Special bonus flackbash coverage today, because I’ve got a lot to say. This un goes out to the Spoon/Deerhunter/Micachu & The Shapes show at the Fox last week. Big props to Spoon for not only being awesome, but for bringing along two very creative bands. So creative, in fact, that they appeared to completely confound a lot of the audience. I heard two ushers openly slag on Micachu to patrons. Dude and lady, there’s a difference between music you don’t like and music that’s bad. Grow up.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that many Spoon fans aren’t particularly adventurous. I’ll also say that the biggest cheers for a Spoon song came for the one that sounds most like a Billy Joel song. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but I’m fitting shoes here, pepples.
But I didn’t come here gently mock Spoon fans and to bury ushers (just two), but to praise Deerhunter, who were fantastic and played a goodly amount of stuff from Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey, my heavy faves. Singer Bradford Cox had a lot of nice things to say about friendship, and it sounded like the tour was one of great joy and bonding. He dedicated “Strange Lights” to Spoon, and even had a couple o’ Spooners out to join them on a lengthy hypnotic freakout that sent a lot of people out to the bar but was excellent.
Deerhunter – Spring Hall Convert from Cryptograms
first posted July 31, 2007
So I woke up
In a radio freeze
Occupied by a couple of girls
I knew from
Way back when, where
Oh, I had my face like the ocean
So I’d radiate but
Too much radiation
I walk around like a walker
And like a walker
Always choosing where to go
And where to be
Radiation
Too much radiation
So long loneliness
So far from home
…here’s Bradford Cox explaining a bit about the origins of the song (from the excellent Deerhunter/Altas Sound blog)
When I was sixteen I was hospitalized for extensive surgeries on my chest ribs and back because of Marfan’s [Syndrome]. That entire summer was like completely erased. I was in a coma for a couple of weeks. I got to really understand what its like to not be well. I’ve always sort of understood, growing up with Marfan’s, but this was hardcore shit. I wrote this song transposing this high school acid trip where i saw my two best friends back then, Sarah and Chrissy, bathed in this golden spring light in the hallway of my high school and felt really close to them, like we were sisters. I always felt genderless around them. I actually took a photo of them in that hallway that day which i will find and upload. If the song could be captured visually, this photo would be it. Anyways, I was trying to transpose the concepts of illness (in this case I was writing from the perspective of someone going in and out of consciousness during chemotherapy, and how they would miss their friends, their past experiences, and anything that reminded them of normalcy, or a time before misery. Nostalgia as anesthetic).
“Strange Lights”
