having a backup is selling out

Shellac was excellent last night-they zipped through a bunch of jams in about an hour and 15 minutes, from Live at Action Park/Terraform stuff through newer things I didn't recognize. (Although they didn't play my girl and I's favorite song of the moment which is this kind of loose narrative one where Albini is kind relating this out-of-control sexual relationship, all from the girl's perspective-interspersed with completely incoherent screaming-we always think this would be most funcomtable song ever to have playing during a traffic stop) No one we were there with had seen them before, with the exception of one of Jenny's friends who said they had played at her house in Missouri, at 10 am for some kind of waffle breakfast-which of course sounds totally feasible alongside all the other fun self-and-otherwise created mythology surrounding the band (they only play on houseboats, recorded all their albums in one giant marathon session and have slowly been parceling them out over the last 10 years, all their songs are either about baseball or Canada, etc) When Albini broke a guitar string Bob Weston led an impromptu audience Q and A (although no one asked what the hell are in the giant aluminum boxes with enormous knobs that seem to power the band) Anyway, shortly after the string was repaired his guitar started cutting out intermittently, and they played a couple more songs they could do sans guitar and then apologetically called it a night. Initially I was bummed-how the hell does he not have a backup guitar by this point-but once me and Jenny got on our bikes and headed back across the bridge to our side of town, I was happy to be in some fresh air, and relieved that I wouldn't be getting in at 2:00 am and at work at 8:00.