I boarded the bus that would take me to an Airbnb in Belltown, located smack-dab between Pike Place Market and Lower Queen Anne. Maybe this was an expensive mistake on my end to see Teen Suicide, one of my favorite bands on the planet. Was the train from Vancouver to Bellingham, and bus from there to Seattle, mixed with the cost of an Airbnb, worth it? Or was I just giving myself an endless hassle for little comeback? The time was 3:30pm, and I would have only two more bao to eat until the show ended at 11. I couldn’t tell, but the glossy image of someone being beat down under the portrait of Chairman Mao was unpromising. As I bit into my second bao, an old Chinese lady handed me what is probably anti-communist literature. I was armed with 4 baozi to last me until God knows when, and I was scared my two bags of luggage would draw me strange looks if I took them into the Uwajimaya across the street. I was haunted by these flaws while waiting in King St. Seeing shows, even as someone who should avidly consume music like a college radio snob should, is too much of a chore, and this admission has drawn some strange looks from friends and associates.
I’ve bought tickets to see Noodles, Titus Andronicus, and Little Dragon, and stayed home instead. Death Grips at the Catalyst was a claustrophobic, rowdy nightmare for which I might have been too sober to live through. At the risk of of aggressively name-dropping shows I’ve seen, eating only one meal the day I saw cult heroes Neutral Milk Hotel almost ruined the occasion I had to sit down for most of the show, and God only knows how much worse it could have been provided the general admission to the venue didn’t have seating. My relationship with live music is tainted by a select number of personality flaws: impatience, constant tiredness (and the desire to sit down most of the time), the inability to eat in a routine fashion (resulting in weakness at the most inopportune times), and anxiety towards fitting into crowds.