Hey y’all. I went to LA for Numero Twenty. Photos are by me. Enjoy!
On February 18, my hair looked like shit. It’s all that I could think about for most of the day. I had showered but without a regular haircut, I felt like I was wearing a bike helmet of unmanageable brown hair. I kept seeing myself in mirrors or storefront windows and thinking, “I need a hat.” Bathroom after bathroom, dampened hand after dampened hand, the hair was winning. No amount of mussing and fussing with it could convince the cowlicks to cooperate. After lunch in Silver Lake, with hours to kill with a couple of friends, I set off in search of a hat.
I found a Brain Dead x Dickies pop-up store that had all sorts of streetwear wares. Toys, floor mats, overalls, hats, carpenter pants, vases, sweaters, even a fake garage for a fake band to play music. I asked for a hat, one that had the Brain Dead logo with a stylized BD that sorta looks like the Public Enemy crosshairs and says “Records,” underneath. The clerk looked directly into my eyes through his cool, slightly tinted sunglasses and didn’t avert that stare for the whole transaction. I felt like I was being questioned at the border as they weeded out poseurs. Papers, please. What’s your business in Los Angeles? Are you in this store for drip or for necessity? Concert. Necessity, but I love and respect the Brain Dead brand. I had the Brain Dead burger at Burgerlords two days ago. Thank you so much for letting me buy the hat.
90 minutes and a milkshake later, I hailed a Lyft from Sunset and Hyperion in Silver Lake to the Palace Theater for Numero Twenty. I crossed the street through traffic got into the front seat while my friends Lauren and Corey bounded into the back. Our driver, Richard, was a curly-haired 50-something wearing one of those silk shirts of mysterious origin. A cobalt blue shirt with a gold print that’s considered Greek or Italian or maybe even “Oriental” with some gilded dragon on it. There is no brand. There is no store that sells them. They are issued by the government to these guys. He let us know that the car was furnished with “Water, lollipops, and copies of [his] book.” He asked me how I was, I responded that I was doing well, and asked how he was doing. “I am... going to succeed! I’m going to succeed.” I texted Lauren in the back seat. “What’s the deal with his book?” I figured he’d be asking me to join his Multi-Level Marketing lifestyle within three blocks.
Lauren couldn’t make it out. I assume she didn’t pull the book out because Grindset Guys can hear like a dog. They can sense any twinge of interest. After a few blocks of silence, Richard asked me if I had opinions on the UFO sightings from the past year or so. I responded the way that I would on any first encounter: With slight trepidation but acknowledgment that disbelief in the extraterrestrial is arrogant. “That’s at least how I feel. I dunno, how do you feel about them?” “Well, as a documentary subject and eyewitness...” Oh thank god, he’s an Alien Guy and not a Grindset Guy. Richard’s book is about his firsthand encounter with extraterrestrials, but stylized and based on his experiences, with several plot points and gags stolen line-for-line from Independence Day (1996). That’s not an accusation, he outright told us he stole them after asking if we’d seen ID4. Hell yeah I’ve seen ID4.
Corey and I got him a little wound up on our trip since we had 30-some minutes to kill. Richard told us about a “UFO Summoner” named Robert Bingham. Bingham summoned UFOs in a parking lot near the LA River in 2014, where Richard was on a bike ride. Richard said that he saw a bunch of people in a parking lot, asked them what they were doing, and got the lowdown on Bingham. Then, he saw, “Three metallic orbs, each the size of Volkswagen Beetles,” take off into the sky. Robert Bingham does exist and there is video evidence of him summoning UFOs. At least, you can watch a video of Robert Bingham doing his thing and there is video evidence of a crowd reacting to seeing... something.
Richard went on about the giant that the US Marines killed in Kandahar and how he found similar bones on his family’s farm in Ohio, which the US Government promptly stole. “A giant, at least 12 feet tall, with eight rows of teeth in his mouth like a shark.” I asked him about the Time Well that the Marines claimed to encounter in Afghanistan and while he wasn’t too sure what caused it, he had heard of it and believed it to be real. If you’re not familiar, there are several paranormal experiences described by US Marines who were the first boots on the ground during the invasion of Afghanistan. One experience is that eight US Marines located a 5000-year-old aircraft and while trying to remove it from a cave, went MIA. It is suspected that they are in a “Time Well,” a structure where time does not exist. Cloakroom referenced it on their 2017 album, Time Well.
Numero Twenty was its own Time Well. It was the first time I ever truly felt like I was in a space where time did not exist. Everything was retro and current at the same time. Chris Richards from The Washington Post (and Q and Not U) did a great job of explaining the vibe from someone who was there for both these bands' heydays and this reunion festival. It sounds like a trip to see people half your age sing along to the bands you loved when growing up. I don’t think I’ve crested the hill that makes me old enough to get it just yet. I saw Title Fight songs in a Vans Skateboarding video this weekend (The 26th) and I feel like time has passed, but I don’t feel the way that an adult at Numero Twenty felt.
I say “an adult” like I’m not in my 30s, but I definitely felt less put-together than the people around me. I felt like a kid, but not in the cool way that Chris Richards intones in his piece. At first, I felt like I was walking around in my dad’s suit because it’s the only thing that fit me for this special occasion. I had no clue how to wear the cufflinks he gave me. I like most of these bands just fine, but I don’t have the nostalgia tied to them that most people in attendance do. The crowd was decidedly older than my friends and me. I remember people on message boards in the aughts and tens telling me about Frigid Stars. I thought it was boring at first but they’d go on and on. How they listened to it after a breakup. How it changed their lives. How I’d get slowcore when I was older. They were right about that last part for sure, but most of my experiences listening to Codeine are... listening to Codeine. Same for Karate. Those are bands where my experience is the act of listening to their records, trying to tap into a feeling I never experienced for myself.
If there’s one thing I’ve gathered from years of embedding myself among music nerds and old guys who Were There, it’s empathy verging on vicariosity. I’ll sit around and listen to old guys tee off about the one time they saw Fugazi or Braid or whoever. I figure I could be one of those guys some day, if given the arena. I go to record stores where my purchases and taste tend to inspire the guy behind the counter to let me know who he saw at what festival and how So and So was so drunk he forgot the words to whatever song. Sometimes I’ll have seen one of these bands and respond in kind, but it’s usually met with indifference. Nostalgia is fun for the person spinning the yarn but I can tell they’re less excited to know someone younger was there, too. Don’t you know how much I care? I’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours reading old show recaps or listening to podcasts. I still read old discogs and youtube comments to see if I can pick up on the lore of long-disbanded bands. Motherfucker, I care about your experience so when are we gonna talk about *my* life???
In five years or so, I assume. I’ll be quite equipped to talk about seeing the first big Restorations set at Fest 11. I’ll come on your podcast to talk about the time I narrowly missed being able to see Comadre but saw them perform their *true* final Fest set of Weezer covers. I’ll tell you about the time I saw Code Orange right after they dropped “Kids” off of their name and before they started to suck. I’ll spin the yarn about how Killer Mike saw me rapping along to “Kryptonite” in the front row of a show and gave me a mic to do the C-Bone verse. The guy older than me won’t care, but some guy downstream will. You’re 23 right now but you’ll be 30 and say, “Holy hell, he saw Hotline TNT HOW many times?”
There are two moments that stood out for me more than any other at Numero Twenty. The first moment was not the first chronologically, but it was the funnier of the two moments. A guy tried to stage dive during Everyone Asked About You. Nobody caught him. In the crowd’s defense, this guy got a full head of steam and jumped further than anyone should’ve. Nostalgia Icarus flew too close to the sun of youth, his wings melted in front of us as he crashed down to Earth. So it goes.
The other moment was when Unwound played and, during tuning after “Hexenzsene,” drummer Sara Lund said, “You guys can come up here,” and motioned the crowd to the front of the stage. The seating arrangement at the venue was a little odd. It was an older theater, full of seats. I wasn’t prepared to sit down and be stationary for Unwound, of all bands. How could I? We’re all here living out our youth! Nobody here is supposed to be old! The first three rows were reserved for VIPs only, or people who paid for VIP, and to have that wiped away at the artist’s request felt like the most punk shit in the world. That made me feel more at home in the Palace Theater than anything else. I wouldn’t have to see one of my favorite bands from the cheap seats. I could get up close-ish and watch. Unwound, through feedback, launched into the opener from The Future of What, “New Energy.”
Where's your energy? There's no energy
Where's your energy? There's no energy
Desperate kicks, faster still
What about the future of what it is?
State your age, set the stage
Start a fire for something new
Chris Richards’ words have been in my mind all week since Numero Twenty. The whole festival was drenched in nostalgia, real and imagined. My commemorative t-shirt and free tote bag are emblazoned with fake Numero logos from throughout the years. It’s fanfic but with a wink and a nod. “We know we’re not that prestigious, but bear with us.” Video content played between sets, some old and some created just for the event. It was, as he put it, a nostalgia trip worth taking. For some people, it was “Homesickness and time-sickness,” but in a Spotify-led landscape, we’re all homesick for an era that some of us never lived through. These are considered to be the prestige bands of their era. Their legacy is something that feels unattainable in this time period. Who’s my Unwound if not Unwound? Self Defense Family? I was born in 1991, I wasn’t even alive when Frigid Stars released.
If the internet and its flattening of time are taking away nostalgia, then we have to use our energy to make something new. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another. We cannot stop or even slow the passing of time, but we can celebrate it together.
Richards mentioned a teen banging his head and singing along to Codeine, how it would’ve felt funnier if it wasn’t so poignant. After the Codeine set, we hit The Drawing Room in Los Feliz for a nightcap and karaoke. I can’t help but think I felt the same way Richards did when I saw a younger dude sing a Jeff Rosenstock song that night. I winced at first but I don’t think it was because of the choice of song. I think I felt my age. It would’ve been funnier if I didn’t realize that in that moment, something that got me through my early 20s was an old song to sing at karaoke, a song that the people around me were singing along to. Even if I spent my teens listening to The Arrogant Sons Of Bitches and Bomb The Music Industry, something that I always considered contemporary was becoming legacy. I wasn’t living through anyone else for the first time that weekend. I was back to living my life.
On Thursday, I went to see Fiddlehead, Angel Du$t, and Drug Church at the Brooklyn Monarch. Three good, popular, active rock bands on one bill is a blessing, but I have been listening to every single one of these bands since their demos/first EPs. These are the bands that I have such serious connections to. I think my roommate Ruben and I listened to Fiddlehead’s 2014 EP Out Of The Bloom at least four times the weekend that I moved to Denver and we both kept saying, “This is so good but it’s a shame they’ll never do anything else.” I remember when a message board friend in DC sent me the Angel Du$t EP, Xtra Raw, and I remember saying, “Are you serious?” to the video for “Slam.” I remember downloading the Drug Church demo and reading Pat’s post about it on the Self Defense Family tumblr. I remember him saying Drug Church’s name came from wanting to have “The most Local Band name of all time.” These are the bands that I remember living my life to for the past 10-12 years. These are very well the bands that I could end up seeing in 15 years at some similar festival to Numero Twenty if Pats Kindlon and Flynn are still up for it. I assume that nothing can stop Justice Tripp, who seems to be incapable of aging.
I wonder if I’ll look back on the ‘10s and early ‘20s as some sort of golden age for the music that I like. With the sheer amount of music we all know and consume, will my generation even have bands we treat like Codeine? Time Well by Cloakroom may be my equivalent to Frigid Stars if only for being a slow, pounding, meditative record that I’ve played through every breakup I’ve had since its release. Do I think it’ll get the same treatment that Frigid Stars has? Maybe not. Maybe that’s for the best. The music I love could be celebrated in ways that I never considered.
On February 23, at the ripe age of 31, I felt possessed by whatever spirit of subculture to hop in the pit for Drug Church’s set. Reinvigorated by the past, I pushed people, shouted lyrics, and pointed my finger in the same accusatory way I have since I went to my first big punk show and saw everyone else doing it. I got up to the front, and during “World Impact,” I saw an opening at the front of the stage. For the first time in almost five years, I got up there, made a brisk walk to the other side of the stage, and threw myself off. Everybody caught me.
.