The Loud Family Tour 1998:

All photos on this page by Jeff Latzko.

From: Jeff Latzko
Subject: [loud-fans] WCBR gig!

All,

I am in a real hurry, but briefly, the band played at WCBR here in Chicago at around 1:15 PM. They did Businessmen, Way Too Helpful and MAURITANIA (My suggestion of course.) I taped it in audio and I videotaped it in the studio. Only problem was you can't hear the vocals in the studio, they were miked and were wearing headphones. But still pretty cool. I know they were talking about me, the DJ and Scott, but I couldn't hear what they said. Anyway, I'll have to listen to the tape when I get home. After they were done, the switchboard was lit up! One reason was they were giving away CDs, but none the less people were interested!

More Later.

Jeff

From: Tim Pintsch
Subject: [loud-fans] Chicago Show

To begin with I had never met Scott before so everything I knew about him was second hand information. I was hoping to get to spend some quality time getting to know him a little bit, but I had no idea if he would be around.

I have only really been into the Loud Family since last October but I have been favorably impressed by them in recording.

The show wasn't set to start until 10pm so I showed up at roughly 7:30. I was favorably suprised to find him sitting at the Bar with his tour manager. Now please forgive me for forgetting peoples names as I met a whole bunch of Loud Fans, but I took the bus for a reason, and that is all I have to say about that (I forgot the tour managers name among others).

I greeted him and introduced myself and I was suprised by how open he was and we started talking right off the bat. We sat there, drank some beer, and talked about things. I asked him how you all were in person (The older ones on the list whom I have yet to meet: Stewart, Ana, Sue, Roger, Doug) He was very kind and polite with me. He patiently answered a lot of what I later found to be stupid questions and was amazed by how intelligent he is.

Conversation with him was very cool, it was almost like a Papa bird feeding a baby bird as I was engulfed by his philisophical speech. Later, more listers joined us, Only one of whom's name I remember (Tom) regretably, I hope the other listers who saw me at the show will please contact me via e-mail. We all sat down and spoke together. It was amazing at what common intrests we shared.

Well on to the show. Unfortunately the first 2 bands were not very memorable with the exception of the second, Windy & Carl, which were very monotoned and the only redeeming quality was Windy's voice.

It was a packed, and I do mean packed house. There was a lot of good energy in the room and the Family rewarded us for that with a double encore, unfortunately, I do not know most of the songs that were played and I know that this is of no help to the rest of the list, but I can tell you that I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

2 sidebars:

1.) Alison looks and acts so much more full of life then in any of the pictures I have ever seen. I am so excited to see them again. She had this sock monkey which resembled one that I had as a child and I was staring at it and asked her about it. She took a picture of me with the sockmonkey. In the beginning of the first set the sock monkey fell over and I went over to fix it and Scott said "Thank you for touching my monkey" in the begining of the set and everyone laughed at me. Rog, I believe, typed that Alison had an infectious positivity (Please forgive me if I am misquoting you) Which was absolutely true, she really drew people in.

2.) Nina Gordon from Veruca Salt was there... I approached her and told her I was a big fan of her work and was sorry to see Veruca Salt go, but look forward to hearing more from her in the future. She said "Thank you, I know its hard, its kind of like when your parents get divorced, but eventually you come to accept it and move on." She was so beautiful... (Just had to say that)

Oh yeah, and I told Scott that everyone said hello.

Please blame the lack of Encore songs on my lack of GT/LF knowlege, but know they got tons of support here in Chicago and we can't wait to see them again, and I will try and do some more listening before the next show... I'm hungry for more...

Regards,

Tim

From: Chris Hornbostel
Subject: [loud-fans] Chicago show...

My .02 worth...

My first experience with the Empty Bottle, after hearing so much about it...nice club, great place to see a show. It was indeed quite crowded; Carrie, the friendly EBottle bar manager (and old friend from Columbia, MO) assured me it wasn't sold out, but was close. I'd guess at least 350+ people in attendance.

Just before the band went onstage, I had to grab one last beer, and lost my plush spot at the front and center and had to "settle" on front and right center. Whatever. The only bad part about my vantage point was that early on in the show, Scott's guitar sounded buried in the mix. As I could hear it loud and clear later on, I can only assume the sound guy took care of things.

Weird thing about the show--the large, *enthusiastic* (I mean, really loud!) crowd seemed to go crazy for the...
...LOLITA NATION songs--strange considering that I think that record maybe sold a couple thousand copies before going out of print.

The set list was pretty much the same as the one posted on the website. A few encore bonuses: Alison sang one of her songs and it was absolutely terrific; catchy as hell and very Scott-like. Scott was also coaxed by someone into singing "Horse With No Name" right up to the "Heat was hot" line at which point he abruptly stopped and started laughing "That's enough for that one...". His "solo" (he was alone onstage at this point) encore then proceeded to "Dripping with Looks" which sounded amazing. The rest of the band joined him onstage for a few more numbers, one of which was "Like A Girl Jesus" which stupidly enough (that song has lots of twisty-turny personal connotations for me involving ex-girlfriends and the innocence of youth and other similar things, crapwise) brought tears to my eyes (maybe it was all the beer, though). Funny "Spot the Setup" moment: "I used to go out with Jim O'Rourke, but it didn't make my life okay..." as the first line. Was the Gastr Del Sol posse in da house? Hmmm.

Having seen five Loud Family shows and two Game Theory outings, I'd proclaim this one the best of the bunch--and this one beats out the Brian Jonestown Massacre show in St. Louis last month as the best I've seen this year (memo to Loudfans: See BJM live--ignore the self-created hype the band has; they're actually playing their songs, and doings so very well, and when I saw them it was staggeringly good. Two twelve-string Vox guitars onstage? Are you kiddin' me?)

Don't miss the Louds, okay? You'll regret not seeing this lineup!!!

--Chris

From: Matthew W. Bartels
Subject: [loud-fans] Chicago Show

To add to the copious commentary of other show-goers, I must simply say that again, I was totally blown away by the awesome show they put on! I brought Jed, a former cow orker and recent convert (he is one of those feg-crossover converts, and a huge Joyce fan to boot!)

We showed up at about 10:00pm, after the first opener, and talked to Scott for a while (including conversation about Rational Records, and the current state of the possible release of Lolita Nation by our own Stewart Mason).

When Windy and Carl began their droning set, I thought it might have been as cool as a two piece "guitar with so much distortion it doesn't matter where he puts his fingers" and "bass playing lines so simple even a piss-poor bass player such as myself could follow them" combo could be... I was hoping for some stereolab-lite". Unfortunately, they stopped playing for a second, and then started playing again... was it a different song? I couldn't tell! Anyway, we played some pool to kill time, and hightailed it into the main room when W&C's set had *finally* ended.

After much equipment wrangling, our dearest beloveds bounded out on stage, full of vim and vigor, to a fairly well crowded room, and Scott announced that people should be careful of overexcitement, because of the dramatic increase in the number of chords which would be played. He also thanked both openers, and then started hammering on his guitar with a beer bottle. Through a killer set, performed with much vitality and zest (and a whole lot of audience screaming, clapping, and carrying on) the band rocked and reeled, though the now-canonical set list, with (if he was telling the truth, I didn't recognize it) a cover of a song by a particular chicago band.

Goaded back onstage by incessand clapping, screaming, and rhythmic foot-stomping, they came back and played encore #1 (songs already mentioned). After their second departure, the fearsome noise from the audience brought Scott out again, where despite protestations of the lack of reliability of memory, he played a near-flawless solo "Dripping With Looks" (my request! Yaay!) He was rejoined by the rest of the band after that, and played some more, finally ending to a monstrous roar of approval.

The merchandise table was packed with supplicants, but I managed to walk away with the Execution Day 45" signed by Alison, as well as a sticker, poster, Game Theory booklet, and t shirt (which I wore the next day to the company picnic). Jed picked up IbC (since he didn't have as much cash as he'd thought he did.)

Oh, and in "Spot the Setup" the lines were:

I was being ironic
I was like rain on your wedding day
I didn't use positive thinking
I didn't imagine the audience naked
I'll do better next time...

-Matt Bartels

From: D. Eric Billingsley
Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Chicago Show

Tim penned:

>I greeted him and introduced myself and I was suprised by how open he was and we started talking right off the
>bat. We sat there, drank some beer, and talked about things. He patiently answered a lot of what I later found to
>be stupid questions and was amazed by how intelligent he is.

I absolutely agree 100%. There seemed to be alot of people wanting to talk to Scott, and considering I got to monopolize quite a bit of his time during his last visit to Chicago (and that I am in such awe of his musical brilliance) - I decided to just smile, say hello, and buckled myself in for one hell of a show.

>Well on to the show. Unfortunately the first 2 bands were not very memorable with the exception of the
>second, Windy & Carl, which were very monotoned and the only redeeming quality was Windy's voice.

This is where we differ - I thought the opening band was pretty damn good; ethereal, almost "Lush"-like (a good thing - I like Lush). My friend Tim bought their cd, lp, and 45 that the band had for sale. However, I found the second band to be INTOLERABLE! I noticed that there were many people around me with their eyes shut who seemed to be "enjoying" the band. Now, lemme say right now that I have no problem with noise as used in music. Some critics have referred to much of sounds inserted into Scott's albums as "noise"; and personally, I very much enjoy the "soundscape" that Scott creates individually for each song. However, "Windy & Carl" could barely play their instruments; or - if they could - they certainly gave no indication of this fact in their show. Their entire set consisted of the same 3 or 4 chords, in which there was little or no variance. They had distortion and feedback turned up to the maximum so that the audience would be so distracted by these musical affectations that they would not notice that "Windy & Carl" are lousy musicians. Apparently, the ruse succeeded with many in the room. I - however - was not amused. By the time Our Scott hit the stage, I was starting to get one hell of a migraine. Fortunately, all bad vibes were soon washed away by the overwhelming goodness of The Loud Family!

>It was a packed, and I do mean packed house. There was a lot of good energy in the room and the Family
>rewarded us for that with a double encore, unfortunately, I do not know most of the songs that were played and I
>know that this is of no help to the rest of the list, but I can tell you that I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Yes - it was a packed house, but I don't think it was anywhere near the capacity of 400 that someone mentioned earlier; maybe a hundred or so. Still - it was a big enough crowd to visibly have a positive effect on the band, as they seemed somewhat surprised at the enormous reception that was afforded by the enthusiastic crowd. After hearing about the 20 bodies that attended the Milwaukee show, I hoped that Chicago (well known for being very receptive to rock artists) would - at least in part - help make up for such a dismal turnout the night before. Now, I know I should have been paying closer attention to the set list; but I was having such a GREAT TIME, that it all but slipped my mind. In retrospect, I can tell you that I have only been able to come up with maybe 1 or 2 songs that I would have loved Scott to add to his set - other than that, Loud Family's set read like a personal "Best Of" album that included at least 3 tracks from the good ol' Game Theory days.

The highlight of the evening was when Scott (during his second encore) played "Like A Girl Jesus". I don't know quite how this song ranks among the rest of you (though I would be interested to know), but this song is one of - if not absolutely - my personal favorite. In addition to Tim, a former girlfriend of mine attended the show on my suggestion - having never heard of or from the band previous to this night. She was a perfect new recruit to the ways of the Loud Family; quite enthusiastic from the start - asking questions of Tim and myself concerning our opinions of the band. At one point, she asked both of us what song we wanted to hear played that night above any other. We answered simultaneously - "Like a Girl Jesus". A few minutes later, I saw Angel chatting with Scott just before the band took the stage. She later told me that she had "made a request" to Scott, and Scott had replied that he would try to play it during the second encore (I am sure the fact that Angel is quite a comely lass helped to sway Scott). Sure enough, with a little prompting from the audience (there were others who also obviously wanted to hear the song played), Scott launched into this beautiful piece, playing it flawlessly despite Scott's protesting that the band had only rehearsed the song once several months ago. Even now, when I recall the show, I get chills. I simply cannot verbally express the sheer joy that this show gave to me. The Interbabe Concern tour two years ago was great (as I remember it), but Friday's show was far superior (I think partly because the sound system sounded better this time, partly because of the high energy in the room).

>>2 sidebars:
>1.) Alison looks and acts so much more full of life then in any of the pictures I have ever seen. I am so excited to
>see them again.

I now see what all the fuss about Alison is from! She was incredible - a talented and accomplished songstress in her own right (the band played one of her songs, which was quite good); but her contribution to The Loud Family is immeasurable. I told Scott after the show that Alison is a "keeper", and that he should take steps to ensure her future collaboration in the band. It is quite an accomplishment for a brand new band member in a band with such a small but devoted following to command such attention and devotion right off the bat. There were as many people screaming "Alison!" as there were people yelling "Scott!" - for whatever that's worth. I love Alison!

Angel also loved the show - particularly Alison - I think partly because of the "girl-in-the-boy's-club" thing. I remember Angel commented upon arrival at the club that the ratio of men-to-women was like 4:1. It made me realize that LF needs more female fans.

I was simply blown away. I hope I don't have to wait another two years to relive the experience.

D. Eric Billingsley

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