Swans Again

The trip this weekend was awesome. Before the trip there was the gym Thursday. I got home pretty late Friday making phone calls for a bit after work. Jacques came and picked us up a bit after 6 and then it was off towards North Carolina. We made it to a little close to Knoxville that night and stopped at a motel. This was pretty close to the halfway mark. Then in the morning it was the rest of the drive through the lovely mountains and stuff. We got to Charlotte around 3:30 or something like that. We went to this barbecue place Mary Beth had looked up before called Midwood Smokehouse. It was good. The pimento cheese fries were the best part. Then we got out and were wondering what to do and what should I notice but the place is about next took to a record store! Lunchbox Records. Probably shouldn't have, but I got a bunch of stuff (mostly used and they were having a buy 2 get 1 sale, so, uh, does that mean anything?): Polygon Window: Surfing the Sine Waves, Kuedo: Severant, Minimal Wave Tapes Volume Two, Trans Am: Who Do We Think You Are?, Silkworm: It'll Be Cool, Melt Banana: MxBx 1998/13000 Miles at Light Velocity, Fly Pan Am: N'ecoutez Pas, Dirty Beaches: Badlands, Erase Errata: Nightlife, Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All-Stars: Guitar Trio Is My Life!, Klaus Schulze: Picture Music, and 801: Live. Then we went and found the motel we had reservations at and check in and poop and stuff. Then it was off to the show! Well, we got there and the band kept pushing back when the doors would open to soundcheck so we sat outside in the moderately cold for an hour or close to it. The opening band was A Hawk and a Handsaw and they were okay. Eastern European/gypsy music. Mostly accordion and violin. On the opening and closing, he played a mallet and string instrument like a zither or cimbalom, but I'm not exactly sure of which or whatever it was. Those were the best songs. Anyway, Swans were once again a motherfucking religious experience. It was much the same as the show last year. Last year had the advantage of not having my expectations anywhere close to being properly aligned. The way they opened with that insane drone last year was far superior to this year, but by all other accounts it was probably as good. I mean, so fucking incredible. Everything I had to say about last year's show still applies. The way it was just physically moving. This time we were up much closer and the vibrations of the sound in the air felt almost like waves of static electricity. Also, the incredibleness of the band, those six musicians up on stage. Again, it didn't matter what they played as long as it was them playing it. They did play "Coward" and it was great, but the most intense shit was the stuff I'd never heard before. This show cemented my feelings of Swans being the best fucking live band. I've seen some incredible motherfucking live bands in my time too. I hit the mech pretty hard afterwards. I got the new album and the new live album from last year's tour: The Seer and We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head. I also got a shirt that fucking says "You Fucking People Make Me Sick." and a tote bag that says "waste is obscene." In the morning we hit the road to head back home. As we were passing right by Asheville around lunchtime and we hadn't even eaten breakfast yet, I suggested swinging by the city to get some quality food intake. We did, but I didn't account for downtown Asheville being super crowded at that time on a Sunday. We went to two places with a too-long wait and then hit Chai Pani (the Indian street food place that is totally fucking awesome). It was really fucking awesome again. Had the okra fries and some other awesome shit (chili cheese fries and "sloppy jai"). That put us back a little on time, but we were okay. Overall the driving was fun. Mostly the usual road trip stupidity and laughing a lot at stupidity. Got back in close to 9 last night. I had to work and shit. Didn't get much sleep so today was kinda lame. Now I have more shit to do and hopefully I won't make tomorrow lame with this foolishness.