ROCK REPORT: ROCK AND ROLLercoasters

RAWK!

You should post on this, too.

Rock and rollercoasters was awesome and heartbreaking and fun and exhausting and very, very loud. The highlights:

* St. Nehloiveht, the best band that never was. That was so, so nice to see. Everyone remembered her lyrics. Everyone faked remembering her instrumentals. But it also looked like y'all were really enjoying yourselves, which was just...awww. I'm tearing up over here.

* Fourth Rotor. Yow! They're so awesome, and so nice, and so scary, and I'm so glad they played Anti-building. I love Kami's deliberateness on that one. And Jake's baseline. And Douglas's scary, scary glaring. Fourth Rotor makes me want to jump up and down. And now I know that I should maybe avoid Finland and learn French.

* Terminus Victor. Victorious! Twice is nice. And loud. I don't think Scott will get over the Free Fall, though. The executioner hood on the one song in Champaign was awesomely crazy and TV-like.

* Mad Science Fair. Yay for the band that brought their own crowd! Huzzah!

* L'il Isaac. Not what I was expecting from their self description at all. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, because they were very good. I didn't catch the calypso groove. Mighty fine dancers. Reminded us how lucky we are to be able to get Czeckoslovakian beer for $3.50, even while announcing that everyone should move to Chicago.

* Cameo Turret. Quite good, I thought. What I saw.

* Batman: Did not knock my glasses off, but provided enough of a possibility of glasses-flinging to completely distract novice riders. Thanks, Batman!

* American Eagle (the ride, not the store): Much like the original Psycho, proves that older and simpler can be just as scary. Especially when it won't let you out.

* Champaign music scene: Sucks, at the moment. We do need more sluts. I was thinking about that last week, and I see your point now. People are too closed up and they don't even bother talking to people. I was thinking about how we got random drinks in New Orleans and met Polish girls in New York and yeah, those are big cities, and those people weren't from those cities either, and we were traveling and maybe (for me, anyway) less closed off, myself, but...that just don't happen in Champaign. Is it because everybody's 20 and too green? Is it because bands aren't helping each other out? Where ARE people going these days? Are they all at the new Starbucks?
I did want to tell you that I went to see Jason Webley last Thursday, at the Channing Murray, and they promoted the hell out of that show. He got good write ups in the weeklies, they talked about him on WEFT and WPGU, good word of mouth...and there were maybe 20 people there. He was talking about the fact that he'd played at a house in Galesburg the night before that had been much more crowded and lively, and couldn't figure out why last time he was in town, the crowd was large and rowdy, and this time were not. I did not tell him it was because of music scene prudery.

* SuperSpence and The Van of Steel: Wow! Yay again to Spencer and his mobile transport unit. That neither van nor driver overheated as we sat on 90 is a testament to superhuman forebearance. Rounds of applause and cocktails to both.

* Speaking of cocktails...Russian Quaaludes.

* Cal's in Chicago, which is as grimy and tiny and beautiful as the Sears tower is shiny and tall and creepy.

* Meg, who earned tides of good karma for hosting four...no, five...no, six...okay, seven of us, and had the hives.

* And lastly, to the ostriches that will one day transport Great America VIPs at great speed past the dawdlers, the spatially unaware, and the zig-zagging Stroller Utility Vehicles.

Please add.