Monastery Show

Words don’t always tell you the truth. Diet cola doesn’t make you thin, a book doesn’t clean your apartment, and a band festival isn’t necessarily either of those things—or any good.

We drove out to this monastery called St. Ottilien for what amounted to a bunch of drunk eighth graders who’d borrowed some guitars and a microphone. They played the same fuck you all song on repeat in a barn for what felt like hours. The twelve-year-olds with the yellow wristbands—the ones who weren’t supposed to be there in the first place—probably had the best night of their lives because of it.

We posted up at what everyone called the dangerous curve, basically sitting there watching kids with maybe two beers in them behave like they’d found a vodka pipeline. There were monks there too, the kind confident enough to wear their hoods thrown back like it was nothing. It was a whole strange scene.

Blurred Minds came on late with this guy Kareem Weth singing, and they actually knew how to play. They saved the whole night from being a complete waste. Everything else before that was just noise and bad decisions, the kind of thing you’d only remember because you were there with the right people at the right moment.