It was the last night of Riot Fest, the punk fest that spent the previous five days stretching 39 bands across five Chicago venues. I had wrangled a press pass to see Oi! legends Cock Sparrer. With songs like "Where Are They Now," "Runnin' Riot" and "England Belongs to Me," the five cockneys are the most famous band you've never heard of.

They were headlining at the Metro on Sunday, the final of four bands. Now, I'm going to put some YouTube videos in here to show off the bands. I shot none of these. Not a one

The first band, Fear City, was pretty good, I guess. It was a skinhead band and skinheads always scare the crap out of me, so I'm not the best judge.  They're this weird combination of things that remind me of neo-Nazis (shaved head and tattoos) and things that remind me of my friend Rob (shaved head and tattoos). They made a lifestyle out of something my friend does to hide the fact he's going bald.

It's ... uncomfortable.

The second band, however, was amazing.

I've never seen Flatfoot 56 before, aside from a few online videos, but I've always been a huge fan of theirs in theory. Why? They have a bagpipe.

This band was worth it. They lived up to the hype of having a punk rock bagpipe.

The gauge of a punk show isn't the sound quality or whether the band hits all the notes. The gauge of a punk show is the pit, that rampaging slam-dance of a crowd ramming into each other for joy.

I had a view from the balcony and was able to watch the bands whip that pit into one beyond any I've seen. Maybe it was just the shock of seeing it from above like aerial footage of a hurricane, but it was a spectacle. Faces were jarred, humans were tossed, mohawks were bent beyond recognition.

Starting under Fear City, the pit truly took form under Flatfoot 56's steady fast-paced punk. By the time the band separated the crowd into two halves and ordered them to charge each other, the phrase "frenzy somewhere between warrior and psychopath" popped into my head. And if you had seen the whirling, swirling, blasting mob in the pit, you would have agreed.

Then came the Lower Class Brats. Very good, but honestly not my cup of tea. The lead singer looked too much like Johnny Rotten. Another guy looked too much like Joey Ramone. There's a difference between celebrating the spirit of '77 and just celebrating the haircuts.

But, like I said, the pit is the final judge. And based on the sheer numbers of people the bouncers had to shove down from crowd-surfing, the Lower Class Brats were a triumph.

With a final warning, ("You don't see Cock Sparrer; you witness Cock Sparrer.") the Lower Class Brats left the stage. Then came the gods.

I admit I didn't know Cock Sparrer before the show. I knew of them. But seeing them live, wow. Just wow.

Cock Sparrer is one of those bands that never quite made it as big as others. While the Sex Pistols and Clash rocketed to stardom and disintegrated, Cock Sparrer kept going, filling the hardcore fans with decades of music.

During the show, lead singer Colin McFaull said they've only played in the U.S. five or six times, always in New York.

Chicago, bring them back. Often.

Let me put this as simply as I can: They were one of the best acts I've ever seen. And I've seen Ray Charles. (He didn't see me.)

Cock Sparrer whipped the crowd past warrior, past psychopath, past fundamentalist tent revival and epileptic seizure straight into that mythical state known as "British soccer crowd."

Physically, the five men shouldn't form a band. They should form a bowling team. It looked like if your dad joined forces with the "Batman Begins" mob boss, the fat, flat-top guy from "Big Love," MacGuyver's boss and The Thing from the Fantastic Four. And then showed that they were cooler than you could ever hope to be. Clapping and stomping, screeching and blasting music, they gave an energy more than all three other bands that night.

If I could describe how it felt to be part of that surging, screaming, fist-pumping crowd, give me the Nobel for literature now. Even leaning on the balcony next to a lip-locked couple and the bowler-hat wearing bagpiper from Flatfoot 56, I felt part of the mob. I felt like I was part of the hurricane pit below and the mohawks and skinheads alongside. I felt part of the baby punks and the Hot Topic rebels and the drugged-out old-schoolers and even the older couple who brought their 12-year-old to a real, live rock and roll show. Starting as individuals, we became a crowd, changed by what we had seen. I screamed along with lyrics I was learning along the way and sweet baby Jesus it felt good.

I've been to concerts that made me angry or made me smile. I've been to ones that made me maudlin or made me feel inspired. But I've never been to one that made me so truly, deeply happy.

It was cold outside after the show. I never stopped smiling as I trudged through that cold, dark night.

As the air chills and leaves tremble down to reveal fingery branches scraping across slate-colored skies, a simple question for you, dear readers.

You're in Chicago. Zombie apocalypse breaks out. What do you do?

Fill out the comment section with your answers, critiques of others' answers and basic discussion about this pressing topic. I want to know your zombie attack plan.

A couple ground rules:

• We're going Romero zombie on this. They're slow and you only get infected if you get bitten. If you get bitten, turning into a zombie is inevitable, but not immediate. You have enough time for a tearful, dramatic and character-revealing good-bye.
• There's also a chance the zombies will just tear you to shreads and eat you. You don't know which one will happen.
• You're starting from your real life. Don't say "Shoot them with an uzi" unless you have an uzi or explain your plan of how you would get one.
• You're you. You're alone. And you may only start from either your apartment (say what neighborhood) or, for the out-of-towners, by the Bean in Millenium Park.

Hurry, I can hear them wailing outside. What's your plan?

I'm listening to "People Who Died." I'm listening to it now, about half an hour after finding out Jim Carroll died.

I'm not going to pretend Jim Carroll's death cut me to the quick, like we had a special relationship where I called him Jimmy and he called me Superdude or some other affectionate nickname. I'm no closer to Jim Carroll than any other of his fans.

In fact, I'm probably less close. I thought the movie "The Basketball Diaries" was, at best, pretty OK. It was just good enough to get me to read the book, which I mostly remember for the references to a young Lew Alcinor. As for Carroll's music career, I love the song "People Who Died" with a white-hot passion, but after listening to the song "I Want the Angel," I decided I should ease off the man lest I be disappointed again. I can't find a decent link to it, so find it yourself.

Funny. I'm listening to "I Want the Angel" now. I actually like it. The words are still infuriatingly close to being on the same tempo as the music without actually being on the same tempo as the music, but I've got a generally good feeling about it tonight. Maybe it's nostalgia or maybe it's because I haven't listened to it in probably eight years.

I'm on the song "Wicked Gravity" right now. It's better than I remember too. It's really good. I can't find a link to that either.

This summer, we lost the stars of a video with dancing zombies and of a movie called "Ghost." We lost a guy whose tagline was "And that's the rest of the story" and all I could do was laugh at the unintentional irony.

Now the guy who wrote "People Who Died" died. And I'm not laughing. Serves me right.

This year has taken someone from every camp. Even cynical meanies lost a poet.

Like sports? 2009 took Nick Adenhart, Harry Kalas, Wayman Tisdale and Steve McNair. News junkie? We lost Walter Cronkite, Don Hewitt and Robert Novak. Art? Good-bye, Andrew Wyeth. Love the '80s? Forget about it. Michael Jackson, John Hughes, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze and the funniest Golden Girl.

How did both David Carradine and Ricardo Montalban die and not make the top 10 this year? Hell, even the Kennedys lost two.

I'm not going to lump all these people together. I'm not going to claim I'm as sad about Billy Mays as I am about murdered Russian journalists. But I'm also not going to claim that some deaths aren't sad at all. They're all sad.

But why am I so broken up about Jim Carroll, a man who did one song I loved and a bunch of stuff I thought ranged from OK to pretty good.

Because he did one song I love.

All these people did something that improved our lives. Even Michael Jackson, an endless source of jokes for society until death canonized him, gave us "Thriller" and "Billie Jean." David Carradine was in "Kung Fu" and "Kill Bill." Larry Gelbart brought us "M*A*S*H."

And they all died during the same revolution of the sun.

I'm going to do something different here. I'm going to close with a poem. It's by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who died 120 years ago. It's called "Spring and Fall, To a Young Child." It always makes me think of lost friends, of, to quote the late Mr. Carroll, people who died.

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880

It's less than an hour until my 30th birthday.

Half of me wants to join my girlfriend on the couch, snuggle her and watch some TV.

The other half wants to run down to the lake, rip off my clothes and dive in, howling at the moon as I paddle naked through the water.

So I compromised -- I'm writing.

I'm scared as I write this. Scared of age, scared of the homogeneity that seems to come with it. I'm scared of my new job. Scared of people who think emote is a big word.

I'm scared of never having that flush of excitement only the young seem to possess. I'm scared of that curse of the 30-something former hip kid -- the curse of the expert. There's a floppy-haired, horn-rimmed subset of 30-somethings, sick little man-hags who know they'll never be as excited about anything as they were at 19. So now they have to know more about it. They have to be able to break down movies, music, art, society. They have to have opinions and criticisms. They don't have the desire to open up and scream "I LIKE IT, SO HELP ME FUCK I LIKE IT!"

 As for The Concert Project, I made it. B1g T1me was the last show of my 20s, thank God. A friend and I sat at a bar I had never seen before, drank beer, took shots of rye and reveled in the music. We called it quits after the first set and went to our respective homes. I worked in the morning.

Technically, though, the show that finished the 10 the project required was a U2 cover band. They have an upcoming gig at a church, their site says. The gig is called the U2charist.

So it goes.

I want to stand on a cliff and scream again. I want to feel like a fucked-up kid, but in fact I'm a man. I've been a man for quite some time. It snuck up on me.

There's half an hour to go. I've been writing for 20 minutes, with a short break to go to the bathroom.

I don't know what's going to happen to the rest of my life. 30 is just a number, but it's a number that makes you think. This paralysis could apply to any moment of any life. It just comes more often when the odometer of life rolls over another milestone.

Here's a prayer from a godless man. It's a prayer for my 30s.

May I swim in the water and never find shore.

May I never find peace, never find answers. May I never stop looking for truth, even after I've found it.

May I never think I know anything. May I never give up and say, "Well, that's it. No new interests, no new hopes. No new dreams." May I always find something new to love.

May I remember at all moments that more can be done. May I remember at all moments that the good fight is on.

May I not want these same things forever. May my godless prayer change as I do.

May I find happiness, but not at the expense of meaning.

May I never fucking move to Naperville.

And as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. First person to name that reference wins a birthday card.

18 minutes to go. 

Happy Birthday to me.

The little girl laughed and giggled as she danced with her father to a song about fucking tranny prostitutes.

Ah, rebellion.

Last weekend, with the sun in the sky and a helmet on my head, I biked to Wrigleyville for the Lake View Music Festival. The festival, in the shade of the ballpark itself, had everything I expected -- booths with crafts, goods from stores like yuppie mainstay The Alley (pre-approved revolution for the trendy Northsider) and more corporate sponsorship than a college bowl game.

It also had great food, people enjoying life and some pretty decent cover bands. The fun was contagious, I thought as I leaned against Wrigley Field, eating my pizza slice and watching happy parents dance with happy children.

The song was "Basket Case" by Green Day.

In 1994, that song was my song. I would watch MTV waiting for the video to come on. It would play, I would flip and then I would wait to see it again.

I was 14 and angry all the time. I was neurotic, freaked out, stressed and worried. And somehow, Green Day made it OK. They yelled about the things I didn't whisper. They got on MTV flaunting what I was ashamed of.

I hid as much as I could; they screamed it.

God bless that video and all the "Brazil" knock-off babyfreak mental patients in it.

Brazil: Movie, 1985

Basket Case: Music video, 1994

Green Day was an important band for me. It was gateway punk. A few years and some green hair dye later and I was ear-deep in the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Dead Kennedys, Dead Milkmen, the Dead Boys, Deady Deady Dead Dead and the Deads.

OK, so I made the last one up.

My hair's stayed the same color for the last eight years, but I'm still a freak about music. I'm just getting into The Dictators and I just picked up a 5.6.7.8.'s b-sides compilation I can't stop listening to.

And now I see a little girl and her daddy dancing in Wrigleyville to my song of rebellion, my gateway song. He flipped her a few times, the first flip coinciding with the word "whore" in the line "I went to a whore, he said my life's a bore so quit my whining cuz it's bringing her down."

Song by song, the band ripped through my life. Weezer, Modest Mouse, The Killers. All the bands of different eras of my past, the band played until I realized, "Yes. Yes, they have always just been pop songs."

I will love these songs always for what they are and what they meant in my life. But they are, always have been and always will be just pop songs, not concentrated rebellion meant only for angry ears. Little girls and daddies love them too.

It made me feel good. It made me happy. And this summer of Wayne Coyne and Verdi would not have existed without the song that touched me when I was an angry 14 year old who thought I was too crazy inside for anyone else to understand.

Thanks, "Basket Case."

This weekend, I learned the difference between a blues band and a band with the word "blue" in the name.

It was the name of the band that drew me and a pack of friends to the Gallery Cabaret last night. I was the one who did the research on this, the Googling that led to the bar. Once again, the Internet done steered me wrong.

I really like the blues. I've been in the mood for it lately. It's not a sad music if you do it right. It just feels like life.

It's a music that doesn't lie.

Enough about that. The music Friday wasn't blues, but it was good. The open act (Despicable Music, according to the Web site and in-bar fliers) had a Howie Day vibe in the way he accompanied himself. And the main act, they were nice guys. Talked about coming all the way from Austin for this.

So the bands were good, the bar was great and we had one of those great nights that's nothing more than some friends getting together and shooting the proverbial poop. The night ends and we all go home.

Then it's today and I sit down to type this. And I look up the bands' names so I can do that hyperlink thing that's supposed to destroy every American newspaper by the time I finish this sentence.

They don't look the same in the picture. One looks a lot more ... caucasian than he did on stage.

Then I read the first line: "Welcome to the all-new-and-improved cyber home of The Dirty Blue: Chicago-based rock and roll band."

Chicago? The guys said they were from Austin. They were very clear on the point. Specific, really, in that way musicians from Austin are always specific about being musicians from Austin (or from Chicago, to be fair).

I keep reading until I get to the italicized red text screaming that the Gallery Cabaret gig had been cancelled.

Cancelled? So who the hell was I listening to? Does that mean Despicable Music wasn't Despicable Music? Was that really Leinenkugel? Does the bar really exist, or will I go back and find an empty storefront with a creepy old homeless man saying, "Bar? There hasn't been a bar there in years ... not since the fire ... 30 years ago last night."

I thank you, mystery band that wasn't actually The Dirty Blue. You came in like the Lone Ranger (also from Texas, incidentally) and saved the night, riding off into the sunrise without us ever knowing who you were. Vaya con Dios, strangers. Adios, you noble souls.

And you guys seriously need better promotion.

An outdoor classical concert at Ravinia has several aspects I wish existed in my everyday life: good food, good music and an old Indian man walking around with a sign telling people their kids need to shut the hell up.

Yes, the Concert Project has gone operatic, with the most recent installment coming from Ravinia Park where last night, Hvorostovsky was Rigoletto. 

I would like to thank cut-and-paste for that last clause, which otherwise I would still be trying to type. 

Proving I have made some very good choices in my life over the last year or so, my ladyfriend wanted to spend her birthday at an outdoor Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert at Ravinia. A picnic blanket and some friends, food and booze seems like a perfect way to celebrate another year, does it not?

I have never been to Ravinia before, but a brief Metra ride got us and our sacks of wine and blankets to the Highland Park park. We met up with the rest of the party and began our picnic feast, like real grown-ups.

Unlike real grown-ups, we kept laughing at the massive ass-crack of the man sitting in front of us. It was like he had strapped a belt across two muskmelons.

But onto Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.

The show wasn't quite an opera and it wasn't quite a symphony. Singers were playing the parts while standing in front of the musicians, but they weren't in costume and they weren't quite acting. It was a classical concert with singers sort of miming out an opera.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky's means of portraying the hunchbacked Rigoletto was to thrust his arms out like a Monty Python Gumby and when Rigoletto's daughter was supposed to be dead and in a sack (read the book), the incredible Eglise Gutierrez demonstrated this by sitting in a chair. Sitting = dead.

That's not to disparage either fine performer (I really don't want a white-haired Siberian baritone mad at me). The night was about the music, not about how well Hvorostovsky could pretend to be a hunchback.

Standing and walking around the lawn area was an old Indian man, apparently tasked by Ravinia with ambling about holding a sign of the type Wile E. Coyote usually uses to say "YIPE."

But this one said, "Quiet, please during the performance. Please have respect for your fellow concertgoers and please supervise your children."

A guy specifically going around to tell people their kids need to shut up? Awesome. 

We weren't sitting with a view of the stage, but rather a view of a screen set up to show the musicians. It was great -- like an old drive-in movie. And a translation of the text was below, sort of a combo karaoke/follow the bouncing ball. The Rigoletto Horror Picture Show. 

It was remarkable and telling to be able to follow the plot. But the translation was a bit dry. The basic problem was that the translator opted for a literal translation as opposed to a poetic or aesthetic one.

In short, the words sounded great together in Italian, but then we got sentences like "Some demon has sent you to spoil our revels. But spare us your ravings. You have offended our sovereign."

It's accurate, but it reads like a bad dub of a 70s kung fu movie. Even "99 Red Balloons" made sure the words rhymed.

Beyond all the jokes about ass cracks, Nena and coyotes (and some alt-text that compares the opera star to John Larroquette), I do love the opera. And I had never seen Rigoletto before.

As the light dimmed and the stars began to twinkle, a light breeze flicked away the waning daytime heat. We were full of bread, cheese and brownies.

What we were doing wasn't cool. It wasn't a hip thing for people leaving their 20s to waste a Saturday night on. We should have been getting drunk off our asses in an overpriced Wicker Park bar with the tight-pants brigade. We should have poured ourselves into Wrigleyville to watch Sunday morning's wolf dates take form. That's what the cool kids do on a Saturday night.

Fuck cool. Go to the opera.

"Am I the third caller?"

"You sure are."

And that's how I ended up at Latinopalooza. I knew putting WLUW in my speed dial would pay off some day.

Yes, I said Latinopalooza. It's Chicago's premier palooza. While music lovers from around the world were dropping fifties and hundreds in  a sopping wet Grant Park like a bunch of chumps, my roommate and I were sipping $3 beer specials and listening to local Latino and Hispanic bands rock out. Thank you, Reggie's.

Reggie's is a great place on the 2100 block of South State Street, or technically three great places. It's a record store (Record Breakers), 17+ show venue (Reggie's Rock Club) and 21+ bar and grill with music (Reggie's Music Joint). I've only been there once before (World/Inferno this spring) and never left the rock club part, so I was surprised there was all this other stuff.

But I got to explore while waiting for Latinopalooza to start. It was running late.

Finally, my roommate and I walked back in to the rock club part and found we were 2/5 of the white people there. And the other three white people were Reggie's staff.

Now I'm going to call out the big elephant in the garage here - Chicago is an incredibly self-segregating city. It's a city of neighborhoods, yes, but a city of neighborhoods where your neighbor is likely to show up on the same Sherwin-Williams paint sample card as you.

We've come a long way since Martin Luther King called Chicago the most racist city in the north, but the groups don't mingle in the same way you'll find in a New York or a San Diego or a, I don't know, Minneapolis (Lutherans from both synods coming together).

And nowhere was this more evident than Reggie's on Friday night. In Reggie's Rock Club, a room full of Hispanics rocked out the amazing conga-backed metal of Maladicto. One wall away, in the adjacent Reggie's Music Joint, a room full of my crackers bobbed heads to "Chicago's #1 Led Zepplin Cover Band."

I think I know which race is coming ahead in this particular conflict. And again, my honky ass is coming up short.

And this sucks for me because, while I appreciate Hispanic culture, I've never known how to talk to Hispanic people about it. Once I figure out how to compliment people on their culture without sounding like a vaguely racist dork, I will be the king of the white liberals. The Utne Reader will praise me.

I've had many Hispanic friends in my life, but the culture never came up in conversation. We always bonded over women, movies, books and the other stuff nerdy guys bond over.

I mean, seriously, what am I going to say to a Hispanic or Latino person about his/her culture?

"Hey. Love the tortas and all the skull art. Oh, and the magical realism - keep that up too."

Latinopalooza - what I saw of it - was great. And it was a true celebration of Latino rock, for and by Latinos. I'm glad I was able to share in it.

My buddy and I called it a night after a few bands. I had been up since 5:30 in the morning, man. I'm allowed to sleep sometime.

But now to a Concert Project status report: I'm not doing that well. If you recall, the goal was to hit 10 more concerts before my 30^th birthday. According to WolframAlpha, I'm 29 years, 11 months and five days into this life and I'm only on concert six. So I'm ramping it up. It'll be a concert-heavy August, but I'm getting it done. Ravinia, here I come.

I interviewed a magician today, an old fat piker who coughed phelgmy into a hand wearing a Masonic ring.

He spoke with passion about magic, country music and old friends. He was born in Iraq. He wore a stained T-shirt bearing his stage name.

I took a walk today. A middle-aged women in traditional German garb and a garland in her hair played the accordion in a public square. I passed by three times over the next hour and a half. She was still playing the whole time, smiling like she just heard a joke she was savoring before she could share it.

In the comic book shop, greasy hairs laughed over Spider-Man and Evil Dead jokes only a few would get. They were happy in their company and their friends. And I, silent observer, got the jokes. They were funny. Why wouldn't people get out when a demonic voice tells them to?

The man who sold me ice cream talked about how he hates when the final product doesn't look like the picture. A little kid danced on a park bench, not caring that she was doing it alone. 

Tonight is the night hundreds of fucks on bikes will gather in an event called "Critical Mass." They'll meet in their indentity-sucking mob and blare their mass uniqueness, their individuality in large groups.

If you don't like their individuality (or actually want to share the street rather than be run off it), they get mad. Real mad. Free thinkers hate people who think differently.

They talk about their individuality, about how people who don't like what they do just hate what they can't control. The important part for their psyche is tricking themselves that the loudest thing is the most unique, that the most obnoxious is the most individual. 

Individuality? Critical Mobbers, you don't know the meaning of the word.

My ladyfriend is five foot two and couldn't see over the crowd at Sunday's Pitchfork. I had to narrate much of the concert to her, tell her what was going on onstage.

"There's a lady on the screen ... light is coming from her vagina ... now the band is coming out of the vagina ... he has a streamer gun ... now he's in the human-sized hamster ball ... there are go-go dancers ... they're dressed as cats or something ... now he's riding a man in a bear suit." 

I mean, it wasn't exactly like that. Upon further inspection, the bear suit was more of a gorilla suit and I completely missed the crowd of men dressed as geckos directly across from the go-go dancing cat girls.

But either way, God damn I love Wayne Coyne.

Unfortunately, I forgot to charge my camera before heading off to the all-day concert.  Here is the last picture I took before the battery died.

That white blur to the upper left of the red hat, that's Wayne Coyne waiting to go onstage.

So, my camera died moments before an amazing show was to begin. After lasting all day through shots of hipster guitars and that one bit of garbage I thought looked like a question mark, my camera gave up the ghost moments before the hamster ball, vagina light, streamer gun pagentry of a Flaming Lips show.

 At least I have Frightened Rabbit. They were good.

 And Blitzen Trapper.

Complete with some random dude's head.

I didn't get pictures of all the bands I saw. Japandroids in particular was a great show. Started a little weird and off-putting, but they really won me over.

 All in all, wonderful and tiring. I think I saw more hitter boxes than actual cigarettes. But the food was good, the day was lovely, the people were polite, I got loads of free promotional stuff and, God damn it, I saw Wayne freakin' Coyne.