sleigh bells at the mayan

all i have to say about alexis krauss is that i touched her.

multiple times. last night was great. the opening band was like a trio of Cousin Its. i think i would hide behind a curtain of my own hair too if i had to be an opening act with an impatient and unamused throng of people staring back at me. the lead singer was a woozy girl who made you feel like you'd just given a mic to the drunkest girl at a house party and told her to pretend to audition for woodstock. she kept getting accidentally tangled in all the cords on stage like a crazy octopus. 

i thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed sleigh bells live. they sounded very good but i thought their set was on the short side - a little under an hour. however, i heard all the good songs and anyways i don't know if i could have survived longer. i think i'm really starting to show my age at these music shows. that shit was loud. i had earplugs in and it was deafeningly loud. not that i was surprised - i would generally categorize sleigh bells under the genre of Noisy Music. some young fellas were bragging pre-set about how they weren't going to wear earplugs. "i'm here to see sleigh bells, maan. i'm not going to plug my ears." well, shit i'm glad i did. i remember the days of post-concert tinnitus and i don't miss them. 

i am also decidedly too old for moshing. i vaguely remember the days when how much we were trying to kill each other was indicative of how much we loved the music. now i just want everyone to stand still like decent people so i can properly gaze upon alexis krauss without getting the crap beaten out of me. afterwards i went limping and whimpering back to bagel's with a lump on my leg and right now i have bruises on my arms and legs, a bump on my head, and my left foot is swollen and tri-colored. i haven't been in a crowd of people attacking each other in so long that i forgot the cardinal rule of being in such an environment, which is that you absolutely must tie your shoes on tight beforehand. it's game over if you lose a shoe because the unavoidable next consecutive occurrence is to have your foot broken when someone inevitably jumps on it. so i was trying desperately to keep my sneakers on while jumping with the crowd because if you don't jump, you will be trampled. and whenever i jumped, i would land several feet away from where i had taken off. i repeatedly alternated between all the way stage left to all the way stage right without ever trying to go anywhere. it was like jumping in the waves at the beach. so some elements of the concert experience were unsavory but all that matters is that i touched alexis krauss.