Because I Wanted to Fucking Dance!

HONK! 2009 took place this past weekend in Somerville outside of Boston, MA. But a big thanks is due to my friend Alita for giving me the heads up on the event that I honestly did not know about – but she read my body language and excitement for recently seeing Mucca Pazza and clued me in. I glanced at the list of bands travelling to Boston to play and it read like an international smorgasbord of brass & drum skins. And I wanted to get my step on!

I got in touch with one of my Boston chums, “mulcad01″, and described the event’s affairs and location. He too wanted to enjoy the festivities, and declared that everything – everything! – was “about 2 blocks away” from where he lived. Somerville and Davis Square, here I come!

from NYC to Boston. I took the Bolt Bus, which comes highly recommended. They have 110V AC power outlets and a pretty good WiFi connection, and their crowd are generally advantageous of these amenities. So there are lots of laptops and movie-watchers. Yes, this means you’re more-or-less isolated from the person next to you, but it’s also a means of discussion & conversation if you’re so inclined, and I am!

It took nearly an hour and a half just to get out of Manhattan! So I arrived to Boston late, but it worked out perfectly that my matey mulcad01 got off work as I was arriving. mulcad01 and I went to a bar and watched the unfortunate conclusion to game 2 of Boston’s ALDS – no better than my Cardinals. And in true Boston style the bar was jam packed with revelers and fans. And in true Boston style they spent as much time yelling at the television as they did drinking – that is, LOTS!

mulcad01 was afraid I’d peek under the covers, so he wore his jeans to bed. Otherwise he said he always sleeps completely naked and chained to his bed (some alarm system “releases” him every morning).

After some driving around and looking at quaint streets and public art, we went to a NERF WAR GAMES event. No shit. See for yourself:

Everybody was really dorky and lovely and the donuts were only a quarter if you were participating in the war, but we wanted to HONK!-stomp!

(Please keep in mind we didn’t have a choice in attending the NERF event. Seriously! It’s not like… a geek like me would ever, I mean ever, be interested in anything like that!)

We proceeded back to Somerville where mulcad01 lived about 2 blocks from everything. And sure enough within minutes from his doorstep you could hear and then see the processions of bands converging on the town and then occupying their respective “stages”: squares, parking lots, plazas, bank steps. Whatever and wherever that could hold a couple hundred people was, for one day, converted into a great outdoor music spectacle! And the weather couldn’t have been better: warm in the sun, cool in the shade; you wanted a sweater otherwise but were fine to take it off and stay warm as long as you danced danced danced!

All the bands were, simply, amazing! Each band had two slots and played in two different places, so the opportunity was there to see every band and site. I did not. Mainly because I wanted to see two bands in particular, and a couple other bands if time allowed. The two bands in particular were Hungry March Band (who have graced these pages before) and the What Cheer? Brigade whom I first saw open the Swoon show at Deitch in Long Island City last year and they blew my mind then, and this time around they completely disemboweled me! mulcad01 and I danced so hard we woke up the next morning stiff and sore!

Oh yeah, here are those bands I was talking about:

What Cheer? Brigade from Providence, RI

Hungry March Band from Brooklyn, NY

Rude Mechanical Orchestra

I didn’t get nearly enough photos of What Cheer? Brigade. That’s because I was dancing so hard! Their second set was after sundown and the pavement nearly cracked from the collective stomping of the crowd! Especially that one song… you know it when you hear it. With that silent break-beat that transitions from horns to drums, breaks again and everybody starts whaling! Oh man I’ve had that stuck in my head for days!

Just do a Flickr search for HONK! 2009, you’ll find plenty more images already flooding online.

After the final sets the evening quickly died down. Everyone was pretty exhausted from approximately 10 hours of dancing and walking the streets, and believe it or not people needed rest… for the street parade the next day! Yay!

But before we get there I went on a nightly walking tour as I often do in new cities/towns, and mulcad01 showed me this round building that I would totally love to call my own. It’s been uninhabited for some years, and is only recently being “developed”. How properties like this ever fell by the wayside is beyond me. If it were mine, I’d paint it in such a way to make it appear like a giant cake! Yummy home!

And now, for the street parade:

What Cheer?, this time marching.

I didn’t get to see them the day before, but I guess this is Orkestar Zirkonium. . . oh yeah, THEY ROCK! Their songs were perfect for marching, as mulcad01 and I kept pace with them for many blocks!

We departed the parade however and took a walking tour and headed to Boston’s ICA where there’s currently some wonderful work by Damián Ortega installed. We took about the longest possible circuitous foot-path route there, and along the way saw a stairway full of slinky, a GIANT ship on the horizon, and mulcad01 pointed out what would be the best possible sniper positions (spillover from his service in the Watching Too Many Movies forces).

look at the size of that boat. seriously. it’s taller and longer than those buildings!

the identity of mulcad01 will forever remain a mystery.

We had some dinner, headed home and I packed my bags for departure. The festival was moving to Providence the next day for PRONK but unfortunately I had already booked my return ticket and didn’t have a place lined up. So I jumped the first available WiFi-enabled bus back to NYC and there I was at 2am.

And well, you know you’re home when:

and just to remind you, SOCKS!:

Bottom line is, if you have the opportunity, GO to HONK! You won’t regret it. What a joyous celebration of dancing in the streets and freedom of movement in an otherwise striated space. Express yourself through dancing!

[full set of images on my Flickr]

Then I didn’t realize until I started thinking about this post that Nietzsche took it up a notch – BAM!

At the London Calling party I mentioned in the previous link there was this douche of a guy with mutton chops and a trench coat and some rocker shirt just standing in the middle of the dance floor. Just standing there. He might have been a nice guy, he seemed to be with good company, I’m sure to him it was some test of social boundaries, but really he was just a wanker. And when people asked him, “Hey are you gay?” or “You gonna take that coat off?” while slinging their hair around and spraying their sweat on everybody, he would play it off as though the questions you’re asking should be about yourself and why you are even bothered by him in the first place. Okay, bullshit excuse. You’re just standing there!

Earlier in December I was at some rocker bar. Lots of dice, leather, too-tight brassieres and being in St. Louis at the time, heavy indoor smoking (almost forgot what that was like living in London and NYC for so long). But rockers these days just don’t dance, and therefore I don’t trust them. Sure enough this room with a ratio of 4-to-1 men/women just stood around for the most part, the men gathering in clusters and when the moment occurred, gawked and cheered at any female dancer. American rockers are too-often attached to some nostalgic image, or perception that you have to act and look and organize yourself a certain way because that’s how it was done back then – that is where I come from.

But I’ve always been more attracted to the cultural export/import than the original.

And the Japanese just uprooted my perception of rockers-don’t-dance:

No way! Okay, but is image everything? What moves do you have?

At this point I’m thinking, “It’s gonna be another movie about wacky Japanese subcultures huh. It’s not like he’s gonna start dancing or anything!”

some stretches, warm-ups, then suddenly:

WHOAH!

rival “dance” gang? You’ll have to watch to find out!

synchro-kick session

respect!

trailer here (.mov 37.3Mb)

by Peter, Bjorn and John

so Shalin lives in a dollhouse, Angie lives in a dog shack, and Martina doesn’t actually live here and was the catalyst behind convincing me and Angie to take a boat trip to Mexico. All of which has nothing to do with the house pictured above, but at the same time that’s where they all live, but not really. New Orleans is weird. Yup, and these are my friends.

Getting to the house was difficult, which was expected. The driver of a city cab didn’t use the meter and charged me $12 for a journey that would have been difficult considering the weight of my backpack but wouldn’t have been untraverseable any other day on foot (I’ve since realized). He didn’t know how to locate the cross street given the address and suggested that having to drive to find the address might be too far for the fare. Welcome to New Orleans!

Once settled, the first order of business was food, so we set out for a walk in search of po-boys! While walking, it became clear that New Orleans architecture is obfuscated by the abundance of growth and green here. The city neighborhood’s landscapes are dominated by trees, plants, flowers, foliage and probably account for 30% of the density of the town:

As for dinner, I think I just about managed to capture everyone with their faces stuffed:

So service here is so slow and almost awkward, but is a journey in and of itself, you just have to roll with it. Then you’ll have a great time! Our waiter must have made at least four maybe five trips to the kitchen to actually figure out what they had in terms of deserts, but eventually landed us with exactly what we wanted:

Devoured, Gone. We Are Hungry.

As I arrived in the city in the mid-afternoon, by the time we finished with dinner the sun was set. Even having been here a week now I’m divided between seeing the city during the day and seeing it at night. It’s beautiful both ways:

The moon here is flipping bright. Bright, and low. And routinely about as big as I’ve ever seen it. Definitely as bright as I’ve ever seen it. So much light gets reflected here, which was more pronounced once we got out on the boat (will save that for the next post).

As for my first night in New Orleans I experienced something magical that I highly recommend to all if you want a flavor of New Orleans that you simply cannot find anywhere else. I journeyed – under Martina’s guide – to the Venue, a club up river where DJ Jubilee (a high school special educator during the day) and Katey Red (a transvestite rapper and teacher also) spin a distinct brand of music that is unlike anything else I’ve heard. Part hip-hop, part electronica, part bass, Bounce as it’s called has it’s own beat rhythm and vernacular that rivals Grime in the UK in its propensity to energy, but is contained to the shores of this fair city.

Music and club shots begin around minute 4. That mirrored wall… will live with me forever!

DJ Jubilee’s myspace page

Next installment: the boat, the cruise, the gulf. Mexico here we come!

and happy today by the way, I hope you will be enjoying some time away from the grind with friends or family or whatever makes you tickled.

As for dancing, if you’re itching to shake your rump I recommend London Calling this Saturday, which will be the final Calling at the Upstairs Lounge on South Grand near Tower Grove Park. It’s $10 to get in but it’s a guaranteed good time as long as you like to dance! At 4am after the previous set at a local diner I was kindly referred to by one of the DJs as ‘the guy on the dance floor’. I don’t think he meant THE guy, but I definitely like to boogie down & let loose. What’s really incredible about their set is they’re largely VJed, as in Video Jockeyed. The music is banging, and that they have accompanying music videos for about 80% of what they spin (with downloadable set lists and mp3s also!) is downright incredible! It’s a layer of culture often overlooked in clubs and provides visual stimulus when your legs are otherwise out of the game (even I need a water break). They’re also very clever at documenting all of their crowd, including me from their previous gig:

while talking with my friend Andrew, note the Sheffield belt-knife and the bling ring.

“hardcord scooter rave” . . . wow.

[via Craig Atkinson]

thanks Steve!