gonerfest V - dag een

the next day started with a hamburger, a huge one, looking at me from a basket, and that’s a good way of starting the day up. some time after that, i was at the goner store (yes, again), watching how amazingly fast the organizers were moving to have everything ready for king louie’s opening set. i had tried at least three times to see louie play in europe, but there was always something going wrong and I had to cancel at the very last moment. this time i wasn’t gonna let anything stopping me from watching king louie’s set.

i got a place really close to louie, second row, just a woman with a child is in front of me and a bunch of guys with huge cameras are going nuts all around louie. he starts hitting the drums with his feet and strumming his pink guitar, singing songs about louisiana, his mother cooking cabbage and stinking all over the place, and himself asking his mom to cook hotdogs and pop corn instead. he’s also raving about how unfair it is not to be able to park in the best spots because they’re reserved for handicapped people, shouting at the end “if you can’t rock, you can’t drive!!”. i had a blast, even though the voice’s amp was too high and I had a noise inside my ear for a couple of days. i’m not a huge fan of this kind of things, the one man band thing i mean, but king louie, together with marc sultan are the two i've never regreted watching.
it’s really hot in memphis, 30 degrees or even higher, so we have to drink a lot of margaritas to overcome this heat. we found the perfect spot to do that, and really close to the goner shop, now we can also buy records completely drunk.
after eating a salad or something as gay, we direct our steps to the high tone, the venue where all the evening shows will take place. somehow, we’re late for the first one, so we miss the limes, but we are death on time to watch the amazing oh sees ripping the stage away. i’ve heard only one record of them, and i have to say i was surprised by it. i couldn’t believe i hadn’t heard about this band before, they’re so good… anyway, even though i knew they were good, i wasn’t ready for what we saw that day. their live set is unbelievable, energy all over the place and you can feel that they’re having a blast on stage. there’re two singers, a girl with a tambourine and a guy, a crazy guy with a twelve string guitar that wails it as a madman and shakes his whole body as if there was no gravity what so ever. when he gets really excited, he puts the whole mike in his mouth and shouts, but he’s the whole time smiling, it seems like, as i said before, they’re having a blast. my favourite song of theirs so far is called block of ice and they play it this night. the tempo is much faster and it sounds more wrecked, more vivid that in the lp and that’s what will happen with all the songs that they play and i know, and that’s exactly what is supposed to happen when you see a band live: they are alive and you have to somehow be able to feel that. that’s the difference between playing a record at home and going to a live show. or it should be, at least.
we have time to go to the high tone’s backyard and have a beer. it’s really nice to be able to go there after every concert, have some air, talk to people and sit (if you’re lucky) for a while.
next in line is dan melchior. i don’t know why, but i cannot feel any excitement in the people around me when he hits the stage. i’m dying to check how do those weird songs sound live, and as expected, they come out as a complete different thing. at least the couple of them that i can identify do. for example, elev to nazz sounds much faster and more rocking, not so weird. even though i don’t know almost any of the songs he plays, i enjoy his set a lot. the band behind him is really solid and he feels comfortable enough to go and play some solo’s loosely, he sounds inspired, but he doesn’t show any feelings. let me explain myself: he doesn’t do any gesture or movement that denotes that he’s having the time of his life, or a blast playing… not even the worst time of his life. he keeps it really cool, like he’s playing without any effort, like this thing he’s doing was the most normal thing that everybody does on any normal day. and it’s not like that, not at all.
next in line were the crusaders of love. i was tempted to listen to this concert from the backyard, but i changed my mind at the last moment and i cannot be happier, the crusaders of love gave a lesson about how to play great pop songs with hooks. they looked quite happy on stage and that was somehow contagious, everybody in the audience had a smile on their face and was shaking along. again, i don’t know any of their songs, but i didn’t feet tired at any moment and there i thought that all their songs were fucking classics. i hate saying this, but they reminded me of the black lips, they have the same untidy way of playing their songs. it looks at the beginning that they don’t know how to play till you realize that all sloppy playing is exactly what makes the songs so great. and those mongoloid three way choruses made my day. great band, great songs and great performance. i definitely want to see them again next week at the pit’s in belgium.
the tearjerkers are next in line. i’ve seen them already three times and i’ve never felt anything special, but i tried again, and after four songs i gave up again. they don’t make me feel excited or anything, i just feel bored after a couple of songs. they are amazing players and they sound really tight, but i don’t know, i expect something different, and if anybody is playing a oblivians song and they change it into a perfectly structured song, that bores the hell out of me, i need chaos, violence, some blood or something edgy. but it’s clear that the problem is mine. lot’s of people really enjoyed their set.
and exactly the opposite happened with the band that closed the night, the sic alps. after twenty minutes more or less they emptied the place, i think we were something like 50 people watching the last half of their set. some people complained because it looked like they were rehearsing instead of playing for an audience. maybe it was too chaotic, too loose, but i enjoyed it a lot. i wasn’t trying to find out what song were they playing, i paid more attention to where the fuck were they leading and how the hell was that gonna end up. i was the whole concert into what was going on and it was like somebody woke me up when they stopped playing. mind blowing, a great way to end up the day and go to get some strength for the next day.