October 13 2005: The Mountain Goats, The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers, Bellafea – Open End Gallery, Chicago IL

The Open End is an all-ages sort of place, in that it is small, serves a purpose other than live music venue by day, has only one toilet, and operates a shitty sound system. To make up for all of that there is a parachute hung above the stage which makes for some nice ambiance, and alcohol is served at a little table in the back. And by alcohol I refer exclusively to Franzia and PBR. And the PBR was behind the girl selling it whereas the Franzia was front and center on the table, so when I first approached this table-as-oasis I honestly thought that all the booze they had in the place was boxed wine. This made me very, very happy, simply because I had never experienced anything like that in all of my life and I try to stay open to new experiences. I was visibly disappointed to find that old standby of Pabst Blue Ribbon also available, but not so disappointed as to not order it exclusively for the rest of the evening.

Bellafea, from Chapel Hill, opened the show rather well. Very Rock + Roll, very screamy, and their set was bookended by two beautiflly quiet songs. The Prayers and Tears played well again, almost the exact set as in Urbana. The Mountain Goats this time played for an hour and brought Franklin Bruno to the stage for a few songs to close the night out. “Going to Cleveland” was played rather well, as was “Mole” with Franklin on keys. "No Children" was closed with and would not be touched again until Northampton.

After the show while waiting for the bus in front of the United Center, a few blocks south of the Open End, some cops stopped and one of them asked two of my fellow concert-goers and I just what in the hell we were doing, a bunch of white kids in this neighborhood. Waiting for the bus, we replied. The officer told us that we’d be wise to go somewhere else but it’s not like we had anywhere else to go, and then the bus appeared a few blocks away so the police bade us good day and moved on. It was my only exchange with the law all trip.