way to the airport, we took a small detour to barnes, got off the tube at east putney, and walked for a half hour in the pouring rain to queen's ride. just so that i could see marc bolan's memorial site.

hang on. back up a second. have i ever mentioned how much i love marc bolan? i know there are a bunch of freaky people out there who LOVE HIM. i hope i'm not one of them. i just, you know, love him. i mean, my blog is called "life's a gas." that's a t.rex song, people. i took a music class at college and the final project was to write a ten page paper on pretty much whatever we wanted; i chose marc bolan. when i took a short story class at college, the final project was to write a short story. i wrote a short story that was from marc bolan's point of view on the day that he died. i once dated a guy because when we first met, he mentioned t.rex and that marc bolan was his idol and he even quoted  the lyrics "i ain't no square with my corkscrew hair." that was enough for me. but mostly, i love marc because when i listen to him sing, i feel happy. it's pretty much  as simple as that. listen to "ride a white swan" and try to be sad. i dare you.

so, maybe it's a little weird that fans have set up a shrine to him at the site of the crash that killed him. but it's all we have, alright? there's a tree there that's all decorated, which is supposedly the tree that the car crashed into, but i've heard that's not true. first, i read that the tree that killed him was actually cut down, and the decorated tree is actually the one next to the deceased killer tree. confusing much? but i just read this article recently, which says it wasn't a tree at all; it was a steel-reinforced fence post that they crashed into. lovely. fair warning: that article gave me chills. i couldn't even read it all at once.

still- the shrine is set up where he died. i was standing in the same place that marc bolan took his last breath. it's incredibly sad and i felt so weird being there. i hadn't planned on going originally, because you know, there was a festival in bath we were supposed to be at. otherwise i probably would have brought a little something to leave behind. everyone does. there are trinkets set everywhere, including a feather boa around the tree, and a board set up where people hang pictures and various other things.

i don't know why people are so fascinated by death, but we are. especially tragic deaths, like this one, where he was killed 14 days before his 30th birthday in a car crash.

i guess the point of this post is to talk about marc bolan and the amount of love i have for him (it's a lot) and trying to explain the significance of going to his shrine. it is an experience that will stay with me forever. it was a very strange atmosphere, standing there under the trees, listening to the rain fall. getting completely drenched in the one and a half mile walk there and then back again was completely worth it. for me, anyway. chris seemed pretty annoyed, but who doesn't bring an umbrella to england? that's totally his fault.

i got a's on the paper and the short story, by the way.

england, part 3: records, records, and more records; or, how i spent all of my money in camden

i honestly kind of hate thinking about how much money i spent on records while i was in england because it was a lot. i've never quite caught up financially since that trip. don't get me wrong, it was one hundred percent worth it, but there is no way i can afford to do that again any time soon.

really i just want to talk about the cool shit i found there. and i would have bought a ton more records but i was able to reign it in at least a little bit. not only could i not afford to buy all the records i wanted, but we weren't staying at one place the whole time; we were sort of flying by the seats of our pants for the entire trip which meant carrying our stuff pretty much everywhere all the time.

the first record store we went to was in stoke newington, which i wrote about already; all the other ones we shopped in were in camden. there was one that was outside, set up next to a bunch of other outdoor shops. we must have been there on the right day for all that outdoor stuff. that guy had so many, SO MANY, t.rex albums. i wanted to buy like ten things but instead i bought tanx (so there is a record store near where i live that has a copy of tanx for sale; they have it priced at like $85 dollars which is absolutely preposterous. the only thing is that it has the poster which i'm probably going to steal from them sometime because i've spent so much money on their overpriced bullshit over the years) for ten pounds, without the poster, but fuck it. and also you scare me to death which i have never seen before. i think that was all i bought from that guy.

another place we went to had disguise in love by john cooper clarke and since we had just seen him and i've never seen any of his records anywhere before, i had to buy it. i also got nobody's heroes by the stiff little fingers. it appears i've never written about them in my blog before, which is pretty sad since i've seen them a bunch of times. i'll catch up someday... anyway, that was really great for me because i love that album. i also got never mind the bollocks which is something that i've seen over here in the states, but not this version; this one is the 2nd uk pressing. then i got the rich kids album, ghosts of princes in towers. i almost didn't buy it but i literally couldn't bring myself to leave it behind because it's so fucking good and i've never seen it before. that ended up being my excuse for buying pretty much everything; "i've never seen this before! i'm buying it." so i also got a couple of t.rex/marc bolan seven inch singles at this place. it was hard to decide, because there were so many of them but again with trying not to spend all of my money... i ended up with a picture disc of "you scare me to death"; "ride a white swan"/"is it love," "summertime blues"; and "sing me a song"/"endless sleep," "the lilac hand of menthol dan." pretty awesome.

there was one other store that we went in, where i got the damned's black album. i think that was the only thing i got there. i know i saved all my receipts but i have no idea where they are or if they even say exactly what i bought, but i just rifled through my records and i'm pretty sure this is everything i bought while i was over there.

i will leave you with the one...ok, two...the two records i bitterly regret leaving behind. one was machine gun etiquette by the damned; uk pressing; i think it was kind of expensive and i let chris talk me out of it, saying that he had seen copies of it back at home. BUT NOT THE UK PRESSING. ah well. then there was a copy of tyrannosaurus rex my people were fair and had sky in their hair but now they're content to wear stars on their brows / prophets seers & sages: the angels of the ages, the double album. so, i already have this but with the weird outer sleeve that isn't the actual album cover; it's this ugly colorful shit. this one was the real deal. i wanted to come back for it and the guy said he would be there the day we said we would be coming back. this was in the one record store where i got a bunch of other stuff, but it was split into floors. upstairs was where i got the sex pistols, rich kids, jcc, and slf records; the next floor down, i got all my t.rex 7" singles. below that was the tyrannosaurus rex album and wouldn't you know it, the guy didn't show up the day we came back, which was also the day we were leaving. and the guys in charge of the other floors weren't allowed to open it up for me to buy it. i was really sad. but there was a cat hanging out so i got to pet the cat and felt a little bit better. cuz i'm a crazy cat lady y'all.

england, part 2: tv smith (also captain sensible, sort of)

so there was that time that i got to see john cooper clarke and i was a giddy little girl about it. except getting back to the hotel was a total pain in the ass since we didn't know where we were. oh well.

so...er...the next day, people were flooding into london for the jubilee. we're not british, and i had no interest in sitting by the river for hours in the cold rain watching a thousand boats go by, so we decided to go to brighton. why brighton? well, chris loves the damned, possibly more than i do if you can believe it, and said "captain sensible lives in brighton; let's go there." so we did.

the weather was so shitty in london. i know that raining is typical but seriously. it sucked. we got to brighton and i think i heard angels singing. it was way warmer and the sun was shining. i follow the captain on twitter so i tweeted to him:

i didn't really expect a response from him, plus my phone was all wonky, probably because of being in another country, so i wasn't getting updates on it like i normally do. but when i did get to check back on twitter, i was pleasantly surprised:

how freaking cool is that? we were tempted to stay until the next week just to be guests of the captain at a damned show.

anyway, nothing happening in brighton, just nice weather and beachy things and the freaky hotel we stayed at that had mirrors EVERYWHERE (yes...even above the bed). we could hear the neighbors fucking. several times. i swear i would not have stayed there if i knew i would have to stare at myself everywhere i turned and listen to those awkward smacking and grunting noises, but it was the only place with a vacancy. anyway, we walked around a lot and then the next day we got on the train back to london. then got on another train to ipswich to see tv smith perform at the steamboat tavern that night.

so...if you don't know who tv smith is, he was the lead singer in the band the adverts. listen to this song and then listen to this song. and then watch this, which might be my favorite song by him (besides his xmas song) and it gives you a good idea what his live act is like. and then you should listen to everything else of his.

anyway- i'm cutting out a lot of boring things like wandering around looking for a hotel and all the fighting. so much fighting. so, we finally find a hotel and it is within walking distance of the steamboat, we find someplace to eat finally, and head out to the show. i don't want to shit talk but i was having a terrible time; part of that was due to hormones and my stupid brain but mostly it was chris. after we got to the tavern, i had to go outside to be alone for a while, where i sat on the ground behind the steamboat and just cried because i didn't know what else to do. when i came back in, chris was mad at me, so he then decided to go outside and leave me alone in there. so tv smith was just hanging out and talking to people, you know how it is in small places like that. but i was just staring at him, wondering when i would be able to talk to him; i hope you guys have noticed by now that i become a complete idiot in front of people i like. anyway, so some guy saw me and recognized me as the girl who was there with chris and pointed me out to tv, saying "she came all the way from new jersey!" (false; chris is from jersey and this guy just assumed i was too. oh well) and tv looks at me and says "oh...so that's what they look like!" i think i probably laughed? he sat down next to me (!!!) so i put aside my troubles and talked to him. i told him about how we came for the festival and he said he was very upset about it getting cancelled, too. he listened to what i was saying and talked to me like i was important, and he was really one of the most genuine people i've ever met. while we were talking, chris came back and immediately came over and interrupted my conversation, and that was that. 

alright. so, we were fighting, i kept trying not to cry, and finally i had enough and decided to give myself a little pep talk in the ladies room. "this is a once in a lifetime chance! you are in england and you are about to see tv smith perform. it's ok if chris sucks. just pretend to like him for the rest of the night. just act happy. you will be fine. everything is going to be fine." sometimes, that little voice in my head is right. i started smiling and talking to the 2 guys chris was now talking to. i don't remember their names; one of them may have been named spud. we talked about all kinds of stuff, and they were talking about the jubilee and spud kept calling the queen a bitch, and he bought me a pint of whatever he was drinking. another guy, phil, who is also a vegan, told me and chris that val at the steamboat was making her vegan chili so we would all have something to eat. i already felt more at home there than at any bar i've ever been to in the u.s.

there were a bunch of opening bands that were kind of just whatever. and eventually, tv came out and played for a long time and it was a teeny tiny little place so i could see him clearly and hear everything and it was just wonderful. he did his punk rock poem, and he did some adverts songs, and it was so fucking cool. 

after the show, i grabbed one of the flyers from the wall and went over and bought a cd and a tshirt and asked him to sign the flyer, which he did. he was very nice, as he was before, and it really made me happy. 

we stood around and talked more to the people at the show; it was a ton of older punks and i felt a) really young and b) like i was really missing out by not living there. then i saw some people taking their picture with tv and i wandered over and asked phil to take a picture of us together. he said sure, and tv put his arm around me and i mustered up the last smile i had in me; if i hadn't been so emotionally drained, that smile would have taken up my entire face.

he apologized again about the festival, and let me pick out another cd of his - for free. because that is the kind of guy that tv smith is.

all bullshit aside, this is definitely in my top ten best nights of my life.

england, part 1: intro + john cooper clarke

i'm still trying to catch up on some of the stuff i've done in the years that i've neglected my sad little blog. so, uh, i went to england last year! i've been there once before, when i was around 15 or 16, and i was in the girl scouts. yes, yes, go on and laugh, but fuck you, because i got to go to england on the girl scouts' dime. so there. and my sister was with me and we had a ton of fun being idiot tourists and i was constantly getting in trouble with our troop leaders. boy did they hate me. i know that for a fact because one of them is my brother-in-law's aunt and she has specifically said what a troublemaker i was back then. but i digress.

so: england! i will spare you the personal details because i went with my boyfriend at the time (chris); we are no longer together because we basically made each other miserable and i'm pretty sure it started on this trip. it was so bad, i very nearly had a nervous breakdown the one night we were there. so, i decided to go to england for a 3 day punk festival in bath and had already gotten my passport in order and purchased a plane ticket, etc. chris didn't want me to go alone, which i was planning on doing, so he got all his shit together and that was that.

the festival was called the last jubilee, set to go off on the queen's jubilee weekend. huzzah. i found out the day i was leaving that the festival was cancelled.
WHAT. I JUST SPENT HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS ON A FUCKING PASS AND A PLANE TICKET AND YOU CANCELLED THE FUCKING FESTIVAL.
here are the names i was most excited about from the lineup, so you can see why i was so upset:
BUZZCOCKS
HUGH CORNWELL
THE SELECTER
CHELSEA
GLEN MATLOCK
THE DAMNED
U.K. SUBS
THE VIBRATORS
TV SMITH
EDDIE & THE HOT RODS
THE REZILLOS
999
ALTERNATIVE TV
JOHN COOPER CLARKE

and that's not even the whole lineup. so yeah. we decided to go anyway and i looked up all of those bands and tried to find some other shows they would be playing in the few days we would be there so we could maybe see a fraction of the festival.

i don't really hate flying; in fact, i think taking off and landing is kind of fun. the idea of being over an ocean for like 7 hours freaks me out a little bit, but what are you going to do? that being said, OH MY GOD. have you ever been in a plane for that long? it sucks. i mean, it's pretty magical that i can get on a plane in newark, nj and get off the same plane in london. but those seats are the most uncomfortable pieces of shit and it was absolutely impossible to sleep, so by the time we got there i was delirious.

skip ahead to the fun stuff: the first day we didn't do anything except wander aimlessly, find a hotel room, and get into our first fight. then i slept for about 10 hours. it was delightful. the next day i checked my list of bands and performers from the festival. john cooper clarke was going to be performing at a library at some kind of literary festival in stoke newington. only problem? we couldn't figure out where the fuck stoke newington was. but we ended up there somehow only to find out that it was sold out. lovely. we went inside and talked to the woman taking tickets and she said someone might sell their tickets back, and in that case, we were welcome to buy them and see the show. i left my cell number with her and left feeling pretty deflated. we wandered down the street and found a record store which cheered me up a bit, especially when the guy working there put on some elvis costello. i bought magazine - real life; killing joke - killing joke; and jesus &  mary chain - automatic. when i was checking out, the guy at the register told me that the magazine record was one of his all time favorite records. anyway, so i left feeling like that trip to stoke newington wasn't a total bust. we walked back towards the venue and chris insisted on asking one more time. he went up to a different girl and asked if there were any tickets available. you know what she said? she said yes.

SHE SAID YES.

someone had just returned 2 tickets. we ran inside to the ticket lady who shouted "i was just about to call you!" we paid for the tickets and got a seat up in the balcony. another guy was talking first and reading selections from his autobiography; simon day was his name. i enjoyed his stories as well.

oh wait. do you know who john cooper clarke is? most people don't (unless you're british), and i think that is a shame. he's a punk rock poet!

watch/listen to this; this is the very first john cooper clarke i was introduced to (this track was on a punk compilation cd i bought when i was in england the first time; full circle, eh?)
then watch this. this is what it's like when he is accompanied by music.
then this, probably his most well-known poem.
then this because holy shit you guys, how awesome is this man?

so, we're sitting in the balcony, and it really hit me: i am in england and i am about to witness a performance by the one and only jcc...i felt a little woozy. he doesn't ever come to the states, so i felt really lucky to be there. the festival was cancelled, but i still get to see this guy!

he was just as fabulous as i hoped he would be. he was really silly and so adorable, with his teeny tiny pants and huge hair and sunglasses. it was everything i hoped it would be. he didn't do "kung fu international" which was a little upsetting, because like i said before, that was the first thing of his i was ever introduced to. and he didn't do "i married a monster from outer space," which is also kind of a bummer. but of course he did "evidently chickentown" and he did "hire car" and he did one that was new, about hawaiian shirts, or "tiki shirts." it was hilarious, and every time i see someone in one of those shirts i want to shout "NEVER BRIGHTEN MY DOOR AGAIN!" but then everyone would just think i'm crazy. i still giggle to myself when i think about that show. we were really lucky to get in to see him and i will never forget that night.

i'll continue this in another post because this one is already way too long.

here is my sad and shitty picture from the literary festival; i only took one picture because it was dark and i didn't want to annoy everyone by taking a million pictures, but i didn't really look as i was taking it and so the camera auto-focused on the railing which is why john is just a blurry little stick man. but you can totally tell that it's him.

jesse malin

i've seen jesse malin a couple of times before.

the first time i saw him was when he opened for marah for their christmas show a few years ago. at that point i was already a fan of everything of his i had heard. seeing him live just confirmed what i already thought about him. he's great.

in 2010 he put out an album with his band, the st. marks social, called love it to life. seriously, what a fantastic record.

now to completely kill the mood, in january of 2011, i found out a friend who was very important to me had passed away. he had moved back to australia the previous summer, and i didn't even find out about him dying until a week after it happened, and i couldn't get to australia for the funeral, and every time it hit me that i was never going to speak to him again, i nearly lost my mind. i don't really want to go into it too much or relive the whole thing because that is a one way trip to depression town, but at this time, i was an absolute mess and couldn't make it through a day without crying for a really, really long time.

i listen to music pretty much constantly, but when i was sad, i found i couldn't listen to most things without getting angry or feeling sick. if it was something that my friend had also liked, forget about it. but there were a handful of albums that i could listen to which had the opposite reaction: soothing, with an underlying feeling that everything was going to be ok. one of those happened to be the jesse malin record.

love it to life has this positive energy to it, but instead of annoying me (like everything else), it made me feel happy to be alive for once. in fact, i think the first show i found myself able to go to that year was jesse malin at johnny brenda's later in january. yeah; that night he left the stage, and while the band still played he got up on the bar and walked around, and then came up through the crowd, getting everyone to clap. i'm not much of a clapper. i just feel weird clapping along to things, ok? well, he came up right behind me, only i didn't see him. i just heard his voice right in my ear: "are you too cool for me?" ah, what a precious moment. but anyway: this dude is really important to me.

he played at johnhy brenda's again last night. i knew i had to go. and i told myself i had to talk to him afterwards and tell him what his music means to me. why? well, if you were an artist and something you created helped someone that much, wouldn't you want to know?

the band played one of the best sets i've ever heard, and when they opened with "burning the bowery" which is the opening track off love it to life, i thought my heart was going to explode. in a good way. he also blew through a bunch of other songs of his that i love, such as "queen of the underworld," "wendy," "mona lisa," "all the way from moscow," and he even closed the show with "death or glory," my favorite clash song. well, one of my favorites. how do you just pick one anyway?

anyway, so after the show, he came out and was talking to people and i couldn't bring myself to say anything because, hello, i'm awkward. i went over to the merch table and bought a copy of the fine art of self destruction on vinyl, and the guy said it was the last copy they had. score! then i saw jesse go into the backstage room and thought "well, you fucked up and missed your chance. good job, dummy."

some guy saw me standing there and commented on the record, so i showed it to him and we got to talking, and he asked if i had talked to jesse. i said no, i got too nervous. he said "aw, he's just a regular guy! i'm sure he would love to sign that for you!" and he went over to one of the band members and said something to him, so then he came up to me and said "he'll be back out, he just went to get the van. i'll let him know you're waiting though," and he disappeared backstage. then one of the roadies came up and introduced himself and shook my hand and said jesse would be back out. i was so happy, i felt like crying.

so jesse comes out, he sees me standing there and comes right over to say hello. he pulls a pen out to sign the record and says "what's your name?"
"it's chloe."
"is that c-l-o-e?"
"it's c-h-l-o-e. but you can spell it wrong if you want." (seriously, did you just say that? what the fuck?)
"there's an elton john song called "chloe," do you know it?"
"i don't think i do, but now i'll have to listen to it."
"you should, it's a good song." (check. it's awesome.)
then he was like "is this 180 gram? yeah it looks like it," and i'm sure i said something stupid in return. i can't remember if he said something else here or not, but then i said, "i um, i really wanted to tell you this..."
and then i paused for what felt like too long of a time, as i was trying to get my thoughts together, but i wasn't going to let myself walk away without telling him.
"my friend died a couple of years ago..."
"oh, i'm so sorry."
another lengthy pause...get your shit together, now, come on!
"it was really hard to listen to any music for a while but one of the only records i could listen to at the time was yours, love it to life. so, i just wanted you to know that, and to say thank you, because it really helped me."
"wow," he said and nodded. i was kind of embarrassed and was like, why did you have to do that? now you made everything weird and he's never going to come to philly again...
"that's one of the really great things about music, i think, is that it can be very healing." oh. wait. he was talking to me again. and he continued to say really nice things to me, so i know that he understood. it felt nice to tell one of the people responsible for my "recovery" that they had such an impact on me. how many other people out there have had similar experiences with his music? maybe he's wondering that too.

don't stop doing what you're doing, jesse. some of us are really counting on you.

ps - thanks for not remembering me as the girl you yelled at 2 years ago.

pps - the guy that i was talking to before snapped a picture of jesse signing the record for me so i thought i would include it here, because you can see that he captured a moment of absolute happiness for me. here it is:

crocodiles

the crocodiles are a band that i had only heard of recently when i got the chance to see them. summer of hate, their debut, came out in 2009; sleep forever came out in 2010.

a friend casually mentioned to me that i should check them out, because i like the jesus and mary chain. i went on ye olde youtube and started listening and was instantly won over. swirly guitars and echo-y vocals and dreamy noisy pop songs? yes please. i want all of it.

i ordered the first album for myself at the record store and then the second one after i played the shit out of the first one. summer of hate is really, really good and has this one song called "i wanna kill" which was the original song i heard that won me over. listen to it; it gives you a pretty good idea of what these guys are about and might even give you goosebumps. sleep forever is even better. i want "hearts of love" played at my funeral. 

so after completely falling in love with this band, i found out they would be touring and my boss and our friend both wanted to go, too, so we had a fun little road trip to hoboken. hooray! royal baths were the opener. i ended up really liking them as well; they were a nice fit on a bill with crocodiles and the dum dum girls. definitely worth checking out. 

we got right up front for the crocodiles set. and i was almost quite literally blown away. it was loud. but in that nice, dreamy, fuzzy way. sort of like you're floating in a cloud of noise. that might not sound as pleasant as it actually is. it's not like going to see a rock band and being blasted away by guitar solos and loud drumming. it's like a constant droning fuzz that envelopes you, but you don't want to get out of its grip. or like drowning, if drowning didn't kill you. please tell me this is making some kind of sense. that's the best way i can come up with to describe their live show. i think being as tired as i was from the lack of sleep the past few nights actually enhanced the fuzzy feeling. i look back on that show very fondly indeed.

after their set we went out to the other room to get something to eat, and my friend and i got to talking while my boss wanted to go in and see the dum dum girls. we talked so much we missed almost their entire set, but it was nice talking with her so i didn't care. we did go in and catch the last song or two, and it was really cool. 

then i went home and slept for an entire day. not really. but it was a nice thought.

since that show, they put out a third album, endless flowers, which is just as wonderful and magical as the other two, but sleep forever still gets my favorite vote. just my opinion. but you can't go wrong with any of them as far as i'm concerned.

crazy fun punk weekend of little to no sleep

i will pick up sort of where i left off...

i saw hugh cornwell at the brighton bar on a saturday night. i was able to do this because i work saturdays during the day and had enough time to drive to long branch to make it for the show. afterwards, at something like 2 or 3 in the morning, i drove back home and slept for a few hours before getting up and planning my sunday out.

you see, the damned were doing their 35 year anniversary tour, and weren't coming to philly (for shame you guys. FOR SHAME.) so i had to see them somewhere else. i decided on washington, dc for several reasons.

a) it was on a sunday and i don't work on sundays, yaaaaay

b) my friend i've known since pre-school lives there now and had been trying to get me to come visit and she is really fun and awesome and down for anything. so when i suggested seeing the damned together, she was totally willing even though she had never heard of them. i sure do love her.

c) dc is relatively easy to get to by public transportation. especially when your friend lives there and knows all the buses and things and the best way to get there.

so after a drive to the train station and the train to the bus and the bus to dc, i was finally there. i'm not sure how many hours it took but it seemed like a lot. she met me where the bus let off and went to her place, where she had dropped off some really fucking delicious vegan food she picked up earlier from some place i wish i knew the name of.

she lives within walking distance of the black cat, which is where the show was. i'm a little jealous. dc seems like a pretty cool place, but as you will see, i was not there for very long. so we walk to the black cat and pick up our tickets and head in and it is PACKED. we manage to get up to somewhere in the middle of the room. the legendary shack shakers are opening. i had heard of them before but never listened to them, at least not that i could remember. but oooh did they win me over. they were so much fun. lots of energy, fun songs, and weird stage antics. i mean, this was kind of a long time ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy but i seem to remember him shoving the microphone in his mouth. i could be wrong. anyway, it was fun.

so the damned finally come out. being their 35 year anniversary (which is, let's face it, a long ass time), they were doing damned damned damned and the black album all the way through. that seems to be a thing that bands do these days; play through full albums from start to finish at their shows. i'm not complaining, but i do find it interesting. it takes a little bit of the fun out of it, since if you know the albums, you already know the set list. they blew me away regardless. so captain sensible comes out and says something about putting us in a time machine and taking us back to 1977. it was SO COOL to see damned damned damned all the way through. SO COOL. remember when i copped out and said that whole album counted as my number five favorite damned song? well. yeah. so you can see why i was so happy.

then they left for a brief intermission, captain saying "see you in 1980!"

so then it was time for the black album. my goodness. it was intense. and fun. and everything you want in a show. for a bunch of old dudes, they really don't show their age. 

after that part ended, they leave the stage again but, of course, come back for an encore. this is the fun part, because now what are they going to play? captain says they had a discussion backstage and are letting us, the crowd, choose the encore. he also says something about doing "copious amounts of drugs" whilst backstage. then "hahaha not really! we don't do that anymore. lemmy does though, if you can believe that." teehee. anyway, people start shouting things and i can't understand anything they're saying but we get to hear "love song," which captain introduces with "if you really listen to the lyrics, it's about trains. so, just for you, here's a train song." that made me smile so much. he's truly fabulous. and then it was "smash it up," naturally. i would love to hear them do "i think i'm wonderful" live sometime, but oh well. "smash it up" is a perfect end to the night. fuck i love that song. gah. 

remember how i said the place was packed? holy shit, people, it was so awesome. if you remember from the last time i had seen them in philly, it was hardly even half way full in there. it made me really, really happy to see so many people there for them after that last time. either people are smarter in dc and know good music when it comes around, or people are just coming out to see them because you never know when it will be the last time you get to see bands like these. sad, but true. 

after the show we walk back to my friend's place, look up my public transportation home, and go to sleep around midnight, only to wake up at 4am so i can catch a bus to another bus that will take me back to philly. at this point i am completely delirious but so happy about my 2 amazing nights in a row that i don't even care. my friend and i say goodbye and off i go on the bus that takes me to the greyhound bus that will take me back to the city of brotherly love (ha). i get off the bus in philly, run over to the train station and catch a train almost immediately that gets me to work on time. amazing. and then that night, i went out with my boss and our friend to maxwell's in hoboken, nj to see the crocodiles. 

did i mention how tired i was? 

the crocodiles get their own entry. because they're that good.

so the next time the damned tour you better get your ass out and see them, for fuck's sake. what are you waiting for?