Holy Fuck vs. The Porta Urinal

We played Primavera Sound in Barcelona, Spain a little over a week ago. For more than one reason it was the craziest festival experience of our collective life. Thankfully we had a professional basketball player on hand to put everything into perspective. More from us later, but for now, here’s Paul Shirley…

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I watched Holy Fuck play at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona on Friday night. Their set was great. Unfortunately, they were almost outshined by a toilet.

I wasn’t familiar with the Fuckers before receiving an email from bassist Matt McQuaid last fall. Before ordering me to check out his band, he told me of his affinity for my writing. (I wrote a book relating my experiences in professional basketball.) Since I’m a sucker for musicians, I found their webpage and then, on a whim, bought the eponymous album.

I liked what I heard and the record soon found itself in moderately heavy rotation as I drank my way through a season on the island of Menorca.

This spring, as it became clear that the Barcelonan I was dating wasn’t joking and actually did like me, I started to plan for summer in that city. While making a routine check of pollstar.com, I eye-scrolled down and noticed a festival chock-full of the sorts of semi-obscure but wonderful bands that give me a reason to get up in the morning. Among them: none other than the employers of my new cyber-friend Matt.

I raced to my computer to send him an email. Or rather, it only took me six days to get around to sending him an email. Strangely enough, the very day I sat down to write, I found an email from him:

“Paul, quit stalking me. I’m not interested in hearing the remaining 25 on your list of 101 ways to prepare a cucumber using only an Exacto knife.”

Wait, that was the guy from Animal Collective.

Matt asked if I would be interested in a guest pass when they played in Barcelona. I asked him if the pope shits in the forest. A few weeks later, I found myself happily in attendance at Spain’s best music festival.

Matt was kind enough to secure a pass for the aforementioned Barcelonan, so I didn’t have to pull my “tall dude wandering a concert alone and creepily” schtick. We arrived in time to watch one good Autolux song and three bad Autolux songs. When they finished, I realized that the plan Matt and I had made—to “meet somewhere in front of the stage where Autolux is playing”—had been a poorly-conceived one. When we had talked, I hadn’t realized the scope of the festival. I had assumed that the Spanish wouldn’t be able to pull together anything more than a few tents and a keg of shitty beer. I was wrong. About the tents. The shitty beer part was correct: the festival was sponsored by Estrella Damm, which ranks somewhere around number 78 out of the 79 or so beers I’ve tried in my life.

When the Autolux crowd cleared out, my girlfriend and I hiked across the grounds to see Man Man, about whom I’d heard a great deal, but from whom I’d heard nothing. There, my new favorite member of Holy Fuck tracked me down. In between Man Man’s hysterics, we chatted about…well, mostly about his band.

Like most of humankind, I have a few unreasonable wishes. I’ve always wanted to ride on a galloping horse, for example. And I still hold out hope that I might get to go to Space Camp some day. But my A-1, most pressing desire is to be in a rock band.

That’s never going to happen, of course. My musical ability peaked in fifth grade at the piano recital I didn’t completely fuck up.

That being a rock star is my greatest secret wish probably explains why I go a little gaga around musicians. To me, good musicians are what Karl Rove is to Southern Baptists. They’re my deities.

Matt was warm and friendly and Canadian, and he answered all my dumb questions without making fun of me. Most interestingly, he said that he doesn’t get nervous before shows. As he said that, all hopes that he is not seven times cooler than I am flew right into the Mediterranean Sea.

We parted ways with Matt soon after Man Man. He had to get back to the hotel, and we had to go watch Cat Power. We walked toward the entrance.

And then I saw them.

Lined up behind the normal Port-a-Potties, like a dream from the future, were the most amazing toilets I’d ever seen.

These masterpieces brought together everything I like about Spain: a simplistic view of life and a relaxed take on pissing in public. Each square unit had four receptacles, divided by walls to keep neighbors’ eyes at bay. No doors, no flushing mechanism. The user steps up onto his corner of the square, does his business, and steps off. No fuss, no worries. Unless, of course, the user happens to be afraid of having people see a rear view of him whilst peeing.

The genius is in the simplicity. Guys don’t really care about doors and walls when it comes to urinating. In fact, most of us like to pee outside. The only problem: the general public doesn’t like random penises flailing about. But the four-sided design solves all that. Non-users don’t see any naked anatomy. And users get a no-strings-attached outdoor piss. Everyone wins.

When I laid eyes on the Stonehenge of toilets, I knew I had to try one. Unfortunately, I could only force down so much Estrella. (Insert beer/urine joke here.) It didn’t look my bladder was going to be in need anytime soon.

I resolved to concentrate on needing to pee.

But then, Cat Power had to go and be terrible. I forgot about the toilets for a while, as I cursed her under my breath. I had three reasons to be mad: 1. I love her album The Greatest and so had high hopes. 2. I had sold my girlfriend on attendance by playing Cat Power for her. 3. I had picked watching her over watching A Place To Bury Strangers and could see and hear their show—which appeared to be a real rock show—in the distance. It was like eating a hot dog next to a Ruth’s Chris.

The next distraction was The Go! Team. The good news: They were distracting because they were wonderful.

I had some time to think about peeing before Holy Fuck. Still, nothing. I wasn’t even that distracted by The Rumble Strips. I just didn’t need to pee. It seemed that my new-favorite urinals were going to go unused, at least by me.

When Holy Fuck took the stage at the un-Holy hour of 4:30 in the morning, any chance that I would concentrate on anything other than music took an hour off.

They were, quite simply, amazing.

I rate my live music experiences by the number of times I get chills on the back of my neck. Holy Fuck, just before sunrise in Barcelona, caused multiple chills.

I realize that what I just wrote seems a little over-the-top, especially since I’m writing this only because one of the members of the band I’m writing about got me in. But I don’t have any reason to be so nice; they’re not paying me and, short of me becoming a Holy Fuck roadie, I can’t imagine I’ll see them again anytime soon.

So trust me when I write that it was one of the best live shows I’ve seen in years. I would compare their show most closely with that of Mogwai, another loud, mostly-instrumental band that’s not from the US.

Most of all, I appreciated that it looked like the band was having fun on stage. Matt and I had spoken early in the night about our distaste for musicians who play it too cool, who are afraid to look like they’re trying. That was not a problem for Holy Fuck. They bounced around like teenagers, playing their instruments with glee.

When my hour of bliss was over, Matt came out and we talked about their show. He seemed tired, but happy. After 10 minutes, I bade him a fond farewell and started up the stairs and began the long walk out.

As I made the same trek I had made earlier in the night, the pre-dawn light glanced off the urinals in the distance. I thought about how long it had been since I’d been on this side—the wrong side—of sunrise and then, wham, my bladder was full.

Holy Fuck was forgotten. The hour of musical near-perfection faded from my memory. I was finally saddled up on the toilet of my dreams.

But then, disaster. The receptacle was full of pee. No matter, I thought. Whoever had designed such a beautiful thing must have surely taken this into account. This is probably normal.

It wasn’t. As I added to the pool of stale urine, a line of pee dribbled down the side of the bowl. It was overflowing…onto my shoes.

I walked away in disgust. I had had such high hopes.

I’ve gotten over the disappointment. Anyway, I didn’t really want to say that the highlight of the Primavera Music Festival was a toilet.

When, really, the highlight was Holy Fuck.

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