o, the last three days...

we just got back from my bloody valentine. it was fucking awesome. not a huge surprise, i guess. it was indeed quite noisy. i recorded it. the people searching my bag even found my recording shit and let me in with it anyway. our tickets were not at the will-call window at all, but then the woman who had the guest list let us in anyway because for some reason the woman from will-call sent us to her. she just looked at my email printout and then just said- 'go on in!' wacky. i was a bit worried she wouldn't let us in at all, but i guess that she had the virtue of common sense (and perhaps distaste for ticketmaster). so it was really good. i'm fairly satisfied with my recording of the show- i'm burning it to cd right now so as to record nick cave tomorrow nite. i'm paranoid that i'll get my minidisc recorder confiscated and then that would be the worst thing in the world to have that happen and then have a my bloody valentine show recorded that i couldn't get off of the minidisc.
the drive home. never. again. not surprisingly it was quite excruciating and frustrating. i was aware that summer time was construction season, but i figure in september it would be fairly safe. this did not prove to be true. in nevada alone we encountered miles and miles of closed lanes a total of about eight times. i quit counting in nebraska because it took so fucking long. holy shit- seven and a half hours in the same fucking state. i thought it would be nice to be back in a midwestern state, but it just felt like we were in a time warp all day. you know what i mean- when you keep moving, moving, moving and time seems to just crawl and the mile markers start to repeat themselves and your destination only seems to be getting further and further away. i think i had about three or four meltdowns. i almost started crying at one point in nebraska because traffic had come to a complete stop at one point on the highway for about forty minutes and once we got out of it there appeared to be no clear reason for this delay apart from contruction. none at all. reaching omaha was quite the chore. after that i was listening to the jesus and mary chain for several hours while stefanie was asleep and as we were pulling in to davenport it was all foggy and this gas station was putting off this bright green light during that last song on 'darklands' which i believe is called 'about you'- it's a beautiful acoustic number. painfully gorgeous in fact. in the fog this green light was gigantic and incredibly beautiful. i got this feeling that i felt incredibly happy all of a sudden. thirty minutes later i had an excruciating acid reflux episode brought on by drinking one of those starbuck's energy drinks with espresso, guarana and vitamin b. this episode lasted for at least an hour or so- possibly longer. i had difficulty keeping track. it was during the last three hours of the trip- i do remember that.
all told we finally got home at 4:30 am- 30 minutes earlier than expected. if we hadn't been delayed for two hours in california right after leaving, and then delayed for another hour in nebraska the who trip would've only taken us about 31 hours. it ended up taking 34- which wasn't too bad honestly. i figured it would end up taking at least 35. two 17 hour driving days back to back. never. again.
today returning the rental car was the ordeal. i got about six hours of sleep, but i was so out of it today i was practically worthless. taking the car back to the rental place took about three and a half hours alone. yipes. stripes.
finally we got to see my bloody valentine and naturally it was everything i'd hoped it would be. there were a few songs they didn't play that they had been playing before that i was a bit bummed were missing- i.e. 'blown a wish' or even 'sueisfine'- but fuck, i got to see my favourite band ever and they did a 30+ minute 'you made me realise' so that was worth my money. holy shit was it loud. i actually wore the ear plugs. i listened to a few songs without them in just to see how incredibly loud it was. the music was pounding against my chest- it's quite a physical spectacle. the lighting was amazing too- sometimes i would close my eyes and the lights would kind of create cartoon like movements behind my eyes. at one point during the noisy part of 'you made me realise' they had these flickering lights going that caused strange shadowy patterns to dance around them when you watched them- i'm quite sure that they weren't physically doing that and that it was an optical illusion that these lights produced naturally. holy shit though- the noise section is pretty much a feast for the senses that must be witnessed to be believed. it was quite transcendent. at first there's a strange sense of panic and then after a few minutes it melts away and becomes something else- kind of calming and then finally it just makes time and space pretty much cease to exist. it could go on forever. it was a bit jarring when they went back into the song actually- it made me lurch.
i recorded the show and it sounds fairly decent so i'm looking forward to hearing it on my ipod. i will probably share it on here. i might put it into audacity and try and doctor it a bit to clean it up and make it sound better, but it already sounds quite nice. strangely the bass is very quiet but at the show it was incredibly hard hitting. my one complaint is that the bass was a little too low in the mix. everything else was perfect. it just was a shame to see debbie googe pounding the shit out of her bass and not be able to hear it. she is clearly a valuable and overlooked key to their sound. i think that 'to here knows when,' 'cigarette in your bed' and 'soon' alone would've been worth the price of admission. wow.