[Everyneurotic]

i just got back from the thurston moore/tom surgal/william winant show and all i can say is WWWWWOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!! it surpassed all my expectations!!

the place, el salón méxico is an old time dancehall which isn't small yet isn't big, it was filled to the rafters by people ranging from your rock intellectuals, grunge-will-never-die retro kids, token interpol/yeah yeah yeahs wannabes (or none wannabes, who am i to judge?) and some emo people. the place was packed, which seems odd to me since there aren't that many sy fans here (most people i told i was going, the general reply was "thurston what?"), so anyway; once there, thurston, tom and william passed right before me to get onstage, the place was also packed with security so you couldn't get near them at all. thurston played a jazzmaster of a color i couldn't make with a shitload of stickers, the most prominent said "SCHOOL IS OPEN", i also could make up some sonic nurse stickers near the plug-in jack, to a marshall jcm 900 half stack; i wasn't close enough to see what pedals he had but i heard a wah, a phase and an eq, also he had two fender combo amps which he used for a cheap mic and an 8-track mic; william winant had timpani, toms, cymbals, gongs of various sizes, two xylophones and different drumsticks and mallets; tom surgal had a more traditional drumset but had a lot of different kinds of rattlers, cowbells and even some whistles. also, william had the raddest shirt i've seen all year, it had a pic of kurt cobain's face with two crossed shotguns, skull and crossbones pirate style with the words "TEEN SPIRIT U.S.A." around it

as you might have guessed, they played "piece for jetsun dolma", not note for note but very close...hell, who am i kidding THEY SURPASSED IT!!!! it was waaaaaaaaaaaay better than the recording (i hope they officially release it), thurston started by strumming the strings gently and both tom and william started swinging away gently too, increasing as thurston began to conjure more radical sounds from his axe. t mo was being very stoic and solemn, eyes closed, swaying; totally rock n' roll but getting into the higher state of stuff, then he would flay a bit. in fact, thurston reminded me a bit of johnny ramone, mugging and intense but also kinda serious. as the improv got wilder so did he, he started to get more into it, producing feedback, smashing his guitar on the floor, rocking it to the amp, making amazing sounds; he was giving a show, kids in the front held their cell phone cams and thurston would twist on the stage floor, or lift his guitar, trying to give the people good shots.

at around minute 27, thurston got his first drumstick out, and it looked like he had taken it from when richard edson or jim sclavanous were in the band because it was taped together and had a brownish color of ageness, he began a quieter section as winant played the timpani and gongs and surgal scraped cymbals. on the other hand of the magnificient sounds coming from the stage, the crowd was fucking awful, whenever they got into a quiet section, people would start to holler or scream nonesense which was super stupid, it's like the crowd noises on the original jetsun dolma recording were doubled, it was very obnoxious, even more obnoxious was the stupid chatting in the background, people talking in the middle of the thing, it sucked!!; but whatever, i didn't mind them.

after the quiet part started to pick up, the sound got wilder and the frequencies began to scale up with thurston playing harmonics and strumming from the other side of the bridge and william wailed on the xylophone, thurston rested his guitar against the amp, splitting with feedback, to plug a cheap microphone to one of the fender amps, when he began to scream and holler thru it (the microphone and the time earlier on the show where thurston put his guitar headfirst onstage, body upwards resting in his legs while standing up, reminded me a bit of the magik markers), he bended over to get the mic close to the amp for feedback and his jeans were showing a little bit of asscrack, so it was as if he was mooning the crowd unintentionally. he writhed on the floor a little just to pick his guitar up again (without unplugging the mic) and you could clearly see his high e string broken but still attached to the guitar; they rocked harder and harder, surgal and winant conjuring something like a western seadrum-style boredoms drumming which was excellent, tribal yet punk rock, with the added free jazz/avant guard flavor. thurston then dropper his guitar on top of the xylophone and began to play it with a SPATULA...i kid you not!!!, he began scrapping the strings with it going lower and lower while tom played some sort of rattler. then thurston plugged in a tape recorder (and if they used the same gear as when they originally recorded jetsun dolma, then it was an 8-track) which thurston plugged into his pedal rig to produce some phantom feedback, scaled tones and some theremin-like action, all the while tom began blowing a very high-sounding whistle.

then, when it began to pick up, the band was clearly in the final stretch and began to scale the sound coming from the stage to the max, thurston turned two of his amps up, and tom and william started to drum the hardest and more recklessly than anywhere before during the show. then thurston, still rocking the guitar, dropped to the floor and began pulling someone who was videotaping the show with a professional camera onstage, thurston went behind him, gave him his guitar, started to hug him and lifting the guy's shirt, then t left him and picked up a girl from the front to go onstage with him, he rolled with the girl on the floor for a bit, then thurston got up, picked the girl's foot and started strumming his guitar with it. then, he picked her up in his arms and dropped jer and himself together on top of william's drumset!! almost knocking it but never quite; by this point everyone onstage was in hysterical laughter, then thurston picked another girl from the crowd and did the same on tom's drums. tom and william never stopped playing and thurston amps were still generating bassy tones, mind you, and thurston finally lifted the second girl and sat her on his amp, some more people crowd-surfed onstage and then that was that.

thurston picked the distorted mic, his smile a mile wide, and started to thank the crowd, mexico, introduced tom and william and wished goodnight, then they went offstage, passed right in front of me again but now there was the whole venue's worth of people trying to get close to thurston. and they left.

man!!! i never expected it was going to be this good!!! it was amazing, i had brought a cd of my noise stuff in hopes of giving it to thurston but since security was incredibly tight, i couldn't get a chance to get close to him (not to mention the humanity!!) but that's ok, i got my worth of a show, it made me want to be onstage and it made me want to see sonic youth live again!!! i still got to congratulate tom on the show, he was on the base of the stairs to the backstage area and had like 10 bodyguards around him, he smiled and gave me a thumbs up

also, i loved how the crowd chanted "THOORS-TON, THOORS-TON!!"

my other favorite thing was when thurston got a very high pitched feeback sound and winant was smashing the xylophone on the upper keys with all he got, a square guy in a dress shirt and jacket started to cover his ears with his fingers because it was annoying him. that was a punk rock moment right there and then!!!

man!!! concert of the year so far!!!. yoshida tatsuya and jamie stewart better bring their game if they want to get a chance of coming close to such an excellent show.