Watching The Slackers show at Mississippi Studios! Epic!
Live music and I have been friends and lovers for years now. We met, we wooed, we exchanged vows…and now we continue to be quite intimate. Whether its a collosium, or a dive bar, there is nothing like when a band takes your auditory sense hostage and all you can hear is the music. Your voice is but a raspy whisper by the end of the night because you had to scream at the person standing next to you for them to have the faintest idea of what you’re saying. You step out of the club for a breath of fresh air quickly followed by a cigarette that may as well be post-quoital. You’re dripping with sweat, eyeliner running, and your entire body is even slightly vibrating….No you didn’t just get laid, you just left the claustrophobic front of the audience. Those first three rows where everyone is chanting the lyrics in unison with one fist in the air. Its not just shoulder to shoulder, its body to body, and you’re not even really in control of your own as the audience takes on a kind of unified, ameoba-like sway and flow. This my friends, it a thing of beauty.
The first show that I ever went to was at Wolf Trap Ampetheater in Virginia to see a bluegrass festival as a family. I was maybe seven or eight, and loved to dance to BeauSoleil-Creole type music, integrating a somersault in wherever possible. It was amazing! I recall playing a game with some older scantily-toothed hillbilly men to see who could submerge their head in this cooler of ice water the longest…and I won. I must admit, I’ve never been a country fan, but I adore bluegrass and rockabilly!
It was many years later till I picked my own concert to go to. It was the nineties, and I was “Just a Girl,” so naturally when No Doubt came to town, I was all over it. The line-up consisted of The Lunachicks, Weezer, and then No Doubt headlining. God, Gwen Stephanie was my idol. She WAS a punk rock chick, that had worked with Bradley Knowle of Sublime, and studded her own underwear with rhinestones…how I was to be let down in later years… B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
My brother Alex, who is now my best friend, and the reason I moved across the country, took me to my first real “show.” There is a distinct difference between a show and a concert: A show can happen anywhere like at someone’s house, in a bar, in a field and its usually made known through guerrilla promotion. Now a concert, you buy tickets for, its at a large venue, and there is generally a good amount of money spent on radio, newspaper, and other kinds of advertisement. This was a show…at a place called The Warehouse in Washington D.C. It was The Superbowl of Hardcore, an all-ages show of hardcore-punk-rock bands mostly out of New York City. My brother’s friends, all about four years my senior (I was 14 at the time)and maybe fifty pounds or more heavier than I, gave me “Pit Dancing 101” in my mother’s living room. “This is The Windmill.” “This is Pickin’ Up Change.” It was an incredible show.
My shirt got ripped in half in the Next Step Up mosh pit, and so stretching the shreds of my top to cover my very un-hip plain white bra, I went to find my big brother. His band Concrete Warfare had played a show a couple of months prior, after which they sat around and had drinks with the members of 25 To Life, so when I found Alex, he was at the booth talking with Rick To Life the lead singer. Turns out, he has a little girl, so when we were introduced and I told them my story, Rick gave me a free shirt to cover up. At this point…I was sold. I was sold on the music genre hardcore, I had already been sold on punk rock, and now I was sold on live, more intimate shows, where you could reach out and touch the artists…even talk to them.
After that…my love grew and evolved…stay tuned, my friends…
-Lady
Lady Katie Cook Presents: Music to my Mouth 
