Y'all

Y'all was a band that existed for one week in late August 2003. 2 1/2 roommates nearing the end of a lease term decided to "do something about it." So in one week, they set up a house show (with a hip hop act, a honky tonk act, and a ceremonious goodnight to the illston compound--their home, practice space, and venue), wrote songs, practiced, and prepared. Here is one party-goer's account of the night in question...

When I arrived at the illston compound there were already people gathered on the lawn. A ceremony of some sort was taking place. There was a man in preacher's garments, a casket, a (yes, ONE) pallbearer, and a gravedigger. The pallbearer placed the tiny pine box at the preacher's feet as he addressed the crowd with taunts of fire and brimstone. As the sermon reached a close the pallbearer, who had slipped behind the crowd, produced a dented trumpet from which he played a disjointed version of TAPS. The gravedigger took one last puff of tobacco and, shovel in hand, led a group into the woods nearby for a burial that was equal parts hound of the Baskervilles and Tom Sawyer. Now I know these dudes. Two of them are weird and the other one is just strange. As the tension died, beer kegs were tapped and the party was to begin. People slumped into couches that had been moved to the lawn. Suddenly, there was a shriek of guitar feedback coming from inside... Calling us. We made our way into the house and packed the living room like sardines. Gaudy cowboys and Yup-hoppers were already mingling together inside. A strange sight indeed. The feedback continued, yet suddenly the men of the ceremony were abound. One rigged himself into a stack of amplifiers that reached above our heads, bespectacled with dark sunglasses. Another manned the drum kit and controlled a series of tape recordings of readings from the "Y" section of the english dictionary, a painter's mask attached to his face. The third man stood over a radio-shack-wet-dream of equipment, or just a keyboard, i'm not sure... it was all eclipsed by his massive beard. Also there was no light other than a 30 watt red light bulb on the other side of the room. CRASH, the music began. This was pure party noise rock. The drummer sang through something inside the painter's mask, the guitar player whipped the head of his guitar through the crowd as if he was spraying them down. The other man moved so fast (and, again, no light in the room really) that it appeared he held the aforementioned trumpet in one hand, the keyboard in the other hand, and a beer in the other hand... that's THREE hands, jack!!! Don't ask me, i don't know how he did it. All i know is that it was loud, fast, noisy and yet it sounded so good. The drummer never stopped with the percussive blasts and vocal antics, the guitarist grabbed the microphone and dove into the lap of a frightened young woman in the audience during a mid-song rant, the third man was producing sounds I had never heard before. By the time it was over they had switched instruments and the drummer had dashed to a back room and emerged wearing a comically oversized paper mache head through which he sang(?) the final song. A bicycle appeared in the room. Someone swung from the ceiling fan. Beer was poured into an amplifier to quell it's emission of sparks. Someone punched a meaty fist through the paper mache head, taking out the vocalist. And I, mild mannered college guy that I am, ended up on the floor bashing my own brains out with a bag of ice as people were losing their minds, falling all over each other. If you think lighting up a joint or batting a beach ball is rock crowd decorum, then you needed to see these guys. They really brough it out of ya. And man did it sound good too. -----Zach