Recap: Chicago trip

The marquee at the Aragon Ballroom.

As I posted in the weeks leading up to the trip, my friend Pat and I went to Chicago earlier this week to see The Pixies & Urge Overkill concert at the Aragon Ballroom. Here is a brief recap of our trip:

Day 1: We left Louisville at about 8:30am Eastern. We wanted to get to Chicago early enough to get checked into our hotel and get ready for the show.

Everything was going smoothly until we stopped at the McDonalds that is nestled in the middle of the Tollway just outside of Chicago. Pat and I both went in to use the restroom. After washing my hands, I noticed what Pat refers to as "the mystery stain." It was a large wet spot on my upper thigh. I couldn't tell if I had somehow pissed myself or if I had simply splashed water there while washing my hands. Either way, it definitely didn't look good. After deciding that it wasn't that noticeable, I attempted to walk to the car. However, outside it was glaringly obvious that I had had some sort of unfortunate mishap in the restroom, so I took off my jacket and covered the "stain" just as we passed a burly truck driver. The last thing I wanted was for a rumor that I pissed myself to hit the trucker circuit. Pat, who was doubled over laughing all the way back to the car, decided to preserve the "stain" forever with a photo. It's a classic.

We ended up getting to Chicago a little bit too early to check in, so we headed up to check out the Aragon Ballroom, the site of the concert, which is located "Uptown."

Unfortunately, there really isn't anything else to see in that neighborhood (other than guys asking us for fifty cents or a cigarette), so we decided to head to the hotel and see if we could check in early. I had used Priceline.com the night before we left to get a room downtown for $89. I wasn't sure what to expect from an $89 hotel room in downtown Chicago; however, it turned out to be a bargain. It was at the Holiday Inn City Center which is a couple blocks from both Michigan Avenue and the Navy Pier. Our room was on the 15th floor and had a great view of both Lake Michigan and the downtown skyline. The sign on the door of the room listed the maximum rate for that room as $530 per night.

After checking in, we ventured out on foot to find something to eat. A woman in the elevator of our hotel recommended a place called Boston Blackie's. It was an old school bar and restaurant that specializes in half-pound hamburgers. It was the kind of place you would imagine the guys from "Good Fellas" going if they visited Chicago. The food was really good. Total bill for both of us (with Pat's requisite Captain and Coke) was $24.

Because we still had several hours until the concert, we decided to hit Michigan Avenue for some sightseeing. I have to admit that I was a bit underwhelmed with the whole Magnificent Mile thing. Don't get me wrong, I love to shop; however, stringing together Nordstrom's, Guess, Crate & Barrel and the GAP ain't "magnificent." Bored, we hit Starbucks and headed back to the room.

We still had about 3 hours until we needed to leave, so Pat crashed out and took a nap. I tried to watch a little TV over his freight train-like snoring, but there isn't much on at 4pm on a Wednesday. The most entertaining thing I did watch was the weatherman on the local CBS affiliate. He had to have been a last minute substitution for the regular weatherman because he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. At one point, he marveled at the temperature difference between Minneapolis and St. Louis. They are 650 miles apart! "We've got some different temperatures over this area of land." And when he looked at the radar image, he said "As you can see, we've got some clouds swirling around right about here." Brilliant.

By 6PM, we were ready to go, so we headed out to find the train to the Aragon Ballroom. We needed to take the red line train, so we had to walk about 6 blocks to the station. Like a couple of tourists, we fumbled around trying to buy a CTA card for the $3 round trip fare. Because we were catching a train out of downtown, it was packed with people trying to get home from work. Even though we were standing right next to people, no one would make eye contact. It was really funny. People would look you in the nose or the chest, but never in the eye. Many had iPod earphones in; however, it seemed that some people weren't even listening to music (they would react to conversations around them). The earphones seemed to be just another way to avoid interacting with their fellow commuters.

The nausea-inducing train ride took about 30 minutes and dropped us off directly across the street from the Aragon at around 7PM. After going through the security shakedown out front (Pat was able to sneak a camera in), we found ourselves in a dilapidated old ballroom that looked like a poor man's Louisville Palace. The main floor was only about 1/4 of the way full, so we worked our way up into the crowd until we were about 5 people back from the stage.

Urge Overkill's equipment was already set up. This time around, all of the amps had the big UO logos on them which looked awesome.

Because they were opening, Urge played a much shorter set than the last time we saw them. They cut out songs like "Woman 2 Woman" (one of my favorites), "Stalker" and (thankfully) "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon." After Pat and I screamed for it for the last 3 songs, they finally finished with a fantastic version of "(Now That's) The Barclords."

While I thought the Urge set was really, really good overall, it seemed to lack
the energy of the Lexington, KY show I attended with less than 70 people. I think the tame crowd is mostly to blame. For example, in Lexington, "Positive Bleeding" really got the crowd wound up and they stayed up for the rest of the (longer) set. In Chicago, "Bleeding" didn't get any response at all. It wasn't until the last few songs that energy of the crowd picked up (and the band's as well). In fact,
it seemed that after realizing the crowd wasn't fully with them, Nash
would only look at the pockets of UO fans. We were jumping around and
singing along (we were standing about 5 people back from Nash's mic) ,
so we got quite a few smiles and "yeahs." But otherwise, he seemed to
look a little disappointed.

Pat kept saying that UO was much tighter than before;
however, they seemed to miss a couple of more times than the previous
show we saw. In addition to the weird cigarette break (in which Nash's
cord kept getting more and more tangled around his leg) in "The Break,"
Ed very obviously lost his place in Sister Havana (it was the same
place where the drummer from The Last Vegas messed it up in
Lexington). I believe it was during the "there's no time to lose"
section before the chorus kicks back in. And in "Erica Kane," they did
a 3rd "she's got the rhythm now" verse. It may have been part of the
show; however, it was a bit awkward and seemed, by the look on their
faces, that they had missed the transition back to the faster part of
the song.

As for the Pixies, they were incredible. Super tight. Charles' voice is just as amazing live as it is on record (as is Kim's). Getting to watch Joey Santiago reproduce all of the weird guitar sounds from the records was pretty impressive, too. They seem to make much more noise than what you would expect from just 4 people. And, unlike the UO set, the crowd was going nuts.

They played a ton from "Doolittle," "Come On Pilgrim" and "Surfer Rosa." Just a couple from "Trompe Le Monde." I believe they opened with "Bone Machine" and then "Gouge Away." The second half of the show was much more uptempo stuff like "Crackity Jones," "Head on"(which really got the crowd going), "No. 13 Baby" (another crowd favorite), "Debaser" and "Tame." During those faster songs, I could feel the floor of the Aragon flexing under my feet. Not the most reassuring feeling in that dumpy old building, but the show was so good I didn't care.

The difference in crowd response (between the UO set and the Pixies set) was the most evident prior to the encore. After they went around saying "Goodnight" to each other on the mic, Charles, Kim, Joey and Dave simply walked around the stage for a couple of minutes. The crowd was going absolutely ape shit. Everybody was jumping up and down and screaming their heads off. I've been to a ton of concerts and I can't remember a more raucous ovation.

I can say without hesitation that this was easily one of the best concerts I've seen. I would like to show you some photos from the show; however Pat was too afraid to take any so we only have the one blurry shot above. We saw some drunk getting thrown out (for being a drunk BTW). However, Pat reasoned that the guy must have also had a camera.

After the show, we waited over a half of an hour to file out of the Aragon. The only way in or out of the concert hall is via a single staircase in the back. So, as you can imagine, it takes quite a while for a couple thousand people to leave.

We waited for the train for about 20 minutes and then took the 30 minute ride back downtown. It was now around midnight. We hadn't eaten since our late lunch at Boston Blackie's, so we started looking for a good restaurant on our walk back the hotel. To our amazement, just about every restaurant in downtown Chicago closes before 11pm. We ended up at our hotel's cheesy sports bar where we planned to make due with some bar food. After our waiter brought us our drinks, he informed us that they didn't serve food after 11:30 (he acted as if we should have known this already). And he also said that room service had a very limited menu at night, too. "Maybe a turkey sandwich or some cheesecake."

We ended up at an Irish pub across the street from the hotel called Timothy O'Toole's because their kitchen is open until 2AM. I had Irish nachos (basically french fries with cheese, bacon and onions) which isn't the best idea at 12:30AM.

Day 2: I was awakened at 8AM by the person delivering our complimentary USA Today. For some reason, they felt compelled to knock to let me know the paper had arrived. Thanks!

So I woke up Snoring Beauty, we packed our things, hit the Starbucks around the corner and then checked out. Next stop...IKEA! Because it is way out in Schaumburg, it took us about 40 minutes to get there from downtown.

We spent about 2 hours picking out our plastic and/or laminated Scandinavian products. Pat dropped about $150. I did about $125 worth of damage.

On the way out of town, we hit a Denny's for a quick French Toast Slam. We arrived back in Louisville around 9PM wishing we had skipped Denny's.