how we know

I never attended a single Lollapalooza. I don't really know why, other than it seemed like a lot of work for bands I nver cared a ton about, and maybe because it was always held in West Virginia or someplace and I wouldn't ever make it back in time for curfew and then it wasn't worth spending my young teen years locked in my room reading backcopies of Sassy and Seventeen and wondering what the cool kids were doing. It was just never something that sucked me in. My hs boyfriend called me from a Lollapalooza payphone in 92, i had paged him (oh god, pagers. I love the idea of bringing back pagers) and he was mad because the loves of his young life had just taken stage. I could hear John Frusciante, or maybe I just thought I could, over the payphone. It sounded like I was listening to the Peppers while being at the bottom of a well, or maybe while wearing two funnel cakes taped to my ears.

Thermals show on Friday night. We missed Statehood, and therefore my opportunity to hold up a sign asking for DPlan tickets. I've only managed to see Statehood once, but I think I am a Statehood fan. We saw the Big Sleep, all droney-uplit-hair-rock. I have seen them before, and I cannot remember for the life of me who they opened for the last time. The Wrens?

Then the Thermals appeared. Immediately apparent - no sound adjustment between TBS and Thermals? The BIg Sleep sound needs (ref. above) does not = The Thermals sound needs (bright, poppy, the Ponys meets ... I dunno, the Cardigans?)

I had just had a this conversation with S., about how people complain about the sound at the Black Cat. I've never really had a problem there. Sure, the ceiling is low, the acoustics are going to be different than in a bigger venue, but I've never found it terrible. The shows there have always been mostly fine to my totally unexperienced non-sound tech ears.

But listening to the Thermals on Friday was like listening to them over a payphone. Or maybe with funnel cakes taped to my ears. They should have rocked out, and (I think) they tried. Besides one lone group of bouncy half-moshers, and a solitary dude who looked like he took a wrong turn at the last Fighting Gravity campus tour stop, all I could see was a see of faces looking kind of bored. It's a shame, really.


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Also rented Brick this weekend. I approve.