the note. friday. november 22, 2024. 10pm.

take note: the story of millimeters mercury is no fairy tale. it is not a story for the faint of heart. on the contrary, during our two years of rockin' the windy city, we have had the wind taken out of our sails. we have had the wind beaten out of us by the rocktopotamus. amps have been swiped, guitars ganked, cars kidnapped and smashed. but worse than all these losses, are the assholes behind them. our show at the up-and-coming late-night indie rock venue, the note, provided us with a healthy dose of dizzying highs and lows. the evening started on a very sour note. as we pulled up to the venue on miluakee ave, and loaded our gear in, we were met by the biggest knob of all time. the note's sound man, who we'll call.... DICKFACE (not to be confused with Neckface), made a very fast impression on us. this guy just had no idea how to keep it real. and when i say no idea, i mean this guy was like "keep it real? i don't even know what that means..." basically, some touring bands were added on to the bill at the last minute, the band order was up for debate, and apparently we must all have looked like kindergarteners and totally incapable of making any decisions since DICKFACE wouldn't let us settle the issue amongst ourselves. so we were suddenly in the predicament of having friends expecting to see us three hours before we would actually hit the stage. how convenient. but things got better. so let's forget about the sound guy. the logic of elliott, a rockin' chicago metal trio, who we love only slightly less than rock music itself and who totally know how to keep it real, invited us to play this show with them. come to find out, this show was to be their last show in chicago ever. during the first two sets, the mmHg crew could be seen in the back passing notes like first-graders (as opposed to kindergarteners) about the quality of the metal that was being thrown at us. gabe and i had a particularly interesting napkin conversation in which we derived a mathematical relationship between metal and whatever it is we play. it has to do with riffs and jazz and nerdiness. damn - it was mind boggling - if only we still had the napkin... anyway, so after two pretty hard rocking bands loe hit the stage and hit it hard. despite a few technical difficulties (and consequently, an opportunity for me to save the day...) they provided the sort of rock service loe fans have come to expect over the last 6 months. they showered us with tons of loe merchandise including hats, "wife beaters", and panties that joe alonso could be seen sporting on his head for the rest of show. [any more details from their set that we can include?] finally it was our turn. and having taken so long to write this write-up, i can't say i remember all the particulars of our set. but to be honest, sometimes our shows are such whirlwinds, i can't even remember them the day after. what i can tell you is that we went totally nuts. at one point, my guitar cut out in keep your hands away and i must have looked like a total maniac as i flipped around in a how-come-everything-always-breaks-or-gets-stolen frenzy and hummed my guitar part into the microphone. i'm sure we played every song way too fast and loved every second of it. thanks to anne for the great pics and for all our wonderful friends for coming out so late. keep on keeping it real stephanie, ella, and shane. perhaps we'll meet again someday.