[jennthebenn]

so...we head back out and almost immediately move back up to where the line was for the first show. we're behind like 5 people, so not bad. you? ANOTHER fucking sonic youth fan who's also a slayer fan. someone should do a survey on this."

some guys in front of us brought up the rumor that Jim skipped out on the Providence show not due to family crisis but rather the "fact" that there is a warrant for his arrest in Rhode Island. internet rumor, first perpetrated on the offical forum. i don't put much stock in this yak for one reason...arrest for WHAT? come on, if you're gonna start a sad-ass rumor at least offer up an offense and make it a good one. like, he's wanted for pissing on a david grubbs fan who started shit with him in a bar. fuck outta here.

the setlist was unchanged save 5 songs: "plastic sun", "skip tracer", "rain on tin", "expressway" and "shadow of a doubt". the show was perfectly fine, but the crowd was heavier in yahooing yahoos and the band was noticeably lower in the tank. not that they sleptwalk or crawled through these songs, but damn i feel bad for people who didn't get to see the first show.

"party at steve's house!" yelled one yahoo.

"kim gordon's panties!" (dude, that woulda been funny to yell out the LAST time they played here!)

thurston was not actually lower in the energy tank, but this was perhaps due to his POSSIBLY being higher in another tank. wink nudge.

"it's great to be back in new jersey." pause. suddenly, he grabs the mic and
brings the mic stand down with him to scream in one girls face, "IT'S REALLY FUCKING EXCELLENT." as i was right next to that girl, i can tell ya, that guy was feeling no pain. bam, oh shit, a cinderblock just bounced off your head thurston. oh...is THAT what that was?

"You're the man, Thurston!"

"Well, thanks. We all die, man. So it doesn't really mean much, does it."

"Speak for yourself," Kim quipped.

"Play whatever you want!" a girl in the crowd hollered.

"Ha, you got that off that album," Thurston sneered back. "That fuckin' uh, that chick says that and then she goes, 'right on', or some other hippie shit."

patrick was up front in front of t-money snapping, i was a couple people behind him.as my visual field was slightly hampered, i had more opportunities to just chill out, bob, even on occasion shut the orbs and phase the fuck out like those chicks in the Murray Street booklet. no drugs, though...just a growing exhaustion.

sure enough, Thurston brought up the Hoboken parade.

"I learned a lot of interesting factoids."

"Such as?" boomed out one tall dude behind me.

"Well...the first baseball game was played here."

"Before steroids!"

"The banana...um..."

"The zipper," Lee added.

"Oh yes, the zipper was invented here."

"Back door delivery!"

"Oh yeah", Thurston acknowledges, "BDD. Didn't know the gang was here tonight."

SY shows are fun to go to not solely for the music, but also the educational value. i would have NEVER known that about the zipper.

Some fuckface with a snap machine asked to let me get in front of him "just this one song" so he could get some pictures. being the nice girl i am, i let him. i didn't get my spot back. if i were a bitch, i would have started some shit before smacking him on the back of his weak pussy neck for a pain
imprint with a expiration date a month from now. i am certainly of the size to do such, if not the mind.

ah fuck it.

during "plastic sun" i was doing the standard head-bob until the "tired of the time" breakdown, at which time my cranial motions slowed to match Steve's intermittent drum punches. i noticed, to my amusement, i was the only one within eyeshot doing so. heh. much like devo, i'm through being cool.

"pattern recognition", which had the flu the first show, got downright pneumonic this time. all i saw was thurston's eyes glazed and glaring down at the front row, namely patrick, who caught sight also and had the presence to move to his left. thurston unstrapped his guitar and tested the speakers with first his sheer weight then his guitar. i won't lie, in tandem with the thrill of seeing one your favorite musicians give themselves up to the whirlwind comes a fear that reminds you, oh christ, don't fall in the audience and hurt someone you dumbass. he didn't, a pro as he is at submission to the momentum.

thurston was mad intense; kim didn't smile very much this show, unlike the first show where she seemed happier than i've ever seen. there was one moment of classic spontaneous merriment, when thurston futzed around with his little radio onstage and picked up some old-school, boom-bap hiphop. he did his own head-bob (the traditional neck-snap, in rap parlance) and amused himself with this for a few seconds behind kim's back. when kim, still turned away, started to do it as well, thurston cracked up and pointed at her. she turned finally to face her husband and for a few more seconds the great couple engaged in some nicely synchronized neck-snappin' to the hard drumbeat. steve was loving it behind the drums, lemme tell ya.

i have never felt so tired.

rain on tin" was the shit. some guy was yelling it for the first show, sure hope he made it back to this show. i still maintain the best "rot" ever (other than Satan Laughs As You Eternally Rot, of course) was Chicago '04, but there is no bad rendition of this song. yet.

SY left, Thurston eschewing the step altogether and deciding to get off at the side where i was standing. seeing this, i stepped aside to give him room. not confident enough to just hop on off, he reached out with a massive right hand and grabbed hold of my right shoulder, gripping it a second or two before making the jump and rushing off. "did that hurt?" patrick asked. i shook my head, amused that i was now able to say that in one night i saw thurston moore with his shirt off AND he touched me.

this one nice girl asked me how different the setlist was this show, and i told her. she was taking some pics and moving merrily, i quite like it when i'm next to someone at a show with a pleasing presence.

"expressway" ended with a wave of noise that reminded me simultaneously how fortunate i was and how weary i had become. the music was beating me down as it was telling me in LOUD CERTAIN TERMS what a lucky card i'd drawn in this game. "this ends one of two ways", i thought. "they drop or i do." they did. i was at once relieved and pissed off.

over...first show better than second, but second no slouch. nice town, nice people more or less.

out of Maxwell's into the breezy night, we were regaled midway by an older gentleman singing a song in Italian. "of course, i could sing it better twenty years ago." he walked on, as did we, and i couldn't help but murmur to Patrick, "yeah, and i bet you could hold your liquor better twenty years ago too, pal."

patrick has a pic of thurston with his shirt off, i didn't know he had
managed to get one till just now. thurston's upper body is like...i don't know how you can get a sunken chest with a beer belly, but this man has both!