2011
i can handle it
maura @ 5:58 pm
I am utterly behind on the New Yorker, as usual, but yesterday I flipped through this week’s issue. Only to see that I am missing the reunited partial Chameleons, now touring as Chameleons Vox, playing a couple of times over the next few days in NYC + environs.
I loved loved loved the Chameleons in high school and college. Loved them. Not sure how I even learned about them in the first place — they’re British and were far less popular here than some of the other guitary mopey bands in the early-to-mid-80s. I still listen to them on occasion and they’ve held up well. Lots of layery guitars and, it occurs to me now, sort of pre-shoegazey. They’d work well on a mixtape with Lush, for sure.
They broke up in 1987 and I never saw them play live. I remember there was a farewell tour that came through Philadelphia (we lived in Delaware at the time). They were set to play at Revival, a club on South St. I was 16 and looked far too underage to even attempt to go to the show. But I pleaded with my dad ’til he agreed to chaperone me. And then I called Revival and OF COURSE they couldn’t make an exception for an underage nerd with her dad, why would you think that?
Grrrr…even as an old lady I still think 21+ shows suck.
