My Saturday technically started with a midnight showing of "The Big Lebowski" at the Music Box. Well, let me start at Fri. I met Shannon for drinks and catching up at the Edgewater. It was a lot of fun and even though I had sworn I was only going to have 1 beer, I had 4. Tim met me there and then the 2 of us headed down to meet Weis for "The Big Lebowski". Now, the Music Box is this great old beautiful movie theater. But it's also not in the best shape. I think the projectionist was high in keeping with the spirit of the movie. It started out of focus (and no, it wasn't from my beers). Eventually, I took a nap during the movie. And then another one. Oops. But it was still a fun way to get the weekend started.Sat. the goddamn Badgers lost to Michigan which really pissed me off. So I was looking forward to the My Bloody Valentine concert. Tim LOVES them. He wanted to get there early. Which was fine by me. I had been warned about how loud they'd be. As we headed into the Aragon, I found it quite polite that security was handing out earplugs for free to the concert goers. How thoughtful! We went inside and got a good spot up front not far from the hacky-sack playing kids (I'm not kidding). The opening band was good. And then came MBV. They were loud. But my ears were plugged so I was fine with loud. What no one mentioned was the seizure-inducing light show. I swear to God it was a bizillion camera flashes going off in your pupils. Times another bizillion. OK, maybe not THAT bad. But it was tough on me. Add to that the heat from the stuffy Aragon and the fact that my chest was vibrating from the music, I wasn't able to handle it the way I do most concerts. I told Tim I was going to the side for some air. Eventually he came to check on me and I was just fine. Just needed a spot where I could look away from the light! But we were there for the whole concert and Tim had a blast. He was happy as a clam and kept declaring the show "amazing" and "awesome". And that, well, that made me happy. (Feel free to vomit in your mouth a little bit).
My Bloody Valentine and their blinding lights
Originally posted: September 28, 2008, Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune
My Bloody Valentine deafens, blinds and triumphs
Earplugs were handed out Saturday at the entrance doors to the Aragon. “The band is recommending these,” one helpful security official said as she handed me a pair. Good idea.
My Bloody Valentine was in the house, as part of its first tour in 16 years. The U.K. quartet released a landmark album, “Loveless,” in 1991, played a series of ear-shattering shows the next year, and then drifted into silence. “Loveless” didn’t sell much initially; it was a guitar-driven album, except the guitars didn’t sound much like guitars. Kevin Shields, the group’s mastermind, created a sound both lulling and violent, blurring old-fashioned notions of chords and riffs into undulating waves.
The album only gained in stature the longer My Bloody Valentine stayed away, and a reunion seemed inevitable – if only to see what the band could do for an encore.
Shields is said to be working on the long-awaited follow-up to his masterpiece, but he and the band didn’t offer any glimpses of the new material. Instead, they stuck to “Loveless”-era music at the sold-out ballroom, as if to prove how well the music had aged. Indeed, it still sounded like the future.
On a barebones stage, the band stood shrouded in shadows. The back-lighting was designed to obscure the foursome as much as assault the crowd, with strobes serving to blind the audience while the extreme volume enveloped it in a cocoon of ambient noise. At times, the music pushed against sternums and rattled limbs of onlookers, as much felt as heard. Earplugs were a paltry shield against this siege.
The opening image on the giant screen behind the band resembled the snowy, degraded signal of a dead television channel, an appropriate visual for “I Only Said.” The band see-sawed between two high-pitched guitar tones and a lulling drone, augmented by the vocals of Shields and fellow guitarist Bilinda Butcher. Voices were treated like another instrument, part of a dense mix that stacked guitars, drums and myriad backing tapes. Bassist Deb Googe and drummer Colm O’Ciosoig held down the middle by attacking their instruments with a ferocity in sharp contrast to the serene strumming of Butcher and Shields on opposite sides of the stage.
The swooping, soaring guitars acted like hallucinogens, piling tones upon tones that evoked exotic instruments: bagpipes, gamelans, uilleann pipes. Melodies drifted through this make-believe orchestra like ghosts, and then disappeared. On “Soon” the rhythm was almost playful, suggesting a Celtic jig. To wrap it all up, the band took “You Made Me Realise” on a 20-minute ride. From the back of the theater, the quartet was practically invisible in the darkness, the better to enhance the illusion that a rocket ship was somehow being launched on stage.
For all the sheer physicality in the music, it wasn’t piercing. The effect was more like riding an ocean wave: building, cresting, and then receding. The helpless souls in its path had little choice except to succumb and drown in it.
My Bloody Valentine deafens, blinds and triumphs
Earplugs were handed out Saturday at the entrance doors to the Aragon. “The band is recommending these,” one helpful security official said as she handed me a pair. Good idea.
My Bloody Valentine was in the house, as part of its first tour in 16 years. The U.K. quartet released a landmark album, “Loveless,” in 1991, played a series of ear-shattering shows the next year, and then drifted into silence. “Loveless” didn’t sell much initially; it was a guitar-driven album, except the guitars didn’t sound much like guitars. Kevin Shields, the group’s mastermind, created a sound both lulling and violent, blurring old-fashioned notions of chords and riffs into undulating waves.
The album only gained in stature the longer My Bloody Valentine stayed away, and a reunion seemed inevitable – if only to see what the band could do for an encore.
Shields is said to be working on the long-awaited follow-up to his masterpiece, but he and the band didn’t offer any glimpses of the new material. Instead, they stuck to “Loveless”-era music at the sold-out ballroom, as if to prove how well the music had aged. Indeed, it still sounded like the future.
On a barebones stage, the band stood shrouded in shadows. The back-lighting was designed to obscure the foursome as much as assault the crowd, with strobes serving to blind the audience while the extreme volume enveloped it in a cocoon of ambient noise. At times, the music pushed against sternums and rattled limbs of onlookers, as much felt as heard. Earplugs were a paltry shield against this siege.
The opening image on the giant screen behind the band resembled the snowy, degraded signal of a dead television channel, an appropriate visual for “I Only Said.” The band see-sawed between two high-pitched guitar tones and a lulling drone, augmented by the vocals of Shields and fellow guitarist Bilinda Butcher. Voices were treated like another instrument, part of a dense mix that stacked guitars, drums and myriad backing tapes. Bassist Deb Googe and drummer Colm O’Ciosoig held down the middle by attacking their instruments with a ferocity in sharp contrast to the serene strumming of Butcher and Shields on opposite sides of the stage.
The swooping, soaring guitars acted like hallucinogens, piling tones upon tones that evoked exotic instruments: bagpipes, gamelans, uilleann pipes. Melodies drifted through this make-believe orchestra like ghosts, and then disappeared. On “Soon” the rhythm was almost playful, suggesting a Celtic jig. To wrap it all up, the band took “You Made Me Realise” on a 20-minute ride. From the back of the theater, the quartet was practically invisible in the darkness, the better to enhance the illusion that a rocket ship was somehow being launched on stage.
For all the sheer physicality in the music, it wasn’t piercing. The effect was more like riding an ocean wave: building, cresting, and then receding. The helpless souls in its path had little choice except to succumb and drown in it.
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