Sunday 25/09/05 Towers of London, Suffrajett @ Bottom Lounge, Chicago

A pitcher of sangria.  Two bottles of Tennant’s from a mock Scottish bar staffed by an arrogant NASCAR ponytail bartender who insists on playing country music on the digitized jukebox.  Saliva from a public make-out session that draws the jeering and scorn of a pack of sadsack losers at the bar across the street who heckle and taunt only because they haven’t had a shag in five years.  These potions are swimming in our system as we step to the corner of Sheffield and Belmont and make ourselves known to the gangly peroxide alien at the ATM.

 

Greetings Donny Tourette.  Welcome to Chicago.

 

“You having a drink?  The rest of us is in that bar over there.”

 

Big City Tap.  Don’t mind if we do.

 

Inside, the discussion wavers from the band’s lifetime banishment from the Rock Am Ring festival to the ridiculous casting of Elijah “Frodo” Wood as both a football hooligan and Iggy Pop.  One Tower dismisses Mark Beaumont of the NME as a “knob.”  Another buys Gigwise a gin and tonic.  Class.

 

The Bottom Lounge is on its last legs, at least in its current location.  It shuts its doors in early October, waits out the winter of the painful heating bill, and reopens in February in the West Loop.  A celebration is in order. Gigwise tries to plant a seed in Donny Tourette’s head.  “You know, the Ssion [magnificent punk band out of Kansas City] had a stage invasion when they played here.”  The seed doesn’t sprout, but not for lack of trying. Donny tugs at a side curtain with the focused intent of ripping it from the rafters but the drape doesn’t budge.  We’re wailing on the railing, braying like a lunatic, standing on the end of the stage.  We don’t know one song from the other but it doesn’t matter.  This is a whole lot better than watching Beck go through the motions on a hurdy-gurdy (not to mention, 3.7 times less expensive).

 

At the merchandise stall, the pulchritudinous Simi of support act, Suffrajett, coerces us into purchasing an EP, an auspicious circumstance considering we were far too inebriated to recall the sound of her band.  The Towers decamp to their bus for more shenanigans.  We eat and egg and forget what day it is.  Rest in peace, Bottom Lounge.