#chris control

Official press release: Following its sordid inaugural booking last year, Portland, Oregon-based anti-fest dubbed Festicide makes its revolting return this year, bigger and badder than before. From August 21st – 23rd, the melee will see nine shows invading nine venues across the city, with a total of thirty bands set to play, including Aerial Ruin, Danava, Drunk Dad, Ephemeros, Gaytheist, Muscles…

I said good bye to Dave today.

I wrote about him last week, how he made me smile and laugh and feel alive and jealous and happy.  And, today, in my sadness, I feel just as alive.  Albeit a little drunk, and more than a bit melancholy.

I saw faces tonight from dick deep in my past.  I saw Chris Trumpower, who went by Chris Control the last time I saw him, and who was the first person I knew who ever booked his own shows.  I saw kids who came to my radio show 15 years ago who are all grown up like me.   They have families of their own, have built businesses, raised homes, grown up.  And their beauty is a salve on today.

And I'm so fucking sad for the loss that brought us together.  I weep that I feel better burying these feelings of loss with shots of Jameson and tallboys of National Bohemian than just openly sharing them with people who I've known and loved for years.  But I also relish that we have tonight, with bands new and old.  And that we have each other.  We're so goddamned special, and we cannot acknowledge it in any other way than with song and drink and poetry.

In my narcissism I can't help but think that half the people would pay their respects were these boots on my feet.  Would Chris come down from Philadelphia to officiate?  Would Neal and Ryan ditch work and cry?  Would Mitch and Russ and Riley raise a glass and be up at 1, damp eyed and unable to sleep?  Who would drop everything?  Who would weep in private?

When you go through life feeling like an inconsequential shit, who can tell you that you meant the world to them, and make you believe it?

I wish I could tell those of you who are younger than me that this all gets easier, that it, as Dan Savage keeps saying, gets better.  It doesn't.  This life is tough.  It is base, and it wears on you like a grinding wheel.  But there's water for that wheel, and it will sharpen the knife of your life.  Relish the people who surround you.  They are the thing that will give you life when you just want to die.