A Concert Life

OK, the move has happened and we are just about settled, so maybe I can get back to doing this on a little bit more of a regular basis. We'll see, I'm still responsible for taking care of a kid that is right now just about 11 months old.

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I moved back to Chicago earlier this month after six years living on the East Coast, with the last three being in New York and it was really hard leaving Manhattan. We got really used to how great it is to live in The City. Great vegetarian restaurants, the best public transportation in the U.S. and a lot of really cool music venues to see some of my favorite acts who seemed to be coming through town all the time (I saw Robyn Hitchcock five times in 2008 alone). And

So being back in Chicago will take some getting used to. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of great memories living here. I saw the very last Replacements concert from the front row in Grant Park and walked away with a guitar pick. I met my wife here (well, in the 'burbs) and some of my favorite friends still live here. And of all the places I've seen live music, my favorite for a long time was The Hideout, though in NYC I really fell in love with Barbes and The Bell House, both in Brooklyn, and the Concert Hall on the Upper West Side. Of course, none of those compare to seeing a show at The Turning Point in Piermont, about an hour north of Manhattan. Seriously, if you like live music at all, do yourself a favor and see a show there before you die.

But Chicago is a really good town for live music, and I got to be reminded of that pretty quickly after I got here. I went to another of my favorite Chicago venues, Martyrs, for The Baseball Project/Minus 5/Steve Wynn show. If you haven't heard of The Baseball Project, here's a quick description: Scott McCaughey, leader of both the Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5 and a permanent sideman of REM for more than a decade, and Steve Wynn, formerly of the Dream Syndicate, got together and wrote a bunch of songs about baseball. They were joined by Linda Pitmon, a drummer for lots of different bands, and Peter Buck from REM to record a great album.

These are some of my favorite musicians. I grew up an REM fanatic, and Scott and Peter also play in The Venus 3, Robyn Hitchcock's (my absolute favorite musician) current backing band. Scott McCaughey plays with so many of my favorite people - Wilco, REM, Decemberists, Robyn Hitchcock - and is such a great songwriter. He really should be a lot more famous than he is. There is really no more proof needed in how unjust the world is than the fact that Hannah Montana plays in packed stadiums and Scott McCaughey only gets to by hanging out with REM.

And The Baseball Project album is fantastic. Rather than write songs that just celebrate their love of the game, ala Centerfield (don't get me wrong, I LOVE that John Fogerty ditty), they made some tunes about specific players and incidents, some based on fact and others based more on folklore. There's Ted Fucking Williams, based what Teddy Ballgame supposedly used to scream out during batting practice ("I'm Ted Fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball!"), Gratitude, about Curt Flood, who fought on his own for players' right to free agency and who is largely forgotten by today's players who owe their million-dollar paychecks to him, Satchel Paige Said, a celebration of the man who may have been the best pitcher in the history of the game; among the songs about players from the game's history.

Two of my favorites are Steve Wynn's Harvey Haddix and Scott McCaughey's Broken Man. The first tells the story of the pitcher who may have pitched the best game in the history of Major League Baseball, 12 perfect innings, but is not in the record books because his Pirate teammates could not score and he lost the game in the 13th. The latter song is about Mark McGwire's fall from the man who helped "save baseball" after the strike to the disgraced steroid user. Scott McCaughey has an amazing talent for writing really catchy songs (listen to John Barleycorn Must Live, Town That Lost Its Groove Supply, Cigarettes, Coffee and Booze or With A Gun and you'll see what I mean) but Broken Man might be his catchiest yet. It has a hook that just pulls you in.

I walked in to Martys on the night of the show and it felt like I had been there yesterday, even though the last time I saw a show there was back in May of 2003 for a Jeff Tweedy solo gig. The place was as cool as I remembered it. It didn't seem like anything had changed, except I think there might be better beer choices now. And despite good beer on the menu most people there still seemed to be drinking Bud, Coors, PBR or some other swill. What is it with Chicagoans and their love of shitty beer?

I was at the show by myself, a common occurrence. I see a lot of shows on my own, not that many of my friends are in to the same music as me or are as interested in seeing shows as often as I like to. In the last couple of years in New York I had met some people at a couple of Robyn Hitchcock shows that became my concert-going posse. I did wish they were there, a fun group of music geeks that I really liked hitting shows with in NYC.

But no matter. I was in my element. Around my people. Indy-rock music dorks, oh how I love them so. This was the kind of crowd that, had I struck up a conversation with anyone, many of them might have been impressed with me saying, "So I saw Scott McCaughey and Ken Stringfellow opening for Robyn Hitchcock at the Backstage in Seattle back in 1994," or "I was at the Crocodile Cafe in 1995 when Peter Buck played with Kevn Kinney, that included the most amazing cover of Leaving On A Jet Plane." (I went to both shows with my favorite all-time concert-going buddy Trevor) I didn't need to have these conversations that night, it was just enough knowing I was around a crowd who might appreciate the experiences.

I was not really prepared this night on just how great this show was going to be. There was no division in the sets between each band, it was the four members of The Baseball Project playing for the whole night, doing songs from Baseball Project, Minus 5 (and one Young Fresh Fellows song), Steve Wynn's various incarnations (Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, etc.) and a few covers.

They absolutely brought the house down with an incredible high energy show that went for two full sets and an encore. By the time they were done it had been almost three hours since they took the stage. I've seen Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey play dozens of times, in many different projects, but I'd never been to a Steve Wynn show before so I didn't know what to expect. Well Steve Wynn is one hell of an impressive guitar player, but Linda Pitmon really stole the show for me. She plays her drums with an incredible energy of wild abandon yet completely focused at the same time. She is the funnest drummer I've seen play since Bill Berry from REM. I was mesmerized by her stick work and her flailing hair as she banged her kit.

A truly fantastic night, maybe my favorite concert of the year so far, going neck-and-neck with Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. And that show had half of the same people playing.

I really enjoy two things more than anything else in the world - traveling and live music. My dream is to combine the two some day and do some rock and roll tourism. I'd love to see one of my favorite musicians in a club somewhere like London or Spain or Germany or Tokyo. The one I want to do the most is see Robyn Hitchcock do one of his benefit shows at the Three Kings pub in the Clerkenwell neighborhood in London. That's how much of a music geek I am.

Why I like to travel seems pretty obvious. Seeing different cultures, sights and people is something a lot of people like to do.

But it has always been hard to explain why I am so in love with live music to the point I'll spend my last dollar on a band instead of food.

I was thinking about this when I was leaving Martyrs that night, why I feel such pure joy at a show. It kind of finally dawned on me.

I'm not the most "in the moment" kind of person. Ask anybody who knows me. I tend to over think just about everything and always be in my head. But not at shows by bands that I really love. I am so in the moment when I'm standing there taking in the music, I just let it flow over me and suck me in its world. No thinking, just feeling. No worries, just happiness.

Is my career where I want it to be? Am I a good husband? A good father? Am I doing enough to make a difference in the world? These thoughts go away for a time and are not a part of it.

But what is "it?" I don't know how to put it without sounding incredibly gooberistic and dweeby. At one with myself? With the universe? An out of body experience? Religious experience? See what I mean? Very stupid sounding, all of them.

I guess I'm just.....me.

And it seems that on those occasions I'm OK with being just that. And that is no small thing.

Document The Passion (Music Geek Night part 2)

A great show. One of my favorite singer-songwriters. A band in fine form. Meeting and chatting it up with a fellow obsessive music geek. A great bartender working the front bar. Talking to Amanda Palmer before the show. All in all a nice night out at the Knitting Factory.

After the set I went back out to the front bar, got another beer and sat there talking to the bartender for a while. Eventually the band was out in the crowd that was left talking to fans and signing various things. I made my way over and spoke with Scott McCaughey for a while. As I alluded to in Friday's post, I used to work with a guy who is Scott's best friend since high school and I've talked with him a few times before. I also know a couple of other people in Seattle that I figured he knew as well (like a buddy of mine who books shows there) so I kind of talked to him about that for a while. I'm not really an autograph hound or anything, but since he was there I grabbed a copy of the new Minus 5 CD from the merch table and had him sign it for me. He was standing there with a Sharpie in his hands so why not? It was cheaper to get the disc there than at the record store anyway.

I ended up close to Robyn Hitchcock at some point and made a few comments to him as well. Now, I've been in this situation before having seen him so many times and in small venues where you can hang out for a while after the show to meet the band. It never really turns out that well with Robyn. There are a few reasons for this. A lot of the time I've had a couple too many beers by the time the show's over and just kind of say something stupid or maybe unintelligible. Also, there's not really all that much to say to one of your favorite musicians besides "I love your music man," or "great show," and I'm sure he already hears that a hundred times a night. I certainly don't want to start asking him about the meaning of his songs because most songwriters hate that. Plus, he's pretty damn eccentric, so half the time you can't tell at all if he appreciates the comments or if he's a huge dick.

I'm not into the hero worship aspect of it like some people seem to be. I just like to talk to musicians about their music and music in general. That doesn't always work too well with legendary people like Robyn, but can be a really cool thing with smaller and up and coming acts. I think that's why it was so easy to talk to Amanda Palmer about her career and kind of discover what stuff she's into, tell her how I've turned other people on to her music and to talk about mutual love of other acts like Robyn. Or the time I sat at the bar at TT The Bear's Place in Cambridge, MA talking to Tracee Miller from Blanche, while the Ditty Bops played their opening set, about topics ranging from the Carter Family to the kind of fans they attract. Truly an interesting person. Had a great conversation after the show with her husband Dan, the leader of Blanche, about things like his musical style, working on the Loretta Lynn album and being in the Johnny Cash movie, among other things.

With Robyn that night I believe my conversation went something like this.

"Robyn, I wanted to say thank you for playing The Ghost Ship at the request show in November at Maxwell's."
"Did I play that?"
"You did, and I was the person who requested it."
"Oh, OK."

And that was about it.

I was pretty much getting ready to take off when I noticed Peter Buck was actually hanging out without being bothered by a ton of people. I've been in this situation before, where I've been in a small club and seen Peter Buck hanging out and it would be really easy to walk up and talk to him. But I've never done it. With him being the actual bona fide major rock star in the room you really feel like he gets bothered by fans more than enough times in his life. But this time I decided to walk over.

You may remember my story from a couple of weeks ago about how the album Document saved my life. Well I decided to tell Peter Buck this story, without being as long-winded as I was in the blog posting (I hope), just to let him know what his music did for me. You don't get this opportunity with too many artists and I decided not to let it go again. I wasn't sure if he would think I was a total dweeb or not. I even said at the end of it, "I don't want to sound like the total dweeb fan and creep you out or anything, but I just wanted to let you know what that album did for me my senior year of high school."

He was very cool and seemed pretty genuinely flattered by what I said. After commenting how young I was, because I was a senior in high school when Document came out, he said, "No that's not dweeby at all, that's very cool. I really appreciate that."

We talked for a little while more and he mentioned that he had albums that were the same for him (specifically Patty Smith) and we talked about living in Seattle and growing up in Georgia, two things we have in common. And some point he told me, and I'm still not sure how this came up, that he was getting divorced. I told him I was sorry and he kind of shrugged his shoulder and said something along the lines of, "Yeah well, what are you gonna do?"

I bounced on out of there before I allowed myself to order another beer and made my way to the subway, happy to have been able tell someone what their music did for me and what bleak times it helped me through.

And even happier that he didn't seem to think I was a total loser for doing so.

And my extreme, obsessive music dorkiness gets rewarded once again.

The Underneath (Music Geek Night part 1)

Time yet again for a post (actually two) about an amazing night at a Robyn Hitchcock show for little ol' me. Now, you know I usually try to not let my blog become one of those boring "here's what I did today" diary type blogs, because I really can't stand those. People might not dig what I write, but at least it's not going to be because it is nothing more than just a daily accounting of my daily life. If I'm going to be hated I want it to be for being a shitty writer, not a boring one.

My thought and ideas, sure. But not just recaps of my day I hope. Unless your name is Anne Frank nobody is interested in your diary.

Well sometimes I just can't help it after I've had such a fun night out. It seems to usually involve going out to a show by one of my favorite musicians. Like here, here and here. Most of you who might read this blog on any type of regular basis pretty much know that I'm a major music geek and that my favorite things are Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Bragg and Jeff Tweedy and that REM holds an important and special place in my life and that my favorite new band to pop up in the last five years is The Dresden Dolls.

Knowing that, you'll see why Tuesday night was so damn cool for me.

So I head down to the Knitting Factory in Tribeca, rushing out the door because the show is listed at 8:00 and I wanted to see at least a little of the opener and at the time I left it meant I wouldn't get there until about 8:30. Turns out I rushed for no reason though. Seems that The Knitting Factory, without specifying it, puts on their listings and tickets the door opening time and not the show start time like everybody else. So I'm at the venue at 8:30 thinking that Robyn would be going on about 9:00 or 9:15 and find out that it won't be until 10:15. So that sucked. I also find out that because I did will call for my ticket I don't actually get a ticket stub to add to my collection, just a stamp on my hand. Kind of hard to put that in my ticket box.

I grab a Boddingtons at the bar and head into the band space to check it out since I haven't been there before. Good space in general. Nice and small, the way I like my music venues. But also really warm already and it is not even close to being full yet. I chat up with a couple of guys hanging out there for a while before the opener starts. When Johanna Kunin took the stage I watched for a while but her music was a little too mellow for the room temperature. So I took a walk to the outer bar and kind of hung out by the entrance. I started talking to a guy named Phil who was trying to unload an extra ticket he had, which is why he was hanging out by the door.

By this time Peter Buck had been walking around hanging out for a while looking like just any regular concert-going guy at a bar, just like he had at the show in November at Maxwell's, with no air of a guy who plays lead guitar for one of the biggest bands in the world and was just inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

So I'm talking to this guy Phil about music, he's a middle-aged music geek from Jersey and we hit it off really easily. I know I've said it before, but the great thing about not living in Boston anymore is that this kind of thing is actually possible in, well, everyplace else in the world pretty much. People in clubs will actually talk to each other and make friendly conversation. But I digress.

While I'm chatting with Phil I notice a black dude walk in with the wildest head of hair I've seen for a while. It's not really an afro because it's too straight. It's more like a black guy with a Robert Smith 'do, which was just great. He walked in with a woman that looked familiar and she told him to find the guest list and he walked toward the box office and I told him I thought it might be at the will call table (I was wrong). He started to scream toward his friend that he found out where the list was but she had walked back outside.

"Oh, she's going to go smoke, I have to wait for her," he said to me.
I said, "She looks a lot like Amanda Palmer."
"That is Amanda Palmer."
"Really, the Amanda Palmer."
"Yeah."
"No Shit?"

Amanda Palmer is the leader of The Dresden Dolls.

So when she came back in I started talking to her for a while and told her how much I love her music and that I saw her perform live several times while I was living in Boston and other such complimentary things. I was starting to tell her that the only thing I liked about living in Boston was discovering her music while I was there (that's where The Dresden Dolls are from) and I said, "I really hated living in Boston, but..."

She cut me off with, "I know doesn't it suck?"

I was so happy to find out that she hates it there too. A great musician, songwriter and a kindred spirit as well. We talked for a little while longer, about her upcoming tour this summer with Cindy Lauper, Erasure and Debbie Harry and that my wife and I would be seeing it at Radio City. I also told her that I had been out there turning people on to her music as much as I could, that my wife would be bummed that she decided not to come tonight because she was a big fan too, and we had a nice little conversation about our shared love of Robyn Hitchcock. That was the reason we were both there after all. Except I wasn't on the guest list.

She went to go get her ticket, gave me the warmest handshake and told me she would try to catch me again later.

In the meantime, Robyn walked past on his way in to the venue (Amanda pointed it out to me in a genuine fan-geek style, she was just as giddy as anybody in the place) as did Scott McCaughey (he remembered me as Gary's friend he met last time) and Phil had sold his extra ticket so we went and got a beer together. He didn't know who The Dresden Dolls were, so I told him why I was so psyched to meet her and tried to describe their music to him. That's hard to do.

Phil and I made our way back in to the performance space and it was packed to the gills and hot. We stood toward the back for the show. It's a small place and I'm tall, so why try to work in to the thick crowd and the heat?

The show was great of course. I've done enough gushing over Robyn shows in the past so I don't need to give a review here. I will say that the highlights for me were finally getting a live performance of Belltown Ramble (brings back Seattle memories), a great acoustic version of Balloon Man, an incredible cover of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd's See Emily Play and the best rockin' version of The Underneath I've ever heard.

I was in heaven. I would be even more so after the show.

To be continued...

I Often Dream Of Trains

Music is my savior
I was maimed by rock and roll
I was maimed by rock and roll
I was tamed by rock and roll
I got my name from rock and roll

----Sunken Treasure, by Jeff Tweedy

I walked into Maxwell's in lovely downtown Hoboken on Sunday night with much anticipation. Robyn Hitchcock's show the night before had been great, with a backing band called The Venus 3 that consists of REM guitarist Peter Buck, Minus 5 leader and REM sideman Scott McCaughy, and ex-Ministry and current REM drummer Bill Reiflen. They absolutley rocked, and played some great old song from Robyns days in the Soft Boys and fronting The Egyptians, as well as stuff from the new album they recorded together. Ex-Soft Boy Morris Windsor even joined them onstage to shake some moraccas and tamborines and provide harmonies.

But Sunday night was shaping up to be special. Listed on his website as an all request solo show and on the ticket as "Robyn Hitchcock and friends," nobody was sure what exactly would be going on until Robyn kind of outlined it a little bit at the end of Saturday's show. He basically explained that he would start off alone, then Morris would join him for a little "Morris and Garfunkel" set, and after a break the rest of the band would come on. Oh, and the whole thing is being filmed for a Sundance Channel documentary. Let the high expectations begin.

I was sitting at the bar when the band showed up. I'm always struck by how uninterested Peter Buck looks all the time. When I lived in Seattle I saw him all the time at clubs, mostly the Crocodile since he owns it, when he was playing some side show with Robyn, Kevin Kinney of Drivin' N Cryin' or Scott McCaughy. He always looked like some non-descript guy just kind of standing around waiting for the band to start. If you didn't know he was a multi-millionaire rock star you wouldn't even notice him.

I saw him deal with both extremes of noticability Sunday night. When he first showed up he went to the end of the bar to order a drink. He must have stood there for a good ten minutes waiting for the bartender to notice him. Eventualy the bartender did and got him his drink. But damn, that's Peter Buck. You'd think you could get quiker service. Maybe he should've said he was friends with Michael Stipe. Just a few minutes later a couple walked up to him and talked to him and then eventualy pulled out their camera so they could each get their picture taken next to him. Each separately, so he had to do that forced smile for the camera while getting a picture taken with someone you don't know. I thought to myself that he probably prefers getting ignored by bartenders than bothered by overzealous REM fans. I know I would.

Soon it was showtime. My excitement level was pretty electric by this point. I had emailed in my request about a week earlier and was hoping like crazy that he would play it. I had requested a song called Ghost Ship. It is a haunting ballad, performed by Robyn with just an accoustic guitar and with a slight reverb on the microphone. It clocks in at over 6 minutes long. It's also a b-side track, so I didn't know how big the chance was that he would play it. I had included in the email that it was the song that turned me into a Robyn-head and that it would make my year to hear it played live. I'm a geek when it comes to my music.

Well I didn't have to wait long to find out. After two songs on electric guitar he switched to the accoustic and I allowed myself to hope. He said "this song is a sea shanty" and then started the opening chords to Ghost Ship. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest.

I stood there, mesmerized, in the middle of the crowd and just let it envelope me and carry me off. About halfway through the song my eyes actually started to well up. It was a moment I had hoped for for almost 18 years and countless Robyn shows. It was just as great a moment as I hoped it would be. And it made me weep like a baby.

I often try to explain to a lot of my friends why certain music means so much to me, and how I could do things like go see the same singer-songwriter or band on consecutive nights or several dozen times over the years. And I could go into long explanations of how Robyn's music is like someting that was written by a combination of C. S. Lewis and Jack Kerouac and performed by a hybrid of Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett and Roger McGuinn. This doesn't really make people understand.

Really, how do you explain to someone how something makes you feel? Especially when you can't really describe the feeling?

For me I guess it goes back to high school. Going to shows then and in college were my escape. Going to a show put on by Robyn, Billy Bragg, The Replacements, Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Pogues or several other of the musicians I was into took me away from it all. I knew when I went to them that I wouldn't have to run into any of the dickheads from school, because those people were too stupid to know who those bands were, much less get them. Concerts were also places where I would never see my mother. They were my sancuary

Obviously my life these days doesn't require the same kind of escape for my survival. I've got no real complaints about where I'm at and the people I'm around. That's the great thing about being out of school, you're not forced to constantly be around people you hate. Or give you wedgies.

But the feeling is still the same. The songs fill my soul and my heart even more easily with less angst to have to push out.

This is why I'm glad I don't listen to the same inane crap that the moron masses do.

Do you think Britney Spears would ever play a random 18 year old b-side at one of her shows? Hell, do you think she even knows what a b-side is?

The ghost ship haunts the sea
Still come back and marry me

The rust is where her heart should be tonight
Her face is where her fingers were tonight

A glassy chequered engine room
The speechless silence of the tomb
The manuscripts inside the womb unfurl
A girl
Translucent as a jellyfish
That palpitates upon a dish
She stings you with her gently falling curl

And sinking in the waters green tonight
I wonder where my lover's been tonight

The ghost ship changes course
And on the deck there stands a horse
Who's munching on sardines and gorse and hay
The Captain trawls the net across the bay
The bubbles rising from the deep
Where deadmen sing themselves to sleep
From oak and coral they do seep to say
"OK
You read my future like a chart
See through my skin; into my heart
That flutters in my ribcage like a bird"

And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life

The air from bottles forms into
The skeletons of all the crew
In white they dance against the blue and wail
Their curling bodies flail around the sail
The figurehead before the mast
Stares back into the golden past
Across the wrinkled sea so vast, forlorn
She mourns

She flutters 'round me like a moth
That beats against mosquito cloth
And tries to eat her way into my dreams

And sinking in the waters green tonight
I wonder where my love has been tonight

The melons on the riverbank
Are bulging through decaying planks

Their beauty is so warm and dank and light
The captain wears a headless grin tonight

And silhouetted on the blue
The cook, the mate, the boss'n, too
They know not where or why or what they do at all
They fall
Like masonry in the abyss
That opens every time we kiss
I hear their laughter echo 'round the bay
And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life