Get together and celebrate the songs

10th January, 2012

Blog tags:
- at the drive in

Any band will win and loose fans through out their career, so a reunion of any sorts is a chance for fans through the ages to get together and celebrate the songs. It happened with the Pixies, with Blur & Pulp (the latter two actually making me feel a bit old as I’d seen them first time round) and now it’s happening with El Paso’s finest punk rock band - At the Drive in. Again, I’m lucky to have seen them before - actually to have stumbled across them opening for the Get Up kids at the Chicago metro in 1999. Idlewild were recording 100 broken windows over there at the time and we took the night off to go see some bands. ATDI blew my mind – it was pure spirit coming off the stage - they pulled every one of their songs to the brink of collapse with chaos and energy. I’ve never seen a better punk rock show. Up until that point an Idlewild concert had been known as a pretty chaotic experience, but it was nothing like what ATDI could do. It was probably some result of this concert that we started to concentrate more on our strengths - writing melodic & interesting pop songs - rather than trying to lay waste to a stage when we went on it. ATDI had it covered. I never felt that their recorded work got anywhere near how good they were live, The Mars Volta albums are a much better indication of how unique Cedric & Omars musical & lyrical ideas are, regardless - seeing ATDI kicking the jams as the sun sets at Coachella Festival will be pretty amazing.

Below is an example of how terrible energetic punk rock can sound on television, and yet how it can still be great at the same time. If i was 13 and saw this I would have formed a band the next day. They don't give a shit, and I say that with the highest regard.