CheekyChicago

Royal trumpets blast, purple lights shine to life and glow behind the thirty foot Hole flag draping the back of the stage. The crowd hoots and hollers after enduring a 30 minute intermission. Courtney, our girl of the hour, drunkenly stumbles onto the stage with lit cigarette in hand, as she is wont to do, and the crowd proceeds to collectively lose their shit. It was pretty clear who they were there to see.

“Shall we?”

With thigh high leather boots, that signature primal scream and four men to back her up as a middle finger to your old feminist tropes, they proceeded to rip it up for the lit Chicago audience. Courtney’s guitar was turned way down and her vocals were on full display, but this is to be expected. You aren’t at the Guitar Player’s Technical Ability World Championship Finals here; you’re in the church of Courtney Love and she’s not about to let you forget it.

Among my favorite quotes of the night:

“I remember my first trip to Chicago, I took my first vi-coh-dan and wrote this song about Billy.”

A collective of girls scream “We love you Courtney!” and as her band begins to play she hushes them and launches into: “I love you too but you? Yeah, you. [Points at a girl in the audience.] You need to shut up. You’re way too loud, you’re insanely loud. I was never that loud. If you’re modeling yourself after me it’s a really bad caricature.” The girl proceeds to ecstatically jump up and down, pointing at herself as if she’d just been picked for The Price is Right.

“This next song is about sex, which I know a LOT about.”

Then she holds up a bra thrown on stage and lambasts us: “I got 120 of these in Nashville. I’ve gotten one so far tonight. Ahh, you big city folk.” Over the next four songs, the stage floor is littered with bras of all shapes and sizes; Courtney takes a minute to dress up her guitarist with a particularly big piece she nicknamed Jugsie. At one point a pair of boxers appear on stage. “Not welcome.” She flings them away like a diseased animal. “No.”

The music itself was great. She’s obviously chosen her new band well (apparently, she’s lived with two of them for five years), and they played a tight set that put Love’s voice in full spotlight. When you’re at a Hole show, though, you’re there for the star. Love’s music is good, but the ridiculousness of the things she’ll do and say, the controversies, her quips and quirks and endlessly quotable mouth — they’re just as good or better. I was happy to see that at age 46, Love’s still got the energy and attitude to make the act work live and enough blood in her veins to make it interesting.

Photos by Dan Thompson.