Thighs Wide Shut

The Streets
+ Lady Sovereign
Webster Hall
June 27, 2006

[foto stolen from The High 5 Queen]
Why do I even bother writing concert reviews when it seems like Maude Dern and Susic Mobbery are in attendance at every one I go to (which isn’t that high of a number, since eating is my #1 extracurricular activity). I’m not going to complain, cause they both boviously have great taste in music and both have thighs worthy of humping. Plus they both bring cameras so I don’t have to, cause mine sux anywayzyz. The gist of all this? Just read Ms and Mr‘s sites daily and you’ll soon be the coolest cat since MC Skat Kat

Anywayz, enuff of the praise, and more about my malaise of writing concert reviews. I mean, what can one really say about show after show? Did it rock? Did I shvitz more than David Berkowitz? Was I more wasted than Robert Downey Jr in Less Than Zero? Balls the above, and then some, and then some more, and a bag of chips, and then some bags of Utz.

Although things didn’t start off well when everyone’s flavorite UK tongue twistin midget took to the stage. Poor Lady Sov. First off, as many of you know, American audiences are the brat wurstest. They don’t respond to what’s going on on stage unless the artist prompts them too (unless of course we’re talking about Radiohead cause if they popped popcorn on stage for 7 hours straight, people would still tear off their clothes and scream like Wilhelm), and the Yanks weren’t givin the Lady any love. It didn’t help that Lady Sov’s ear pretty much hexploded while performing. She was visibly upset and kept complaining about it. I mean, she is a girl. But although Webster Hall’s sound blows, she doesn’t. I hope her ear recovers and she rox the Nikki Cox when I see here at Lolla in August. And even though she has the body of a 12 year old boy, there’s something hextremely sexy about her and I wish I was Zach, but I guess I was too slow to take action

As for my main maine mayne man Mike Skinner, dude is on a forkin roll. In my mumble opinion, at this point in time (at least until Air’s next album is released), The Streets are the best act in the world. I know that sounds crazier than a basement in the Alamo, since he’s juss a dirty chav who talks about shit-in-a-tray merchants, but I really do bee leave that. I’d do anything for him. Even clean his trainers (dem be what is known as ‘sneakers’ in our lame country) with my tongue. I’d even take a bullet for him (as well as the BlogFather). Although I’d probably rather protect him from people throwing trainers at him. Huh? Whatevs. Dude, Skinner and his live band, including his eggsalad singing partner, put on a top notch show with show stoppin tunes that notch tops!!! It also didn’t hurt that he force fed the audience liquor, made us squat on the ground on 3 given occasions, and kept mentioning how he’s gonna run in the NY Marathon (I better start training too if i want run wit him and give him endless HJs).

Please tell me you own all three of his albums. They are more magical than David Blaine humming the Cars’ ‘Magic’ while doin some Presto Magix underwater for a week. If yer missin the boat, it’s never too late to climb aboard. I’ll make sure Isaac is there to greet you wit a smile, and some marlon (that’s Skinner for ‘brandy’)

pee es – forgot to mention how pissed I was he didn’t play ‘Hotel Expressionism’ [d]

See also
+ The Streets Are Alive With The Sound Of Music
+ 7th Heaven

Where did we leave off? Oh yeah, I was balls tired and passed out with a belly full of In-N-Out Burgers. And away we gogh gogh!

Saturday May 1st

Don’t you just love vacation? All you end up doing is waking up earlier than you normally would, you spend a shitload of money, and you’re always running around, never relaxing. Nonetheless, this is Coachella time, and mees gots to get my groove on.

The cigarette that’s for ghetto hipsters

Woke up round 8 am, walked outside to smoke a chub and to check the weather. How is my cigarette already lit without me lighting it? Oh yeah, that’s right, it’s 123782183 degrees and it’s only 8 AM!!! It tasted like burning. With the liz-adies asleep, me hit the road and picked up some water, a $28.99 carton of Parliament Menthol Lights and some water. What’s that smell? O lord, I’m not getting swamp ass already, am I? Got my first useless “What’s Up Coachella” text message. It told me it was going to be hot, that I should drink a lot of water and wear sun tan lotion. Jeez. If I wanted motherly advice, I would have called mumsy. Any-haze, the gals finally woke up, took 14 hours to get ready, cause they girls, and we wiz ready to rock steady.

Wees stopped at some dumpy-ass place that served cheap breakfast. This eating establishment was right out of David Lynch’s head. It also doubled as a Budget moving store. There was mad people up in that bitch and the only people working was the cook, one sloppy waitress, and some sweaty-ass dude who kept forgetting to get me OJ and the check. Although there were mad flies abound, the food was top notch. Top notch as in it sure beats starving! Off to the show.

Richie and Julia Gulia can’t decide whether to czech out Howie Day or Erase Errata

Quick background: The event is called Coachella, which is the name of a town, but the event actually takes place in Indio (also the name of Robert Downey Jr’s child). It’s held at the Empire Polo Field, which is where they filmed the polo scene in Pretty Woman and one very special episode of 90210 that I can’t quite remember too well. This is Coachella’s 5th year and my second tour of duty. I went to 2002’s shebang, which included Bjork, Oasis, The Strokes, The Chem Bros, Charlatans UK, and Jurassic 5. There are two outdoor stages, 3 tents, a film festival, strange bikes you can ride, shit to buy, and every food imaginable (plenty more on that later). This is the closest thang to the original Woodstock for us hipsterinos, but it’s staged every year… and they keep topping themselves with the f-in lineup. This aint no Warped Tour, no OzzFest, no Limp Biszkskit poop-a-thon, and this isn’t your daddy’s Jim Croce concert. This is fucking Coachella. Hellz yella.

After taking some ghetto-back ways to avoid traffic, we arrived in the grassy parking lot. 3 lots and one smelly ass horse stable later, we arrived at the gates. This was it, the moment I’ve been anally preparing for since January. Soon as we got in we had to use the port-a-potties. The show barely started and the toilets in a box reeked worse than microwaving fish. Hot rotting poo aside, it’s time to f-in riz-ock.

The Sounds were the first band we peeped. And lemme tell you, the sounds of the Sounds sounded great. They played their three breast songs, “Seven Days A Week”, “Dance With Me”, and “Living In America.” Then it was off to watch 2 seconds each of The Sahara Hotnights, The Evens, and 5-time Coachella alumnus, Peretz (aka Perry Farrrrelll). After that we were stilled by the sounds of The Stills. I didn’t know much about em, but still, they put on a decent enuff show to watch most of their set. Still-rific!

“Joyous”? More like BOOOOORING

Beck was up next in the tiniest of all the 5 stages. We knew there would be a crowd so we made camp as all the hipsters with the ironic tee-shirts began to fill up our surroundings. It all started off fine with “Cold Brains”, but it went straight down the toilet like a goldfish from there. He started playing boring-ass music and putting me to sleep. He was so quiet and boring that the ghetto-blasting tunes from the “dance” music tent overshadowed him. Mees seen the Beckster before, but this was horrid. Is this what happens when you marry a Ribisi? To the heeezey. And I aint the only one who was disappointed. Uncle Grambo likened it to a, “back alley abortion of a performance.” So f-in durst.

I should have followed my heart and checked out more of Junior Senior. When we did hear em in a smelly tent, they were covering “Twist and Shout.” I felt like I was at a Bat Mitzvah and “We Are Family” was up next, so it was time to bolt. Walking around we heard the Hieroglyphics singing “Clint Eastwood”? Why? Whooops. I found out later that Del the Funky Homo (a Gorillaz member, for those of you living in a cave) joined them onstage. A few Death Cab For Cutie (by far, the lamest band name I have ever heard of) tunes later and it’s off to another smelly tent to czech out the Black Keys. Megbot used to work at an Akron record shop with Key maestro, Dan Auerbach. It’s been awhile since they’ve seen each other, so backstage humping was out of the question. Anwyho, the Black Keys f-in rock. It’s not like their sound isn’t crazy original (think White Stripes meet Led Zep blues), but its miles away butter than most of the Jimmy Eat World shit out there. By the way, wasn’t JEW supposed to be there? Maybe Beck and his lame-ass-ness scared them off.

I dare you to name one thing that’s fried and covered in sugar thats awful

With a bunch of crap that I didn’t want to see, it was lets eat junk food time. Why eat a complete meal when you can eat crap. Sure they had healthy shit like fruit and hippie-vegan garbage for hippies, but I aint having it. It’s vacation and I’m packing on the pounds (sort of like any other day for me). While the liz-adies waited in the huge smoothie line, I opted for a funnel cake covered in caramel and o course, powdered sugar. As I was wolfing that down like a champ and joined the liz-adies in line, I noticed they were selling frozen chocolate covered banananananas… my Achilles heel, my kryptonite, my secret lover. Life is good, and my belly agrees!! During the break in the action, I also attempted to meet up with Uncle Grambo, ole IU pals Shady, Pfife Dawg, and Busta Hayman the II, and Lindsay Lohan via text massaging, but my cellie-cell was on the fritz lang. I guess when you pack 50K + peeps into one place, techmology breaks down. Oh well, the liz-adies are all the company I need…

Checked out kibble and bitz of Sparta as everyone awaited the most awaited band that everyone awaited to see: The Pixies. I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life. I used to rock out to Doolittle and Trompe Le Monde while I played hours of Nintendo’s Dragon Warrior. I felt like everything was coming full circle. So how did they sound? PERFECT. F-in mint. And they played EVERYTHING. “Debaser” was debomb. “Here Comes Your Man” made me come on my hand. “Wave of Mutilation” was a wave of awesomenesssness. Sounded better than when I first heard it in the 2nd best Christian Slater movie of all time, Pump Up The Volume. Towards the end of the set, Megbot really had to pee and dragged me along. When I got back, I found out I missed “Where Is My Mind?” I was about to ask Megbot where is her mind for making me go with her. Oh well, there’ll be plenty of chance to hear it again when los Pixies comes to NY later this summer and winter. It’s hard to describe how a band really sounds… especially if you have a limited vocabulary, so why don’t you just download their whole Coachella set for yourself. Link via Burned By The Sun.

A qwik stop for the Rapture and DJ Laurent Garnier, and we had to scurry back to the main stage for a lil Radiohead. Me love the Radiohead, but I still don’t understand why they are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO huge in America. I’m more baffled about Coldplay, but they aint playing, so lettuce not speak of them ever again. Why is Radiohead so popular? This was their only North American stop of 2004 and it basically led to the 1st Day selling out. The set was pretty much the same as when I saw them at MSG in Rocktober. Everyone went wild when Thom Thumb and his epileptic dance style were kicking it to “Creep.” That isn’t even a good Radiohead song people. Qwik side story. I won tickets to see Belly (“Feed the Tree”) back in the early 90s. Radiohead was the opening band. Yep, the opening band for BELLY (who suffered the Rolling Stone cover curse)! I was young, dumb, and filled with foam. I was crowd surfing during “Creep” and got to touch Thom’s hand. I never did wash that hand… until that day I was trapped in a closet and had to wipe my ass with my left hand.

Mischa, let me buy you a funnel cake

After dat, there were 3 bands all on at the same time that I wanted to catch. At this point, my eyes were going to fall out of my head and I was too stoned to even spell “Agrarian Socialism.” Phantom Planet played in the cursed Beck tent, so that was already 2 strikes against them. And by the time we got to the tent, we just missed “Big Brat.” Since I didn’t want to hear Mischa Barton’s O.C. theme song, it was time to pay a visit to Electric Six. That lasted about 4 seconds, and Kraftwerk ended our noche. I don’t really care for their “music”, but I do like the Flea/Peter Stormare ripoff group, Autobahn from The Big Lebowski, and for that reason alone, I had to peep them.

Day 1 in the can. A 14 mile walk in the dark back to the car. I felt like a zombie. I wish I felt like a mummy. That way I could at least sleep in a sarcophagus and live at the Met. I was covered in dirt and sweat, but I was too friggin’ tired that I couldn’t even take a shower. I think I scared the liz-adies, cause they said I passed out with my eyes open. But were my thighs wide shut?

Kwik cool sightings on the day: Joan hotness of Joan of Arcadia fame and a dude wearing a Cutters shirt. BIG UPs!!

Sorry, I didn’t have the balls
to take a pic with Joan

Stay tuned for Part III where we review all of Sunday’s sizzling bacon and meeting of blog minds. Sunday.