Meet Spot. Spot is my newest friend. If you click on that picture, you can see a bigger version. Spot lives inside the STOP sign at the end of the street. At night, Spot comes out and hangs upside down for a few hours. I see Spot doing its thing whenever I park on the corner, and I always try to say hello and take a picture of it for my friends and family — just to let them know how it is doing. I don’t know of Spot is a boy or girl because I respect its privacy. I just know that I love it, and I don’t want anything to happen to it. By the way, I named it Spot because of the cute birthmark it has on its belly. I don’t think Spot likes it when I take its picture. The flash might scare it a little bit. Hopefully Spot will love me as much as I love it, and never get mad at me for taking its picture. I would hate to not be friends with Spot anymore.
You have just about two days to help my poor charity (The Human Fund) by bidding on one of my two eBay auctions. I know the records kind of suck, but they’re rare and out-of-print, so you should definitely add them to your collection if you are a collector. Furthermore, if a Swan Fungus reader wins the auction, I’ll include some bonus prizes for you. Place a bid, be happy you donated to the site, and good luck.
Now, your Friday Top Ten!
Top Ten Worst Concerts I’ve Seen
10) Elefant / Broken Social Scene (Mercury Lounge, NY) – This one shouldn’t even count, but Ian’s car broke down right outside the Holland Tunnel during rush hour traffic, and we had to push it out of the road onto a dirt patch, where we waited to be towed to a mechanic. We missed the show. I’m sure it would have been queer as all hell. I guess in the grand scheme of things I haven’t seen that many terrible shows. This probably would’ve made the list anyway, because I never really liked BSS and Elefant was one of those bands that I only continued seeing because I’d become close with their drummer Kevin McAdams. I could also put the Curiosa Festival on this list, because we were stuck on Randall’s Island after Lindsey’s car broke down until four in the morning. Interpol sucked just as much that night as they did the first time I saw them. Even Mogwai couldn’t save an otherwise paltry lineup. When we got back to Ian’s house, his sister and a friend were awake watching TV. I drank a six pack of Blue Moon and drove home drunk. I think that was the first night I ever dry heaved from a combination of exhaustion, dehydration and booze intake.
09) Her Space Holiday / American Analog Set (Knitting Factory, NY) – I’m a huge AmAnSet fan. So much so, I tried for two years to make plans with Andrew Kenny to interview him for my book. I don’t hold him accountable for not having time to meet with me. I think Know By Heart and The Golden Band are two incredible albums. But I will always remember this show for two reasons. I met a smoking hot girl there that I developed a five-year crush on (you should’ve seen the way she held a cigarette — so hot), and because the chick from Her Space Holiday got in Ian’s face after their set. Their set was immeasurably boring, or however boring it is watching two people playing on laptops for an hour can be. They had goofy Spencer’s Gifts “disco lights” positioned all over the stage, and a perpetual fog machine going that threatened to blind and choke anyone standing in the front row. At one point, Ian started rolling his eyes (he swears he was checking the fan to see if it was on) at me. I started laughing. When the band finished, the Her Space Holiday woman leaned over the front of the stage and said, “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy our set” or “I’m sorry we weren’t your cup of tea.” Something like that. Ian was dumbfounded and asked for clarification, to which the girl responded, “I saw you rolling your eyes at us.” He made some defense I can’t remember, but I do remember chiming in, “Well, the smoke machine was a bit much,” which I thought at the time was a helpful suggestion. It didn’t help. She packed up her computer and left the stage. Every time I see a Her Space Holiday CD or LP at a record store, I smile while remembering this night.
08) Ozma / Weezer (Electric Factory, PA) – By March of 2001, Weezer was done. The glory of their reunion tour (which I quit my summer job to follow for a week or two, how embarrassing) had worn thin. Their eponymous “Green Album” was stale. And I still bought tickets to see them three separate times on their tour with Ozma, a band I was completely in love with at the time. So much so, I publicly flaunted about how carried on lengthy Instant Message conversations with the Asian guitarist fellow. No one cared then, and if I said that now I’d probably get my ass kicked. It certainly didn’t help matters that The Electric Factory was always a terrible place to see a show. Hindsight is a funny thing. It can make a man say crazy things. But I am 100% serious when I say I’m more proud of the fact that I saw moe. at the Electric Factory than I am of seeing Weezer there. As far as Philadephia shows are concerned, I’m more proud of seeing LIT open for Silverchair at the Trocadero, I’m more proud of seeing Ben Lee at the Pontiac Grill in 1999, and I’m way more proud of seeing Phish at the Spectrum than I am of seeing Weezer twice in Philadelphia in two years.
07) Clutch / System Of A Down (Universite de Montreal, Canada) – Ian swears this show was really cool, but I swear just the opposite. I mean, it was interesting to hear the guy from System Of A Down pull off that throat-mutilating voice for an entire show, but the whole thing was just really weird and horrible. Clutch might win the prize for worst single band I’ve ever seen, and wait until you hear some of these other awful bands I’ve seen. I have a list somewhere, but I can’t find it. It gets so, so much worse. Anyway, the show was at a hockey arena in Montreal (of course), and we were positioned on an upper level. The floor was a massive sea of bodies moving and falling in various directions. The sound was “meh”. I just remember watching the fans getting crushed most of the time. I have pictures somewhere. I’ll have to find them.
06) Rilo Kiley / Nada Surf (Brownies, NYC) – Half of this list could be comprised of Nada Surf shows I saw in 2000 and 2001. After the band was dropped by Elektra, they self-released The Proximity Effect and the band took regular day jobs. Once the album was ready they toured really small venues to try and rebuild their fanbase. Since I was a huge fan of the band, I traveled to some pretty obscure places to see them. Plenty of small bars in New York (like Brownies, and a few others whose names I can’t recall), a dive bar down by the Jersey Shore, and I even saw them at the Middle East (the smaller room) in Boston with Ilya that year. I remember taping a show of theirs in New York, then being asked by Daniel Lorca to tape any other shows I might see and mail them to him. I think this kept me returning to these crummy venues and suffering through horrible bands (True Love?)
05) (insert opening act) / Ours (insert venue, any state) – Okay, I really liked Ours. I really, really liked them. I photographed them. I recorded a dozen shows of theirs or more. I was so entrenched in their clique I was invited to attend secret shows at their rehearsal space. Still, I saw them way too many time with way too many horrible bands, and I will never forgive them for having terrible support at all of their shows. I can’t even remember some of the bands, but they were all awful. They epitomized awfulness. Fuck, Lindsay…Sam…remind me of some of the terrible acts we saw open for Ours!
04) Queens Of The Stone Age / Smashing Pumpkins (Tramps, NY) – It wasn’t so much that this was an awful show…I mean, QOTSA were pretty bad, but that’s because they had just released their first album and no one knew who they were. Josh Homme kept yelling at the audience that he was going to fuck everybody’s girlfriends, and that made people boo the band even more loudly. He told some guy up front to suck his dick, and maybe they ended their set early, I couldn’t quite tell. I was sandwiched between my friend Jonas and a morbidly obese Smashing Pumpkins super-fan, so I couldn’t really tell what was going on. Then the Pumpkins (this was the re-introduction of Jimmy Chamberlain “Arising” tour) took the stage, and everything went to shit. The crowd all surged forward several feet, and before the band even began playing you could hear people up front calling out for help. By now I was seriously fucked. I found myself wedged between a guy in ass-kicker boots and a leather jacket, and the right side of my body and right arm were lost inside the morbidly obese kid’s rolls of fat. After one song I realized I couldn’t breathe, and had to escape to a safer location. There weren’t many. I watched person after person pulled out of the audience, some of them unconscious. The floor of the club seemed to be in danger of collapsing. It was a pretty fucked up show. The Pumpkins were alright. They played some old songs and some new ones. It was just a cluster fuck and a mess. It’s no wonder why Tramps closed shortly thereafter.
03) Interpol / Ash (Bowery Ballroom, NY) – Just a few months after 9/11, I think seeing this show highlighted my first trip back home from Vermont during my freshman year of college. They had those “eternal lights” or whatever they were called glowing where the towers once stood. It was a very austere drive into the city, and as I stood outside the ballroom I kept gazing upward trying to remember what the skyline once looked like. A few moments later, my ears were obliterated by two of the worst performances I’d ever witnessed. Interpol sounded like utter garbage. My friend Bret and I were standing next to each other gawking at how awful they were. At the end of the band’s set, they tried to do some sort of noise freak-out, but it didn’t work. Then the bassist dropped his bass into the audience accidentally. I caught it by the neck and handed it back to him. The guy whispered “thanks” and went off the stage looking rather pathetic. I think we kept calling him “George McFly”. Anyway, that was my introduction to Carlos D.. Before Ash took the stage, he pressed through the crowd and found his way to the front of the stage. He tapped me on the shoulder and thanked me again for saving his bass. I kind of furrowed my brow and said, “I know, it’s okay.” Ash sounded awful. They were probably coked out of their heads and feeling really good about the show, but the sound was atrocious and it wasn’t very enjoyable.
02) Nerf Herder / The Bloodhound Gang (Roseland Ballroom, NY) – When I was deeply, deeply entrenched in my geek rock phase (I think GeekRock3 was my AOL screen name), nothing excited me more than the possibility of seeing Nerf Herder perform live on stage. It was a raucous and exciting 25 minute set, I think. They played “Golf Shirt,” “Nose Ring Girl” and a couple other “classics”. Then Bloodhound Gang performed. The highlight of their set was when they called up a kid on stage and bet him one-hundred bucks he couldn’t drink a 24 case of Dr. Pepper before their set ended. He got through seven or eight before puking all over the stage. They gave him $20 and shipped him away. They had tons of naked chicks on stage. That wasn’t enough to save the show. Not even for my 16-year-old insane, unquenchable sex drive. Retrospectively, I would call this the worst show I ever saw, if it wasn’t for the worst show I ever saw…
01) Montel Jordan / Mary J. Blige / Boys 2 Men / TLC (Madison Square Garden, NY) – My father used to have this client who sold all the clothes Boys 2 Men wore. Or something like that. Maybe he designed them, maybe he sold them, maybe he wore them while they fucked him in the ass. I’m not entirely sure. All I know is, I was home from overnight camp for a week with a broken finger, and my father asked if I wanted to go to a concert with him in New York. Little did I know the line-up for that auspicious event included Montell Jordern (of “This Is How We Do It”) fame, Mary J. Blige, Boys 2 Men, and TLC. This was right around the time CrazySexyCool was released. Maybe 1994. Anyway, it was fucking horrible. I’ve tried to push it out of my memory, but I can’t. I’m always at social events or parties where someone has the bright idea to ask, “What’s the worst show you’ve ever seen?” And I’m always the asshole who wins, because I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing a spectacle such as this. My father will swear on his life that by the end of the show I was standing on my chair and cheering and dancing, but this could not be further from the truth. Even at eleven years old, I was bright and worldly enough to realize that I was experiencing the most embarrassing moment of my life. To have such an observation in real time is soul shattering. Most people have to look back over the course of many years to find such a moment…but knowing at that moment that you are participating in such a dreaded event is totally mind-blowing. I saw Sesame Street Live in nursery school and I’d rather tell people that was my first concert. When I’m old and dying, I’ll be more proud of the fact that I attended the Nintendo Powerfest at the Jacob Javits Center. Shit, I’ll be more proud of witnessing SummerSlam (1989), or standing in line at meet-and-greet to shake hands with Macho Man Randy Savage than I will be of seeing Boys 2 Men in concert.
Speaking of which, I could write an entire blog entry about SumerSlam ’89, with pictures. I’ll have to dot hat one when I fly to New Jersey at the end of the month.
And now…if you would like to win a copy of the new Thalia Zadek Band CD, Liars And Prayers (to be released on 4/22 by Thrill Jockey), please comment or e-mail me your ten worst concerts of all time. The winner will be announced Sunday evening.
