I absolutely meant to post yesterday, but then I watched Bubble Boy (JAKE GYLLENHAAL DO ME EVEN WITH YOUR DUMB HAIR) and ate tacos. So, a productive day all in all.
Anyway! I managed to make it up to Minneapolis to see Reggie and the Full Effect and Leathermouth on Tuesday, and it was AWESOME. Ok, and I say that knowing some pretty high levels of awesome in the past.
I am mostly going to copy paste big sections of an e-mail I sent the night I got home, because it is way easier than typing it all out.
We got there super super early so we could hang out at the bar before the show, and I maybe drank a little too much! Which is unfortunate because most of the Leathermouth set is a little fuzzy. But it was totally worth it because uh, yeah, Erik Funk from Dillinger Four was our bartender. I was maybe a little starstruck and had one too many Guinnesses to keep myself in check. He was amazing and kept calling my friend "brother". I knew he co-owned the venue (The Triple Rock) but I kind of didn't expect him to actually be serving my booze.
Anyway, so the venue is kind of tiny, and since we were there so early, we got right up close to the stage. Also there was this group of like, thirteen to fifteen year old boys that I hung out with the entire time and were awesome, which is maybe a little creepy but all the other people there were not cooperative with my efforts to make friends. Plus the kid said he liked my shoes, and they were pretty awesome shoes, so, we bonded. They were there for MC Chris, and they were ridiculously adorable fanboys about it, they brought him a tiara (which they never ended up giving him) and a weird smelly brown pillow they found outside that said "MC Chris" on it, since it was his birthday.
So, Warship played first, and they were decent, it is kind of sad because the whole time their um, bassist or guitarist, I wasn't really paying attention to what he was playing, was looking over at the drummer and smiling or playing toward the drummer or walking over there, and I was thinking, if I knew more about these guys I would be slashing those dudes so hard.
So then Leathermouth came on and Frank was very into it! He didn't talk much between songs, didn't do much audience interaction (although he did make a comment about um, girls being under eighteen or something, and how the song Catch Me If You Can (?) was for them - like I said, the whole thing was a little fuzzy) and he sat on the floor a lot to sing. Like, he actually sat cross-legged on the floor for a while, and he sang with his back to the audience for quite a while, too. And the most exciting thing that happened during the show was that the guitarist (or bassist, idek I am terrible) was playing right up front to the crowd, and Frank came up and behind him and fucking KICKED him in the tailbone, HARD, and the dude almost went flying into the crowd. Luckily the crowd was already pressed up tight against him, so some people probably got his crotch in their face, but he stayed on the stage, and then he went over and kicked Frank back. And then when the song ended, he grabbed Frank's head and kissed it.
Also, right toward the end Frank took a big swig of water and spit it, and a big glob landed on my arm. I was like SCORE. IDK. I've never been spit on during a show before, it was a big moment.
So then it was this dude MC Chris, who was pretty cool, but I was still pretty tipsy so I was maybe WAY too loud going "wooo wooo" (you know that noise you make when you're like, "yeah, me!" not like "hey hot stuff") when he asked who in the room had a clit. But the boys in front of me also represented, and I highly doubt that is true, so. I was not the only one being a dork.
Allow me to be a TOTAL and RIDICULOUS fangirl during this next part, ok.
So Frank comes out for Reggie's set, starts tuning his bass, and he's right in front of me. When I say right in front of me, I mean like, less than four feet away. He came over to plug something into an amp and I had to BACK UP to get out of his way. He was playing something while he was tuning it, and someone in the audience goes, "Is that Fugazi?" And he nods, and smiles, and they're like, "You have to go one up!" So he moved his hands up a fret, and was like, "This?" And they're like, "No, no, I can come up and show you if you want!" And Frank grins and is like, "That's ok!" lol. I had actually heard that he played on the left side of the stage for Reggie's sets, but I was on the right side so I figured I wouldn't see him much. NO SUCH THING OCCURRED. THE WHOLE TIME I GOT TO STARE AT FRANK AND PRETEND I WASN'T. He was facing Reggie most of the time so I got like, really good pictures of his scorpion tattoo. :-/ But he was so into playing Reggie's songs, it was great. Plus I got some decent pictures of his leg tattoos, which I never see pictures of, so that's a plus.
He didn't say much, but he laughed at all Reggie's jokes in that really silly laugh he has, ducking his head down and kind of shaking it. And then Reggie dedicated one of his songs (the one he did the video of that had Frank as Frankenstein in it) to Frankenstein and Dracula, and Frank kind of like, put his hand on his chest and did the whole, "aw, that's so nice of you" face, like he was touched.
James Dewees was, as expected, amazing. Even my friend, who didn't know any of these bands going in, is convinced of his awesomeness. He was wearing his Hannah Montana "popstar" shirt, and little booty shorts over pink half-sweatpants. I'm pretty sure the booty shorts were MC Chris merch, because the thirteen-year-old kid in front of me was also wearing a pair of them and they said something about MC Chris on the butt.
He played a lot of new stuff, but he did play Happy V-Day and Apocalypse WOW! which were the two I was hoping for, so I was totally satisfied.
He played a little bit of two new songs he's putting out under his Fluxation alter ego (persona? I don't know what to call his other characters), which is like, British synth-pop I think he said. I was pretty tempted to yell, "Yeah, Electro Boy!" but I am often alone in my Mighty Boosh love, and I was sobering up by then so I stayed quiet.
Some dude in the front asked James if he'd marry him and his girlfriend, and he said yeah, if they had the paperwork, but he was only legal to marry people in certain states. So he said if they came to the House of Blues the next night in Chicago, he'd marry them there.
Then for Reggie's last song they all came out in like, these god-awful wigs and flannel shirts and shit, IDEK. Reggie said something about why they were dressed up, but I was too busy laughing at Frank's awesome eighties hair. I couldn't get ANY good pictures of it because he was like, hiding behind the guitarist the whole time, but I got a couple of him in the background.
We didn't stick around afterward to get pictures or autographs or anything, just long enough to use the bathroom, which was long enough for me to drop my lip gloss in the toilet, awesome. Here, awesome venue, have a souvenir of ME.
These haven't cropped or fixed up at all, but do with them what you will. If you make icons I'd kind of love to know about it so I can grab some.
empires is playing the same venue in November, and I'm pretty sure I've got Allen talked into going (HEY THANKS
just_katarin FOR MAKING ME LOVE THEM), but Alkaline Trio is playing a different venue in Minneapolis two days later, and there's no way I can make both. Um. I've been wanting to see Alkaline Trio for like five years. :-/ But they're playing at this really upscale place, I don't know, like the pictures make it look like something you'd see in LA, where you'd order Cristal and stuff. I think I'd rather wait and see them when they come back around and hope they end up at a different venue.