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Labiahead at Assembly
Friday, January 30 2026
It was difficult for me to muster the motivation to return to my I2C bootloader project, especially given the comforts of a woodstove-heated living room filled with sunlight both from the sun itself and reflected off the persistent surface of snow. (With temperatures rising into teens by day and dropping into the single-digit negatives by night, the only way the snow has to disappear is by sublimation.) But early this afternoon I finally put my MacBook down and went upstairs and began working on the bootloader.
By adding yet more serial logging, I further narrowed down the location of problems and, in so doing, managed to resurrect some functionality lost earlier as the result of placing too much faith in suggestions offered by ChatGPT. By this evening, I'd zeroed in on a fairly serious problem: the bootloader wasn't actually responding to interrupts with an interrupt handler but was instead polling an interrupt flag that was probably too ephemeral to catch in the on state. I asked ChatGPT about this, and it basically stated what I was thinking, only with more cheer, vehemence, and conviction. But by the it was too late in the day to follow through on this revelation. Gretchen and I had a cultural event to attend.
We bundled up in our coats, told the dogs that, sadly, they wouldn't be coming, and then began our drive towards Kingston. The weather was so cold at the time that the Bolt's dashboard alerted us that it was operating at "reduced propulson." In old Hurley, we picked up Nancy at the Town Hall and continued to Uptown, where we parked in the DMV parking lot (which is free in the evenings). Then we walked to the old repurposed school where the newish venue Assembly is located on the third floor. We'd come to see a queer-positive all-women Radiohead tribute band called Labiahead which was touring in support of their album Hail to the Queef. The band is full such twisted-grrrl wordplay, referring to one song as "Perimenopausal Android" and leaning in to lyrics such as "Don't leave me high/Don't leave me dry."
Assembly was surprisingly packed for a presumably unknown band on a bleak arctic evening. There were maybe 250 people in attendance, with all ages represented. There were definitely more women than men, but it wasn't wildly lopsided in that direction. Racially, though, the crowd was even more white than the one had been for Judas Priest that we saw back in 2019. Labiahead itself, though, was racially diverse, with an Asian guitarist and a Black drummer. It also featured a decidedly butch white woman twiddling synth knobs, singing backing vocals, and playing guitar.
Before the show, Nancy got a round of drinks for herself and me (wine is $12 at Assembly) while Gretchen was chatting with our friend Chrissy and her friend Lisa P, the latter of whom didn't know we would be at Labiahead tonight. But we both love Radiohead, and putting a feminist spin on it in these troubled times seemed like it could only make the music more awesome, especially live.
The show began with some talk from one of the guitarist, the one who happened to be Asian. She immediately turned to the subject of ICE and what is going on in Minneapolis, and offered that ICE agents reminded her of her worst boyfriends, the ones who had no idea where the clitoris is to be found. "No, that's my elbow!" she interjected. She also made a non-sequitur about a boyfriend who had decided to make out with her cheek (one on her face). And then she sang a song while playing an electronic piano. It was one of her own compositions. Then other members of the band came out and performed their own compositions. The band members were, we were told, opening for the band. "But I wanna hear Radiohead," Gretchen said to me impatiently. I thought the Asian woman had a good Thom-Yorke-style voice, especially the way it broke into a falsetto, and assumed she was the lead singer. But no, the lead singer was a white woman whose birthday happened to be today. The songs she opened with were dark and featured gloomy guitar chords and a lot of belted vocals in the style Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. In that context, her voice was a little hard to take, but once she was singing Radiohead material, it worked well. Radiohead is not easy music to perform, and Labiahead did it well. I was particularly impressed with the drummer, a large Black woman with a non-ironic mullet.
Fairly early in the show, a very tall man showed up and stood between Gretchen and the stage, blocking her view. I looked across the audience and saw that he was definitely the tallest man in the room and, judging by how much taller he was than Gretchen, would place his height at about seven feet. "A man that tall should have to wear a monitor on their back," I said. Gretchen quickly burrowed through the crowd to get near the stage, where she had a great view.
After I'd bought a round of wines and drunk mine, I snuck off to the bathroom and filled my wine cup with gin from a flask I'd smuggled in. That's the sort of thing I did back when I was young and poor, and $12 drinks has me doing it again. Nobody ever suspects a man who looks like me of pulling such juvenile delinquent stunts.
I eventually found my way up to near the stage with Gretchen, were we sang and swayed to familiar Radiohead anthems. I forget which one is the one that calls for it, but when it happened, everyone in the audience held up their phones with their flashlight function on, like the cigarette lighters of old. The show ended with "Creep" of course, which the Asian woman said that they were contractually obligated to play.
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Labiahead tonight. Click to enlarge.
More Labiahead. Click to enlarge.
Temperatures were down to three degrees Fahrenheit along Hurley Mountain Road as we drove home tonight. Click to enlarge.
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