C O U G H S

Recently the Chicago Reader included a blurb in their Best Of issue about my friends' old band Coughs. It brought back a lot of memories, and I ended up writing this little thing about being at their shows. It was originally posted on my Facebook wall on June 20, 2013.

I'm still surprised I never got injured at a Coughs show. Just imagine a room (no matter the size) packed wall-to-wall with a convulsing mass of headbanging misfit kids. It's no exaggeration. At every show we would all be smashed flat into each other (if you wanted to leave too bad, cause you didn't have a choice), so that each row was literally being supported by the row in front of it. Meanwhile, the entire writhing shit show would undulate forward in violent spasms. Forget it if you were in the front row and trying to stay upright, because you would inevitably be knocked into the drum sets over and over again, relentlessly demolishing them. And then the band would get pissed and stop the show and curse you all out. Then they'd start up again, and it would all repeat. It was great! I always worried that I would get my teeth knocked out by the person headbanging in front of me, cause my eyes would shut involuntarily and my own head would be banging. The day after a Coughs show I always felt like I'd gotten whiplash from a car accident. But miraculously that was the only injury I ever incurred.

My favorite moments were those when the band winded down to a tick-tocking reprieve. It was like the eye of a storm. Jail's sax would wail and Anya's voice would be in a steady, anticipation-building mantra, and the band would suddenly jolt you and then sink back into that steady building anticipation, and we'd all be waiting for the next jolt to knock us over. It was during that eye of the storm, that momentary reprieve, that everyone, squished and spent, would give up and lean onto the person in from of them. We were all so exhausted and sodden with collective sweat that we simply couldn't hold ourselves upright. It was strangely intimate. You could feel people's chests rising and falling, heaving, their heart knocking. That was my favorite moment in any Coughs show.

And then the punishment would start again.