This Weekend: Black Lips break out the toilet paper at Detour Fest

Okay, so I'm lame, and I admit it. It took a school-boy stunt -- flying rolls of toilet paper -- to get me to actually stop and pay attention to the Black Lips long enough to realize that I actually like them. They've always been one of those bands that I dug on a theoretical level -- like, yes, they rock, but no, they don't hit me where they need to -- as I passed them at festivals and opening slots and so on. I walked by all high and mighty saying, 'I just don't get the Black Lips.' And that was okay.

So then on Saturday during Detour as I was making one of my fifteen or twenty laps around City Hall (from stage to stage to stage to stage to VIP to bathroom to stage), I spied flying TP rolls amidst some sort of musical ruckus, and giggled. What a good idea, I thought. Better than some lame LED screen flashing colored lights (sorry, Cut Copy, but those lights are kinda cheesy, like you're playing at a state fair). I was drawn to the stage by the arcs of white floating through the crowd.

For us Midwestern/Southern boys, autumn and toilet paper rolls go hand and hand. As the leaves fall from the elms and maples, the bare branches become irresistible for the prank known as teepeeing. Armed with dozens (or, if you're doing it right, hundreds) of rolls of toilet paper, we roamed through the night targeting houses with big trees and dark windows. Usually a cute girl lived within. Then we started lobbing. Branches snagged the paper, and within a half hour bare trees looked covered with snow. Yes, it's an environmental disaster. But when cute girls and hormones are involved, the future of the planet is but a passing concern.

So while I was getting all nostalgic for my lost youth as the rolls flew, I started actually listening to the Black Lips, and they sounded great, as evidenced in the clip above, in which they play "Bad Kids."