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2012 was a pretty great year for shows, but of course, some are way better than others. Here are my top 10! Psychedelic Furs play tiny Maxwell’s in Hoboken, recapturing some of the magic from the first two awesome albums (at least until they play “Heartbreak Beat”). Bruce Springsteen! At Madison Square Garden! My first time seeing Bruce live. Everybody should go at least once and soon. He’s the hardest-working man in showbiz. Swervedriver at Bowery Ballroom. The juggernaut returns! Frontman Adam Franklin is awesome singing in this band and solo. Asobi Seksu at Highline Ballroom. Yeah, man! The coolest band in the world keeps smokin’! Agnostic Front at Warsaw. Three decades along, the veterans show the whippersnappers also on the Power of the Riff bill how it’s done. Asobi Seksu at Brooklyn Bowl. They count again because Yuki sang through a cold for this show. She is like so great! Grimes at Hudson River Park. The show almost didn’t happen due to warnings for a thunderstorm, but Grimes could not be denied. Not my sort of music at all, but from the standpoint of delivering a live show — she killed it! Ringo Deathstarr at Cake Shop. My favorite new band will go on to rule the fucking universe! Public Image Limited at The Music Hall of Williamsburg. John Lydon has a never-ending supply of bile. Corrosion of Conformity at St. Vitus. The Animosity-era lineup is having the time of their lives playing shows, judging by the smiles and jokes. “How’s the weather?” asked singer/bassist Mike Dean. This was about a week after Hurricane Sandy. “Too soon!” yelled back an unflappable audience member. New York. You gotta love it.
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Outside of San Diego, is there a better place to see Hot Snakes (above) and Night Marchers (below) than Alex’s Bar in Long Beach? Two world-class rippers in one world-class dive bar. We arrived at the unusual, awesome, and sold-out matinee on Sunday just in time to see Night Marchers (1/2 or 3/4 of Hot Snakes, depending on who’s drumming for the latter) finish setting up their gear and start their set at the ungodly hour of 4:37. Lots of simmering new stuff from the upcoming album and some fave older roots-garage rockers (“I wanna deadbeat you!“). Everyone’s obsessing over the RFTC reunion happening around Easter, but don’t sleep on the January release featuring the hard-rocking pipes of Swami John Reis.
(Art by spoon+fork.) Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Roman Catholic Church I went to before my father freaked out, was also the place where I went to get my flu shot. It was especially terrifying because Maximilian was killed by a lethal injection in the arm by the Nazis. Who designated this church to give shots? My Sunday school teacher told me that despite how crass and crude the Italian race was, they hadn’t lost the True Religion, and that was to their credit. The English had broken from God because Henry VIII was horny, she told me. I was six. If you didn’t do the rosary everyday, you could lose your faith. The devil was real and was always working to get between you and God. “Even I could lose my faith,” she admitted. “How could the devil get you? You’re a nun,” I said. “When I dress like a nun as a matter of routine and not ritual, then I am lost.” My father was a heavy drinker but unlike most alcoholics he was home a lot. He usually lay face down or up on the couch but he would get up to make coffee in the afternoons and to get the mail. I looked forward to when I was old enough to drink and grow stubble. One day he got a letter from his brother in Ireland that told him that his mother had died. He folded it up and put it in his back pocket. My mother begged for him to pray for his mother’s soul in purgatory, that we all should say the rosary together. He refused. She begged again. I got scared when he laughed. “Her spirit’s in another baby right now,” he said. “She’s being born again. She doesn’t need prayers.” He woke me up that night, his breath stinging my eyes. “The entire Irish race is being punished. We let the Christians pervert our Gods and smash our altars. They built churches over our sacred sites. This is where the troubles come from. ” I didn’t know what the troubles were back then, but I kept quiet. I would have been stupid to ask him. My father hated listening to anything–people, news or music. He had something under his coat. He took out a set of cheap dinner knives, still in the cardboard holder. The metal looked like tinsel in the light coming in from the streetlamps. They must have come from the 99-cent store. “Boy, come with me. We’ll throw knives in the water to celebrate grandma’s life!” I suddenly had a premonition as bright as operating-room lights. My father was going to bring me down to the beach, stab me and cut my throat. Then he was going to throw my body into a marsh. I would be found centuries after my death, perfectly preserved like those bog bodies I saw in National Geographic. I rolled over and wedged my legs between the bed frame and the wall. “No!” I...
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