Dance

[ateolf]

It was another day of Gonerfest. This time I broke it up into two parts. I went early as soon as it started (1:30) to see Cloudland Canyon. I keep missing their shows lately, so thought I should finally actually make it since I was going to be at the same festival anyway. And never seen them since they've been a three piece, and yesterday they even had an extra person with Alex Greene playing guitar! So they were really good live. At the end, Corbin put on a spaceman helmet. I stayed a little bit after that to check out the next band whose description seemed like it COULD be good, they were described as jangly indie pop and one of the people in it is in one of the other bands I'd seen the day before that I liked. So I stayed for a little bit but they ended up sounding more like Americana (with John Mellencamp vibes or whatever) so I split and went back home to take a break for a few hours. Then I went back this time with Mary Beth. We were there for a few hours, for a few acts before the main one I wanted to see. Nothing else really piqued my interest, mostly not bad but just there. Though this Japanese rock band closed their set with a cover of Ramones' cover of "Do You Wanna Dance?" and that was a little fun. In this time I ate a little and tried the barbecue nachos and they were a bit disappointing. I mean, they're barbecue nachos so they were still good and I definitely chomped the fuck out of them, but they did leave me wishing they could have been as good as they should have been (thanks, Railgarten!). Then we followed Mary Beth's strategic plan of getting up near the front for Etran de l'Aïr! And we were successful, making our way in as people were leaving after the previous band. There was one row of people in front of us (then they ended up leaving after a couple songs (what?!, right?!) and then we were right there! And they were so fuckin' good! This show was possibly even better than when I saw them last year! It helped that I was right up in the middle of it and just surrounded by all of the interlocking patterns. They understandably played a shorter set this time than last, but they're just so fuckin' good live! And they closed with a song that isn't familiar and is probably on their newest album that I don't have (vinyl only, no cd! sad!) but it was holy-shit good! After it was over I ran into Jenny and we talked for a second about how good they are and then it came up that she saw me on the video from the stream being projected on a big screen. Ahhh! I was afraid of that! A peril of the joys of being right up front! Even a stationary curmudgeon like myself can't help but awkwardly moving their body when being rocked by Etran! So I hit the merch table and got a t-shirt. Then shortly after that Mary Beth heard an announcement that they have jewelry at their merch table so we went back for some of that! (But I'm a big idiot and picked up a necklace that was different from the one she'd pointed at and bought that instead!) Anyway, we're getting close to it all being over.