Undoubtedly, the conventional lore, exponentially propelled by the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, builds a towering mystique around Daniel Johnston – a troubled genius, a volatile and mysterious persona, a songwriter informed by mental illness, a musician catapulted to international success thanks to smart product placement by way of Kurt Cobain.  But seeing him live is something else entirely.  Seeing Daniel perform in an intimate setting like the Good Folk Festival on Saturday stripped away that mystique entirely.

This was my first time seeing Johnston, and I was really taken aback at seeing something truly unique.  But prior to that, we had a chance to see Daniel’s table at the exhibition.  I imagine that the prospect of showing and selling his art was a big incentive for Daniel’s family to make the special trip to Louisville.  Daniel, Mountain Dew in hand of course, was signing autographs, creating doodles, and chatting with a fanbase that’s arguably more well-wishing than most.  My best good buddy Brandon was able to snag one from him (pictured below) and was glowing about it shortly afterward.  Daniel’s sister had accompanied him this time, manning the table and taking care of logistics.  Daniel’s art is quite impressive, especially in real life, with the seamless meshing of pop art, surrealism, cartoonism, and colorful pastiche.

Daniel only played four songs, which is about average as he has immense stage freight. His stage presence is exactly what you’d expect from hearing his innocent, fragile voice.  Daniel strums through each song energetically, with a slight jitter, not looking up from his songbook stretched across a music stand in front of him.  The childlike innocence that permeates Daniel’s being is understood by everyone in the crowd, politely laughing at a botched joke like you would of a child’s.  Nick at Backseat Sandbar said: “Daniel stopped shortly after this song to tell us about a dream that he had in which a man was sentenced to death for committing suicide.  There was no follow-up, but a few chuckles from the crowd emerged.  After playing “Mask” he told us that he told us wrong about his dream, and that the man was sentenced to death for attempting to commit suicide, and the man was him.  He was sitting in the back of the court room and he reacted by screaming, “NOOOOO!”  Corrected, more laughs were garnered.”

He ended the show with the heavy “Freedom,” with the coda “Last night I dreamed / I died in my sleep / Only to awake / Lying in a coffin,” and then, “thanks everybody!”.  Quite an emotional gutpunch.

Afterward, we stuck around and examined all the booths.  It was a pretty large art fair, taking up two spacious exhibit spaces in the Mellwood Art Center.  The fair, by the way, was amazing.  It was mostly young artists showcasing excellent, subversive artwork.  And of course, Daniel had one of the largest booths there.  After seeing most of the other art, we returned to Daniel’s booth.  Most of the crowd had cleared out, and Brandon’s girlfriend Katheran was trying to find the original of the print she bought for his birthday. That’s when Daniel’s sister approached us: “can I help you all find anything?” she asked excited.  At that point, I knew what was coming – Brandon, as someone who works with children for a living, is bright and friendly as a motherfucker, so robust conversation was going to happen.  And we learned a lot.

Brandon asked a lot of questions, especially issues brought up in The Devil and Daniel Johnston.  Thankfully, Brandon did this in a tasteful way, as the film sometimes tries to indict the family at worst, portray them in not the most positive of lights at best.  No matter, Margie, though somewhat visually disappointed that we couldn’t purchase any original art, was gracious in speaking with us.  She mentioned a dislike for Jeff Tartakov, the original manager for Daniel, who moved his cassettes into proper distribution, noting that Jeff did not divvy up money proportionally.  “People are always trying to cheat Daniel out of money.  Someone would come up and say ‘hey, we’ll give you $50 to play.’ [imitating Daniel excitedly] ‘Awww, $50?!’ And so that’s why we’re here.”  She also shared that their mother, Mabel, is going through a lot of health problems at the moment straining the family.  It was during this time that Daniel strode determinedly through the crowd behind us to the booth, and behind the table exclaimed to Margie “I’m hungry, can I have some money for lunch?”  “Of course, I’ll give you $20, but no sugar!” she responded.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something really cool about seeing an intimate family moment like that, seeing what life with Dan (as Margie refers to him) might be like.

We bid goodbye and made our way through the rest of the fair.  At the expense of sounding totally cheesy, Daniel Johnston is really cool.  He creates original artwork, inspiration music, and hides away in his parents’ basement without a care in the world.  He showcases himself, and you get all his triumphs and all his scars with it.  And it’s funny to see so many musicians posture this idea of cool, yet Daniel is cooler than all of them while radiating all that’s not cool (mental illness, living with the folks, sweatpants).  The other thing I took away from the concert is a respect for Margie and the Johnstons.  Sure, they recognize the business the family generates from Daniel’s success, but it’s also undeniable that they have reached the point of understanding what Daniel’s best interests really are, and they roll with it with love and patience.  So much patience that they even sell the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Thanks to my friend Katheran for the photos.  It should be mentioned that she’s a reporter, so these are totally legit.

MP3 :::
Daniel Johnston – I Killed the Monster

Interestingly enough, I had the pleasure of seeing both Battles and Don Caballero play within a few months of each other last year at the ol’ music venue I used to help book and promote. This is significant as guitarist Ian Williams (pictured above, courtesy of Radio Free Chicago) brought his non-soloing fingertap riffage to Don Cab for years before Battles, and conventional lore suggests that the disbanding of the original Don Caballero lineup was not pretty. So the venue’s other talent buyer and I joked that Battles might have been supremely bummed if they knew we were playing the field with two of our favorite math rockers. If they read this blog, I guess they know now. Me and my big mouth.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen Battles yet, you can get a quick sample of their live show with the recently released (albeit on the other side of the world) EP Lives.

I love Battles, because I love prog rock. People who pan prog rock but also like Battles need to reexamine their opinions on music. Battles are as close to prog as they are to the often-dropped math rock tag (sans some of the corny theatrics, of course). This was reaffirmed for me during their performance with Caribou I saw at the Metro in Chicago last November. They widen the sonic space even more live, replacing the glitchiness of Mirrored with cascading swells of thick, aquatic, warm, analog astral plane journeys. They are compositionally tight and otherworldly live, just like the best proggers were. Not only do Battles sound like the music that would be pipped into the antennae of the Martian army in Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan, but they dress the part of an extraterrestrial army by sporting nothing but the most immaculately ironed, matching, crisp white collar shirts. That, combined with the bizarre six-foot cymbal ex-Helmet drummer John Stainer crushes and Tyondai Braxton’s “throw your hands in the air” dance he does behind mountains of samplers, creates a visually strange and captivating show without reliance on video or light visuals.

Battles Lives features a taste of what you can expect of the group live. So far, Lives is only available in Japan and is not economically priced. I’m sure it will see domestic release sometime in the not-so-distant future, so in the meantime, enjoy a couple of my favorites from the EP to tide you over. I’m not posting the whole Lives EP though, because this blog is for sampling, remember. Keepin’ it real, keepin’ it legal.

MP3 :::
Battles – Bad Trails (Live)
Battles – Tonto (Live)

Good gawd, ya’ll. The bootlegs keep coming in, but this time from the official source. WFMU just posted their archive of Growing’s performance at the absolutely immaculate All Tomorrow’s Parties. The attractive photo above is also from your menacing friends at Beware of Blog.I’m super bummed that I missed not one, but two festivals that were curated to my specific taste in music – as in, I would be stoked to see any given group on the festival roster. The other festival I speak of was Terrastock 7 in Louisville. Sure, ATP would’ve been a hike from Chicago (not to mention additional investment of time and money into exterminating bedbugs from my luggage due to an alleged infestation at Kutschers), but Louisville is just five hours and some change due south on I-65. I had no excuse other than pure dumbassery.

Anyway, Growing slays, and I hope they frightened each and every Hot Chip dork with their opening sets this month.

MP3 :::
Growing – Live at ATP

Alright, as promised, here’s the full set from My Bloody Valentine’s Aragon performance on Sept. 27.

This bootleg is every bit as clear as the Loom record (and oh junk, I have that too), with an even more balanced mix. As I mentioned in my commentary on the show, you can’t hear the vocals in this recording (with a few exceptions like “Thorn”) because you couldn’t hear the vocals at the show either. That’s the way Kevin wants it, and I shan’t question it. These recordings are in .FLAC format (a super high quality audio file), so you may need to convert them to your preferred file type. I use Switch. Switch features a convenient drag-and-drop GUI, so converting should be easy breezy for you. However, lots of media software supports the .FLAC file extension, so try it out first and keep it in the high quality format if you can. If you have any issues, contact me and I’ll see if I can help.

For extra reading whilst listening (or something to occupy your time while downloading), get a little back story on the arduous time leading up to Loveless, and the nerd fight between Creation Records head Alan McGee and Kevin Shields, here.

Again, thanks for Julian at Roof’s Up and “Alien Rendel,” the mystery recorder of this show. I probably don’t have to mention this, but I will anyway… when downloading bootlegs, remember to support the people to bring it to you. If you’re diggin’ on the show, but don’t own a My Bloody Valentine album (a travesty in and of itself), you should correct that here. I’m fond of the Tremolo EP, myself. And of course, if you like the myriad bootlegs and MP3s you find here (and my general surly and sardonic prose), be a champ – please tell your friends about this blog and link to me if you have a website or blog yourself.

Chicago – Aragon – 9.27.08 Setlist:

I Only Said
When You Sleep
You Never Should
When You Wake (You’re Still in a Dream)
Cigarette In Your Bed
Come In Alone
Only Shallow
Thorn
Nothing Much To Lose
To Here Knows When
Slow
Soon
Feed Me With Your Kiss
You Made Me Realise / Holocaust Section

ZIP :::
My Bloody Valentine – Chicago, 9.27.08 (approx. 485 Mb)

MP3 :::
My Bloody Valentine – You Never Should (Live in Chicago)
My Bloody Valentine – Soon (Live in Chicago)

No need for any commentary here – behold three choice tracks from last weekend’s My Bloody Valentine concert / religious sermon in Chicago. The audio quality is outstanding, so I assume this recording is directly from the soundboard. I plan to have the entire set up soon (probably Monday or Tuesday), so look out for that. That reminds me… yeah, why don’t you subscribe to the Decibel Tolls RSS feed, so you’re the first to know when I unload shipments of awesome on this blog?

Jump over here to read my, more or less, “review” of the show while you’re listening. And of course, I need to thank my friend at Roof’s Up for pointing me in the direction of this excellent bootleg (originally recorded by a gentleman with the handle “Alien Rendel”), as well as for the choice photo above.

In other news, the Sun Times’ Jim DeRogatis is still a moron.

UPDATE 10.6: The entire show is now up.

MP3 :::
My Bloody Valentine – Cigarette in Your Bed (Live in Chicago)
My Bloody Valentine – Thorn (Live in Chicago)
My Bloody Valentine – Slow (Live in Chicago)

Once again, “woj” emerges victorious with another quality recording of WFMU’s broadcast of last weekend’s All Tomorrow’s Parties. This time, he comes bearing gifts of the Brain Jonestown Massacre and Spectrum (a.k.a. Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom).

The Brian Jonestown Massacre says “no” to hippies and ravages through a cross-catalog of jams in a 45-minute span. Though the volume is low, the quality is good, with no discernible rip hiccups or encoding snags. The highlight for me includes, what I believe to be, an impromptu cover of The Smith’s “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” right in the middle of “Hide and Seek” (from Spacegirl and Other Favorites). And of course, there’s always the strange and entertaining BJM stage banter.

Your Anton Newcombe Quote for October 1st:

Interviewer: What keeps you buzzing as a band?
Anton: Amphetamines

A quick programming note – the Decibel Tolls is ALL NEW this Friday with Kenny Bloggins v. Anton Newcombe. Comedy ensues when Kenny accidentally gets into an online nerd fight with the BJM front man, but they make up and touch weiners afterwards.

Spectrum… just plain sounds amazing. Spectrum dusted off and reworked some old gems, such as their own version of Spacemen 3’s version of Mudhoney’s “When Tomorrow Hits.” I’m also including a celebratory Silver Apples MP3 below since Simeon used to jam with Sonic Boom, often uncredited, under the Spectrum name. What, you don’t have the SA/Contact joint? Take care of that! Oh, and hey, anyone got that Spectrum/Silver Apples split Lake of Teardrops? That shit’s hard to find.

The new Spectrum album is tentatively titled On the Wings of Mercury (though I’m sure someone will correct me if this is wrong) and is supposed to be released before 2008 on Space Age Recordings, but no official date has been announced.

MP3 :::
The Brian Jonestown Massacre at ATP – 9.21.08
The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Here It Comes
Spectrum at ATP – 9.21.08
Silver Apples – Misty Mountain

I’m not going to review the My Bloody Valentine show, at least in the traditional sense. Any show review more than a couple of paragraphs long while taking itself very seriously is innately stupid. At that juncture, such writing is fodder-saturated music critic masturbation, an attempt at trying to connect multiple points together and relate them to a particular concert or band when all you’re really doing is trying to show the world how smart you are. Fuck that. Unless it’s the Concert for Bangledesh, a live show is nothing more than a band who wants to rock it out in front of other people besides themselves and their recording engineer. It’s as simple as that. A long review also, statistically speaking, permits the phrase “rocked the [insert venue name]” to rear its ugly dome at some point, which I will not stand for.

So instead, I’d like to stave off the pretense and simply construct a grocery list of thoughts, then provide you with a couple of videos to czech out. First, I want to talk about my day today. How was yours? Well, great, that’s good to hear. Well, mine’s been busy. Besides uploading videos and returning missed calls, I’ve been taking time to learn American Sign Language.

I did something bad, you see. I took my earplugs out during the Holocaust Section. I did this for these reasons three. First, I wanted to experience it as it was meant to be heard. Secondly, the curiosity began to overtake me. It’s like when you have a friend, right, who says “hey man, take a whiff of this, it smells like shit.” You proceed to inhale the pungent, odiferous substance despite the disclaimer that you may not want to take a whiff of said substance or object. We all have this friend, and all do these things because we’re stupid and we do what our friends tell us. Kenny Bloggins has demonstrated time and time again that he is not a bright person, and proceeds to do things just like that. Third, I was feeling brave as I was rather drunk. We enjoyed a steady stream of screwdrivers at Bloggins Base Camp, the decided pre-game rendezvous nay two L stops from the Aragon, and preceded to continue with shitty domestic beer throughout the evening. So by the time the Holocaust Section rolled around, I was feelin’ groovy and ready and willing to do something dumb.

I now can’t hear a goddamn thing. Friends on the west coast attending this week’s shows – do not do this. This is a very bad idea. I now have severe tinnitus. This frequency buzzing in my ear right now… it’s loud, and it’s dying a slow death. I’ll miss not hearing this frequency ever again. It’s a good one. Now, the grocery list of thoughts on last night’s show:

1) One word: Biblical. Beautiful and unseasonably warm (78 degrees, breezy) day in Chicago, perfect for a religious experience.

2) Hopewell opened the show. They are a terrible band. If Incubus decided to experiment with dream pop, they would sound like Hopewell. The drummer rocked a mean faux-hawk. Not to be superficial, but if you’re in charge of finding support for the first appearance in over 17 years of a musically revolutionary/culturally vital group, conventional wisdom tells you to steer away from bands who elect, on their own volition, to sport a faux-hawk, ironically or otherwise. Hopewell pissed me off. I tried to think of a clever “1997 called and they want their radio-ready unit-pushin’ band back,” but nothing came to fruition. I can’t believe they’re on Tee Pee Records, who boasts an impressive roster of like-minded bands like Entrance, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Earthless, since those groups rule and Hopewell does a lot of other things that don’t include “ruling.” Also, unless you’re a rhythmically complex, percussively intriguing band (Caribou and Warmer Milks come to mind, for example), you don’t need two drummers. Most listeners can’t even tell that you have two drummers. All you do is give the show’s sound engineer a big fuckin’ headache.

3) The live show demonstrates that MBV is not just an aural representation of what’s in Kevin Shields’ head. They are a rock band. Colm O’ Ciosig is a visually engaging, technically mind-blowing drummer. Debbie Googe’s low-end hellride is fluid and gravitational. I have no idea where the “shoegaze” term came from. Sure, Kev just sort drifts to the back and hangs out, but Debbie is straight Headbangers Ball. She rocked out on a very handsome Gibson Thunderbird bass, and danced like no one was watching. Sure, MBV is a concept, but they’re also an incredibly tight and monolithic live act – a formidable force.

4) If your girlfriend’s retarded, please don’t bring her to a watershed event such as the MBV reunion. This inconvenient bitch in front of us was, I believe, aboard the X-press train and bumping into us throughout the entire show, flailing her arms around and epically boogying. She kept trying to, I think, grind dance with my girlfriend and I despite the fact that a) we obviously weren’t interested, and b) you can’t dance to “Cigarette in Your Bed.” Seriously, cut it out. If you can’t control your shit, don’t leave the Grotto. This giggly little hoop-earringed, fluffy red blouse broad almost got knocked the fuck out by L-Dog, who is about a foot taller, a wicked ol’ dame, and was halfway to livid. Heads almost rolled, so luckily, Scottie 2 Hottie valiantly escorted his inamorata out of there before she was abruptly ended… or at least forcibly launched across the room. So here’s your Decibel Tolls public service announcement: most reasonable people, like L-Dog, have a rather low bullshit threshold. Guys, before you bring your shorty out, consider – does my girlfriend act like a shockingly stupid asshole when she drinks/does drugs? If the answer is yes, then either keep her from consuming the finer things in life, or let her hang out at the frat house or somethin’ where that behavior is more tolerated than a concert of this variety, one where people are trying to have a profound experience. MBV is my church. How would you like it if I crashed your youth group gathering to act like a fucking dick?

5) Visuals are important to me. Most of the bands I like to see don’t shred finger-tap solos whilst riding their guitar like a cock out of hell. As such, you better have some sort of visual element to your show. MBV delivered. I love the look of grainy 8mm film, especially when it’s rapidly cut. Lots of bucolic imagery plastered itself across the entire length of the Aragon stage, cultivating a truly psychedelic experience.

6) Bradford Cox likened the Holocaust Section as standing in front of a nuclear reactor, causing his balls to retract. My friend Jerry described it as sitting under a Saturn V rocket during lift-off without being burned. I can’t think of any better way to describe it. You can’t differentiate tones accurately beyond 140 decibels, which is ten above the threshold of pain for human beings. Mogwai clocked in at about 137 decibels, and as I mention in this story, almost completely blew the power for the entire building they were playing in. The structure of the building was constructed sometime around 1910, when the idea of 137 decibels was a nebulous endeavor. The building and adjacent structures actually shook and vibrated. The other insanely loud band I’ve witnessed was delightful noise hip-hop group, Dalek, who’s massive sound and intensity comes from using clean, direct input samples turned at high volume peppered with tones and frequencies whose timbre burrow deep into your ear canal. My Bloody Valentine is a different type of loud. If I had to guess, it had to be around 145 decibels (I’d be interested to know if anyone out there has an exact figure). It’s the type of loud wherein every single frequency in the audible spectrum is filled to capacity. It was thick enough to cut with a knife. During the Holocaust Section, I kept inhaling through my nose because it tickled. My nostrils vibrated in and out as a breathed due to the sheer number of molecules being pushed and pulverized by the sound waves fluttering about. I felt like I was hit in the face. There were reports from last weekend’s ATP that the band actually dislodged pieces of the ceiling during the 25 minute ordeal. I believe it.

7) There were three distinct reactions to the Holocaust Section. You either threw your arms in the air and embraced the Second Coming, you covered ears and mouthed “nooooo,” or you tried to leave the premises. I had the elusive fourth reaction: the feeling that a monk might have when he decides it’s time to dedicate his life to the church. Let me know what Good Works I can do for you, Kevin.

Eight) Yes, the acoustics in the cavernous Aragon do suck, and wipe out a lot of the sonic subtlety that is critical to the texture of MBV. This said, I was expecting to hear a less-than-clear show. The ballroom just isn’t meant for amplification. It was just like seeing Low at the Singletary Center for the Arts at the University of Kentucky – an amplified band in a room meant for acoustic acts. In some ways, though, I love the roar this scenario produces. It becomes disorienting, which I like. You lose yourself. By the way, I had to type out “eight” so Wordpress didn’t turn it into a smiley face. What the fuck?

9) I cannot give you any more insight into the show if you weren’t there, other than MBV did not disappoint. Thinking about that, it would be very hard to not disappoint, considering the length of their absence, the group’s mystique, and the general hype and celebration behind this tour. Kevin and friends had a lot riding on these shows, and they delivered the goods, at least Saturday night in Chicago. I feel lucky to have been there.

10) It is my belief that there will be no professional shots of this show. We saw no press in the barricaded section in front of the stage, presumably the photo pit. I tried to snag a photo pass from Mr. P at Tiny Mix Tapes, who related to me that pretty much nobody was getting a photo pass.

This is the best video of the batch, the show opener “I Only Said,” which I immediately posted here yesterday. I’m impressed by the sound quality considering how small my camera is versus how insanely loud MBV is. You can’t hear the vocals in the video because, well, you can’t hear the vocals in the mix in real life either.

The sound on my video for “When You Wake” is pretty satisfactory. However, I’m disappointed that, for some reason, I decided to constantly pan the camera left and right. I’m really sorry I did this. It’s annoying

And here’s a 30 second clip of the Holocaust Section, about 10 minutes in. That’s all you get, 30 seconds. But I clocked it at approximately 28 minutes, give or take one. I was standing by the beer line on the periphery because, well, you should sip on a man soda whilst your face melts off your skull. Plus, this was best enjoyed from a bit of a distance. I didn’t have a death wish that evening. Also, did you know that there’s drumming in the Holocaust Section? Yeah, me neither… I found that out when I took the earplugs out and the high end appeared in the mix all of the sudden. My good friend J-Rowdy Risner helped me upload this one, and he describes it well: “My Bloody Valentine tests the structural integrity of the Aragon.”

My favorite moments from Saturday’s performance included the B-side “Slow” and the whammy bar plus rhythm section assault of “Nothing Much to Lose.” The MP3s below aren’t from the Chicago show, but sound pretty similar nonetheless. Don’t forget about the soundboard quality vintage bootlegs I have over here.

Chicago – Aragon – 9.27.08 Setlist:

I Only Said
When You Sleep
You Never Should
When You Wake
Cigarette In Your Bed
Come In Alone
Only Shallow
Thorn
Nothing Much To Lose
To Here Knows When
Slow
Soon
Feed Me With Your Kiss
You Made Me Realise / Holocaust Section

MP3 :::
My Bloody Valentine – Slow (Live)
My Bloody Valentine – Nothing Much to Lose (Live)