Cretins

Escondido’s Team Cretins put together this show with a number of other mutual aid organizations to raise funds for the AIDS/LifeCycle ride from SF to LA. Benefit shows pretty much always mean the bill comprises basically anyone who will say yes, so this particular show featured tall:shadow alongside other rappers plus cumbia, hardcore and teenage dad rock.

Before the show Tall Can and I met up to kick it at Aztlan over tacos de camarón and papa locas con adobada from Xicanitos, the vendors who set up outside the Barrio Logan VFW during quinceañeras.

For a quick read on the bus over I cracked open Sally Rooney’s Normal People, a finely observed yet ultimately only slightly-above-average romance novel which like its college-aged characters spends most of its page count putting in major work to appear much smarter than it is. During a lull in the music everyone popped outside to roll blunts. Since I don’t partake myself I simply sat down to read — yes, I’m an enormous dork, but if you’re reading this blog you should already know that — and happened to open to a chapter headed “Three Months Later.”

“Is this guy reading Nietzsche over here?” I heard a voice ask. Some guy in jorts with enormous pupils. “What is that, ‘Three Monads Later?’”

“I wish,” I said. “Some Deleuze would really hit the spot right now.”

“You know what, bro?” he asked. “Sometimes I just Kant.”

I have to give the guy props for commitment to the bit. He spent the rest of the night trying to start circle pits during every set.

At rehearsal the night before the show, Lewis asked if I’d be interested in a possibly cursed amp. Or at least, it had been cursed at one point.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to break it,” he said.

“That’s a very convincing way to pass the curse onto me,” I told him.

The amp’s true provenance was something of a mystery but it’s cycled through a myriad of Lewis’s friends on its way to him, with each of whom Lewis has personally watched the amp falter, fuss and fizz until finally it found its final home in his capable hands, where after putting in at least double the original estimated labor. it would appear the curse may indeed have been lifted.

And so for once I got to play through a big boy amp, a 65-watt Music Man head, the very first product Leo Fender made after leaving the company named for him, powering a Marshall cab. This amp is something of an oddity, a solid state head nonetheless possessing a tube rectifier, allowing for a pretty legit overdrive section perfect for the aggressively midrangey tone I use in this band. We were, perhaps unsurprisingly, the only band asked to turn down during our set.

Irán from Yokai House had a bench for stick-and-pokes in the back of the room. I had convinced her to tattoo my leg during our set but we ended up playing so late she had run out of supplies. One day!

Erik from Year of the Dead Bird was DJing the show, having just returned from their Japanese tour. I haven’t seen that cat in forever and it was great swapping stories of our recent travels abroad and what a bummer it is to be back in the states.

Fantastic shirts at this show:

tall:shadow rides again in two weeks for Chicano Park Day:

Driving to the show playlist: Nathan was really feeling Philly soul and of course I’m never going to complain. I saw MSFB’s “T.S.O.P.” pop up in the queue and started waxing rhapsodic about the orchestral arrangements so of course the connection bugged out and skipped the song. Alas!

• Lou Rawls – “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine”
• The Stylistics – “Betcha by Golly, Wow”
• The Chi-Lites – “Have You Seen Her”