Fuukk You, We Got Swans.

"Swans are playing Bonarroo on the Sunday evening
They are NOT playing sasquatch" -via Sasha Barfbag, supersleuth

This set is gonna slay. Probably the most unlikely get I'll have seen set foot on the farm in the eleven Ive been to.



Pics are from Boomslang '11. My camera was a little loaded.

One of the trademarks of Swans' early period was playing at painfully loud volumes during concerts, to the point where some audience members would vomit[citation needed] or the police would stop the show. Gira was also notably confrontational with the audience, such as stepping on people's fingers resting on the stage, pull people's hair, and notably beating up anyone caught in the crowd headbanging, something Gira detested.[9][10] This lent a reputation to the name Swans which was one of the contributing factors in Gira's retirement of the band in 1997.[11]
Since Swans' reformation, Gira has made a point of maintaining the intensity of their live show, stating that it is at once "soul-uplifting and body-destroying". He has also sometimes turned off the air conditioning before Swans performed and compared the experience to a Native American sweat lodge.



Kane compares Swans to blues icon Chester Burnett, a.k.a. Howlin' Wolf. While this comparison might initially seem unlikely, there are in fact some similarities worth noting—the music of early Swans was often based on a single riff, played repeatedly to hypnotic effect. Some of Burnett's songs—especially the songs penned by Burnett himself—have a similar structure and quality. Their early music was typified by slow and grinding guitar noise, and pounding drums, punctuated by Gira's morbid and violent lyrics (inspired by Jean Genet and the Marquis de Sade), usually barked or shouted. Critics have described Swans' early recordings as "aggressive beyond words".