[April 2, 2009]

I somehow randomly caught the very first episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1993 when I was thirteen. I’d be lying if I said I stuck with the show from that very moment, or I was even allowed to stay up that late. But by the time I was eighteen I had developed into a cult member in the celebration of complete nonsense, hanging on every peculiar one-liner the guy ingeniously fashioned out of thin air.  

All through my twenties I was obsessed with the show. I identified with the bizarre humor and self-deprecating antics. Quirky misunderstandings and off-the-cuff awkwardness.

The Masturbating Bear, FedEx Pope, Frankenstein who wastes a minute of your time, and The Slipnuts – the guys who slipped on nuts.

I watched religiously. Conan was not only a perfect fit into my very sense of humor, but he was also a voice of my generation – the odd, small group that never fully fit in with Gen X or Millennials.

At a certain point I started burning the show on to DVD-r just so I could hopefully re-view at some juncture. I even discovered various bands from the show that I would grow to love. Iron & Wine and Arcade Fire to name a couple.

In 2005, I witnessed Death from Above 1979 play “Romantic Rights” on Conan. I didn’t know who they were. The band felt insane to me. It was just two guys: a drummer who did vocals and a bassist who made all types of crunchy distorted melody that somehow magically carried the song like a rigid, twisted hovercraft.

Halfway through the performance, the singer stood up, walked away from the drumset and headed downstage. During a contorted bass breakdown of squelches ‘n shards, he stood behind the microphone while Max Weinberg came out of nowhere to take a seat behind the kit in E Street Band fashion.

Max couldn’t quite get his suit jacket off in time, so he started bashing the cymbals before his arm was even fully out of the sleeve. It was an incredible sight. Max finished the song on percussion, and it was a major surprise “whoa” moment for me at age twenty-five. I’d never seen anything like that.

I took a trip to Reckless Records and picked up the 2004 DFA 1979 album You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine.

The French-Canadian noise rock was a delightful mess that tracked with me via crazy bass and vocal melody. Tied to fuzz of cohesion and injections of synthesizer, the maddening drums felt cathartic as I had been tiring of most metalcore. I appreciated the energy meshed with high gloss. I loved the album. The pink album cover art was cool. The dudes just seemed cool.

I was into groups like New Order, Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys, but in 2005, I was becoming heavily interested in the French New Wave musical movement. Artists like M83 and Justice, arguably the pioneers of synthwave, had come out of the gates to grab me by the collar to show me which path I’d inevitably head down.

By 2006, while actively searching for more present-day electronic leaning projects, I learned that Jesse F. Keeler, the bassist from Death from Above 1979 collaborated in a disemvowelment called MSTRKRFT. I immediately picked up their album called The Looks.

It was a project not unlike Justice or early Daft Punk, but a bit darker, with more underground disco and house with vocoders and distorted rock riff loop elements touched in. Bass-heavy wails chasing glittering arpeggios on top of seductive dance grooves and soundclaps.

The arc of my musical universe is long, but it bends toward the electronic.

…

In 2009 I saw on MySpace that there was a free, “secret” MSTRKRFT show at Co-Prosperity Sphere. This was a venue I’d never heard of in Bridgeport, on the southside. Bridgeport was a neighborhood I had no experience with other than going directly to and from Comiskey Park as a little kid, up from the south burbs. Even then I would have had zero idea that it was even called Bridgeport.

Living in Boystown and having no real clue at the time how far Bridgeport actually was, I started walking there from my apartment at Belmont & Roscoe. I had done long walks to the Loop which took me roughly two hours or so, one way. But this trek was extreme. Really, I could have taken the Redline right to 35^th Street. Instead, after realizing just how far the venue was, I made it very complicated with ending up riding a few different CTA buses until I finally made it to 32^st & Morgan.

Just to add a tangent of strangeness and to illustrate how ungrounded I still was, for some odd reason I have a memory of eating a bag of jellybeans during the journey.

With all the time in the world to kill, I made it early. Since the show wasn’t starting for a bit, I walked a block north to a random, local coffee place that would later in life become a staple for me – Bridgeport Coffee.

Sometime on the horizon I’d become encapsulated by all things Ed Marsewski; Marias Packaged Goods, Kimski, Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream, Marz Brewing, Life on Marz, Buddy, Mash Tun Journal, and Lumpen Radio. I’d sometime later learn that Co-Prosperity Sphere, an experimental cultural center, was owned and operated by Ed Mar as well.

I would consider 31^st & Morgan the best intersection in Chicago until sometime later when I would move to Humboldt Park and discover Augusta & California Ave. The original Pleasant House Bakery was there in Bridgeport in all its English Royal Pie extravagance. Wandering hither and yon between establishments, you could bring Royal Pies into Maria’s pub, and you could bring beer from Maria’s bottle shop into Pleasant House.

Co-Prosperity Sphere was an artist’s haven. When I walked in, I saw art exhibits and I perused the pamphlet leaf piles of dates for screenings, installations, gatherings, and performances. The giant gallery was a different world and did not seem as big from outdoors on the sidewalk.

Programs and projects from the local region ecology of art and music, journalism and activism.

I stood on a balcony area and watched MSTRKRFT. Jesse F. Keeler, with a cigarette dangling from his lip, operated a duo set of laptops and a synthesizer. Shimmering cloud pads and programmed kick drum samples that thumped into my chest in syncopation with my elevating pulse. It was a beautiful thing to witness.

I’d say a vast majority of the music I was heavily into while coasting age twenty-three to twenty-eight I just can’t really sit down and listen to any longer than a few minutes. I feel I had a lull of lifespan during that window and some of the albums I had on repeat back then, just suck me back in to the void. Some toxic friendships I had or a five-year romantic relationship of staticism and dead settlement.

MSTRKRFT is unfortunately one of them. I’ll always love that first record, but I rarely go back for it these days.

I can’t recall how I got back home that night. Aside from those few notes I can’t even remember much from the set other than the fact I thoroughly enjoyed it. A memory splintered by time and a fleeting feeling of a full neighborhood on the southside I’d look forward to exploring.