Can you tell we're having a relatively quiet day in the Lord/Morrow household? Also I'm in a much better mood today than I have been in.. oh, 6 months?
Some of you might remember that a little bit before the baby was born Davey and I got tickets to All Tomorrow's Parties NY, which seems destined to be one of the most memorable experiences of my life. They've been periodically adding more and more artists/bands to each days' lineup, and I just took a peek at the current list for the first time in a while and I am SO JAZZED!!!!!!!!!!!!! (This isn't all the bands- just the ones I'm most excited for; the full lineup is here)
Oh my god, fuck it, we did it- it ended up costing us even more money than we thought (more than my first car cost, we'll leave it at that) but after we got through (the server went down a few times, but Davey is the ultimate ticket securer) and the tickets were booked we were jumping around the kitchen, shouting incoherently.
I ended up talking to my mother about it yesterday, since she's typically the one who tells me to think realistically about things (rightly, since she's tried to save me from an innumerable amount of personal disasters throughout my life, in spite of the fact that I've rarely listened) and I thought she would convince me not to buy the tickets. Instead she was excited and enthusiastic about it, and even encouraged us to get a room right inside the venue instead of a hotel room outside of it, which would have saved us a few hundred bucks. I had been looking at a lot of different lodging options, including camping, renting an RV, and staying at a Best Western a town over. But my mother, typically a paragon of parental-type reality checks, said that I have no idea how much my life is going to change after the baby is born and that I should consider this my slightly belated "babymoon" since nothing after it will ever be the same. "Go all out!" She said, "Don't put yourself in the position where you guys need to worry about traffic or driving or never being able to split up or having to sober up if you don't want to; just go and enjoy it and have the most carefree possible time." Weighing that in on top of the overall truly legendary feeling of this festival and the knowledge (as Natasha commented yesterday) that we'd kick ourselves for the rest of our lives if we didn't go finally pushed us to decide to get tickets if we could. So we did! Eeeee!
I think I've mentioned this before, but David and I are in a truly unique and uncharacteristically convenient position right now, money-wise. We're going to be living in a five room house rent and utilities free for the next two years; Massachusetts has a five year look back period to seize non-monetary assets from people in elder care, like my grandmother, if/when they can no longer pay for the care on their own. It's fucked up, but it's the law. My grandmother transferred ownership of the house to my mother and my aunt after my grandfather died in 2005, meaning there's two more years left before we'll feel comfortable selling it or whatever we decide to do. We don't *anticipate* my grandmother's other assets running out, but don't want to do anything rash just in case. In the meantime David and I will raise the baby here while saving up money for our own place, preferably somewhere a little more pastoral than Springfield. We still have to pay for food, gas, and car and baby-related things, obviously, but we've got a free roof over our heads for the time being, which is ridiculously lucky and one of the major reasons why I thought spending such a large amount of money on festival tickets would be okay (or at least not COMPLETELY irresponsible)- it's the right time and place, and we'll probably never be in a position like this again.
Focusing on the positive, here's what David and I now have to look forward to in late September:
1.) Staying on-site at Kutsher's Country Club, where all of the shows will be taking place in small, intimate, indoor venues. Everything will literally only be a short walk away at all times, and we won't have to drive at all once we get there if we don't want to.
2.) Once again: We get to see MY BLOODY VALENTINE play to 3,000 people MAX, not to mention similarly small performances by Built to Spill, Mogwai, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra, Low, Shellac, Tortoise, and Thurston Moore (performing all of "Psychic Hearts!")
3.) More performers are going to be announced soon! Who knows who else we'll get to see?!? We entertained ourselves all of last night fantasizing about it.
4.) My return to Upstate NY, where I once used to live some time ago in one of my many former lives. The Catskills aren't Rochester/Buffalo by any stretch of the imagination, but it warms my heart just the same.
I don't know if many of you know this or not as I'm (not so) woefully disconnected from music media, but a few days ago David informed me that All Tomorrow's Parties is holding it's first ever group of shows in the US this fall, in Monticello, NY. The lineup of bands so far is basically right out of what my wildest fantasies were at 18 years old, almost as if a very old prayer was only recently answered. My Bloody Valentine (!!!), Built to Spill playing all of "Perfect From Now On," Mogwai, Shellac, Low, A Silver Mt. Zion, Polvo and a ton of other bands that I'd basically given up all hope of ever seeing live, never-mind all in a row and in intimate, smaller venues. If Cat Power was suddenly added to play all of "Moon Pix" a wormhole would be created enabling me to literally travel completely back in time to the year 2000. In case it wasn't obvious, what I'm essentially saying is that this is SERIOUS dream come true territory for me.
The issues? Tickets are RIDICULOUSLY expensive- $225 for three days of shows (so $450 for both of us), not counting hotel accommodations. We're guessing that all together it would cost us $500-$700 total, which is an unbelievable amount of money to us. We have a lot of money saved and can definitely afford it, but it's still such a high number that we're having trouble wrapping our heads around it. Finding someone to watch the baby won't be an issue for us (this is my mother's first grandchild and she would basically adopt him if we'd let her), but I'm not sure how I'll feel about leaving him for three days when the time comes, especially since we're already taking off for an day in August to see Radiohead & Grizzly Bear.
Tickets go on sale tomorrow, and we're still undecided. I really and truly would love to go, only because I feel like as the baby gets older and we get more and more wrapped up in the trials and tribulations of parenthood things like this will only become LESS realistic for us. Also My Bloody Valentine last played in America half of my life ago, and who knows if and when they will again?
I have construed a cheap little poll below if anyone feels like helping me out. What to do, what to dooooooooooo!!!!
$$$$$
Should David and I spend roughly $700 to see My Bloody Valentine, Built to Spill, Low, Mogwai, Shellac, Silver Mt. Zion, Polvo and other amazing bands I never thought I'd ever get to see live at ATP NY?
Thanks to David's quick thinking the other day (we were driving in the middle of nowhere when he suddenly remembered that tickets had just gone on sale, so we detoured to my parents house where we used to mothers laptop to get tickets), he, Renee and I somehow secured tickets to see Radiohead & Grizzly Bear on August 12th at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield!
This will be the second time I'll have seen Radiohead live (the first was at Suffolk Downs in 2001) and my first time seeing Grizzly Bear, whom I absolutely love and have been wanting to see for a while now. It's going to be tough to beat the show at Suffolk Downs, though, since it was without a doubt one of the best live show I've ever seen (despite it's size). THE BETA BAND and Kid Koala opened, which was amazing enough, but then after their regular set was finished Radiohead came back for two long encores, playing for almost THREE HOURS. I got to witness Johnny Greenwood experimenting with his beautiful machines for almost 15 minutes at the end of "The Tourist." They played almost every song I wanted to hear. The weather was perfect. The outdoor crowd was so well controlled that I, in spite of my amazing lack of height, got a pretty good view from my spot closer to the front without being constantly squashed into the barriers by rowdy teenagers and excitable drunks in the back.
I'll keep you all updated on how it goes! No doubt that it will be a welcome break for me, seeing as the baby will be about 2 months old by then (it's happening so fast)! In the meantime, here are some more Radiohead/Grizzly Bear tour dates:
08/03 - Verizon Wireless Music Center @ Indianapolis, IN 08/04 - Blossom Music Center @ Cleveland, OH 08/06 - Parc Jean Drapeau @ Montreal, QC 08/08 - All Points West Music & Arts Festival/Liberty State Park @ Jersey City, NJ 08/09 - All Points West Music & Arts Festival/Liberty State Park @ Jersey City, NJ 08/12 - Susquehanna Bank Center @ Camden, NJ 08/13 - Tweeter Center For the Performing Arts @ Mansfield, MA 08/15 - Molson Amphitheatre @ Toronto, ON
I have to admit I'm particularly excited to see Grizzly Bear. I can usually find a way to see every band that enters into my life in some significant emotional way right at the start of when they begin to touch me (Why? and Parenthetical Girls are good examples of this) but Grizzly Bear has eluded me in one way or another for over a year now. Seeing them at the Tweeter Center opening for Radiohead won't be as wonderful as seeing them at Pearl Street in Northampton this past September would have been, but I'm thankful just the same.
This song in particular was everything to me for a while:
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