Holiday to the Boredoms (part 4)

The Boredoms

On Sunday afternoon, we abandoned nature to attend the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Kutcher's Country Club in Monticello, NY. The bands lined up for Sunday were particularly interesting to me including Deerhoof, Boris, and Bob Mould playing Husker Du songs with the band No Age. But, the real reason we drove six hours for a concert was, without any question, to see the Boredoms.

Image swiped from "Mountmccabe's" Flickr stream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/14669732@N07/3922214558/

Advertised to play Boa Drum 9, the stage setup had a circle of nine drum kits surrounding two structures of guitar necks fused together to look more like a sculpture than an instrument. Eight drummers accompanied Yamantaka Eye to the stage and sat quietly while Eye used a drumstick to carefully pound mesmerizing chords from the various guitar necks towering behind him. The crowd was intent on the growing composition, enjoying the mood but obviously anticipating the mania that was obviously soon to follow.

As Eye began pounding the guitars with more force, a distraction was occurring near the rear of the theater with security quite vocally demanding people move and not enter the center of the audience floor. Combined with screeches from their communication radios, it was growing slightly irritating until Eye conducted the drummers to start slowly entering the composition. Also around this time I started noticing that a ninth drummer wasn't entering the stage; while true, eight drummers is still a lot, it wasn't the nine we were expecting to be there. The drums picked up beat and volume rapidly, with Eye temporarily manning the ninth drum set, and the answer to a few questions was quickly presented.

Image swiped from The Village Voice, http://www.villagevoice.com/slideshow/view/28463544/32

Eye and a few others well positioned from the stage began looking to the rear of the theater where the sound of drums seemed to be emitting from. I began to think something was wrong with the feedback of the room when, being carried like an emperor, we saw the ninth drummer skimming across the crowd, answering beats to his peers on the stage with vicious pounding. Carried through the crowd, the found ninth drummer, floating while being expertly directed by the security crew, led the band into the start of the monstrous set we were about to experience.

Image swiped from The Village Voice, http://www.villagevoice.com/slideshow/view/28463544/35

For nearly 80 minutes, the Boredoms played a wonderfully constructed, nearly non-stop orchestrated piece that weaved in modified versions of songs from their catalog (Acid Police, Super Going, and Seadrum, to name a few I could recognize) with a deliberate compositions obviously written to bring out the power of the massive wall of sound the drum sets could provide. Eye, while chanting and screaming in time with the music, replaced his drumstick with an six foot poll that he used to strike the guitar necks simultaneously, adding to the crashing percussion. Somehow, it was all musically wonderful; hardly as chaotic as what words might make it sound to be yet devastatingly loud with the rhythm shaking my entire body.

Image swiped from Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/features/photos/galleries/736-all-tomorrows-parties-2009/

With each band at ATP having only 60-75 minutes, the Boredoms wore out their welcome with the stressed stage crew who, after fifteen minutes of apparently trying to reason with Eye that it was time to stop, started unplugging equipment and literally taking away parts of drum sets while the drummers continued pounding. Smiling, the band finally succumbed, abruptly ending their set to while applause from the blown away crowd. For hours after, we overheard numerous conversations throughout Kutcher's of how great the show was, and I've found numerous blogs online talking about this being one of the most enjoyable live experiences from any band.

Image swiped from Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/features/photos/galleries/736-all-tomorrows-parties-2009/

For me, it is hard to disagree; a week later the music is still stuck in my head (and my right ear still smarts a bit...like the Bug Off a day earlier, I also forgot to pack ear plugs). With some regret, I had missed the Boa Drum 77 on July 7, 2007 in Brooklyn, so this chance was very hard to pass up. I'm happy to say the trip to NY for this show resulted in no regrets whatsoever.

I didn't take a camera into the event, so I stole all the shots appearing above, giving credit as appropriate.