Song Of The Day - John Barleycorn Must Live

One of my favorite authors is Nick Hornby and one of his brilliant pieces of work is a collection of essays called, "Songbook." Hornby picks favorite tracks and writes about them in a brilliant, funny and sometimes incredibly poignant way. The stories go off in various directions with the only rule seemingly being that at the beginning of his thought process is that particular song. Cool idea. So in the best tradition of mediocre non-writers stealing the ideas of far superior writers I thought it would be cool to do this sometimes. So with apologies to Nick Hornby...


On October 1st, 1994 my buddy Trevor stopped by the pizza place where we both worked - he was off - and asked me if I wanted to hit the Robyn Hitchcock show with him that night. I had moved to Seattle after college about four months earlier and Trevor was pretty much my first friend there. We had already bonded over a shared love of the indie music (though Trevor's knowledge far surpassed mine and he was a guitar player himself who knew the Seattle scene really well). He was one of the rare people I met that actually knew who Robyn Hitchcock was and he was also a big fan. He had an extra ticket to Robyn's show that night at the Backstage, which I would discover that night was the best music venue in Seattle (sadly, no longer there).

This would be the first of many shows that Trevor and I would see together while I lived in Seattle, he would turn out to be my favorite concert buddy.

When we got to the Backstage we went straight to the bar and got some beer. Trevor asked the bartender who was opening and the guy told him, "Scott McCoy". I asked who and Trevor said it was the guy from Young Fresh Fellows. I'm pretty sure I said something like, Oh, cool. Yeah" but in reality had no fucking idea what he was talking about. But being 24-years-old I did not want to expose my relative lack of indie rock knowledge.

I would learn later, of course, that his name was spelled Scott McCaughey and just sounds like McCoy. He was great that night in his short set he did with Ken Stringfellow from The Posies, but I mostly remember the awesome Robyn Hitchcock show. I had seen him before but it was with his band in bigger venues opening for REM. This was my first Robyn show in a small club with him on stage by himself, I didn't know then I would see him dozens of times over the next 20 years; by himself, with a band, with violinist Deni Bonet, with Peter Buck from REM, with Scott McCaughey, and many other combinations.

Over the next few years going to concerts in Seattle I would see McCaughey all the time playing with other musicians I had gone to see, including when he became REM's permanent sideman on the Monster tour.

One year I got a job at a law firm - one of those great 90s slacker jobs that were so abundant in Seattle where I didn't have to actually do that much work. My favorite co-worker at the firm was this great guy named Gary. Gary was around 40 while I was in my late 20s and he had a wife and kids. I would discover that Gary was Scott's best friend since high school and that they had once been in a band together. I believe they also followed Mott the Hoople on tour through Europe.

Gary would be something of a role model for me during my time there. First of all he loved music, and despite being over 30-years-old he still loved hearing new bands. He also took his kids to concerts, introduced them to cool stuff, but also didn't begrudge them for liking some pop stuff he couldn't stand listening to. Gary showed me you could actually grow up without becoming "old." He was the first parent I ever met that made me think that it was possible to breed without becoming an asshole or a boring shithead. He had a lot to do with my thinking that having a kid might not be so bad after all. He is exactly the kind of dad I'm trying to be today

Through these years I had actually become more familiar with Scott McCaughey's music and had become quite a fan, especially of his project The Minus 5. I didn't realize it at the time, but that first show I saw him play back in 1994 was pretty much an early version of The Minus 5 since Ken Stringfellow and Peter Buck were his main collaborators on it back when he put together the first version of the group, which has had a rotating cast of characters through the years (including all the members of Wilco and The Decemberists as well as Robyn Hitchcock at various times, among many others).

Seems to me that people love to work with Scott for several reasons. It looks like he can play just about any instrument well, which is a great guy to have in your band. He also seems to have an insane musical knowledge when it comes to the history of rock-and-roll. Having talked to him a few times after shows over the years, I also know he's a hell of a nice guy. (I'm sure the number of times I've dropped Gary's name to him over the years  - "Hey remember me, I used to work with Gary in Seattle..." - has gotten a little annoying but he is always very cool to me).

And most of all, the guy knows how to craft a song. Seriously, how he has not become a bigger star has always surprised me since he can craft a pop song like nobody's business. Listen to John Barleycorn Must Live (off the excellent record Let the War Against Music Begin) and you are listening to a pop gem as good as anything The Beatles put out. Catchy, with lots of cool instrumentation going on underneath, it is also both an homage to music history - John Barleycorn being a British folk tune famously recorded by Traffic in 1970 - and a kind of redemption for the poor Barleycorn, who in the original song, "...should die." Scott McCaughey just decided that somebody must finally stand up for poor John Barleycorn, so this catchy tune is the result.

Scott's sense of humor as resulted in other beautiful pop numbers like With a Gun and also serious rockers like Aw, Shit Man. The man can make a song that makes you think of The Monkees and then turn right around and rock out with his cock out.

People who know how much I go see live music will ask me who I've seen the most and my answer is always, Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Bragg, and Jeff Tweedy/Wilco; all of whom I've seen between 40-60 each, with Robyn being the most for sure. But it dawned on me a couple years ago that I've probably seen Scott McCaughey almost as much as any of them, maybe even more than Billy Bragg or Tweedy. I've seen him play with Tweedy. I've seen him many times with Robyn Hitchcock - especially after he was a part of Robyn's backing band for a few years. I've seen The Minus 5. I've seen him in Tuatara, a kind of Seattle indie super group. I've seen him play with Peter Buck and Alejandro Escovedo. And for the past few years I've been loving seeing Scott play in The Baseball Project, a band composed of him with Steve Wynn (ex-Dream Syndicate) as the songwriters and guitarists along with Peter Buck and Mike Mills from REM, and excellent drummer Linda Pitmon. And as the name suggest, all the songs are about baseball.

Scott McCaughey has very stealthily become a major part of the soundtrack of my life. There are many artist/albums/songs that I think of when looking back on parts of my history and without my noticing Scott McCaughey became one of the dominant artists on that list. I really didn't even realize it until recently. On Record Store Day this year my number one target was The Minus 5 record called Scott the Hoople in the Dungeon of Horror, a sprawling, ambitious 5-LP boxed set of all new music with each disc playing on a theme (one of them being all songs about the band The Monkees, including a 9-minute track called Michael Nesmith, which just may be Scott McCaughey's American Pie and it is just as good if not better).

One of my favorite musicians, even though I didn't know that for years. Makes me think of seeing shows with Trevor, hanging out with the coolest dad I've ever known - which in turn reminds me that I'm happy I married my wife and had our daughter, and how much I love a well-crafted song and a great night out in a club watching great musicians.

Scott also reminds me that life is good.

Indoor Fireworks

I'm somewhat amazed that at the age of 37 I can still be so blown away by a concert experience that I become a giddy little girl in those moments. When I was a teenager going to a show was an escape from my horrible home life for a few hours, so a really amazing show by one of my favorite artists was always a special and memorable experience. It also helped me forget, for a few hours, that I was growing up in a horrible place under the rule of a wretched, tyrannical mother. As Jeff Tweedy sings on Sunken Treasure, "Music is my savior..."

I wouldn't have made it through my teen years without music and concert-going. But now I don't have anything to escape from. My mother lives far away from me, I have a great wife who I love and we have a kid on the way (that is the first time I've written that here, the big news in my life. If you know me I probably already told you and if you don't know me you are probably not even reading this). I even met my wife because of a concert, REM at Rosemont Horizon in 1989, during those dark days.

It seems that by the time one reaches their late thirties these romantic notions of "special" experiences at shows that perhaps "take me to another place" or some other idea about "out of body" hippy nonsense would have been beat out of them by life. But with me that's not the case. I can still be so caught up in a beautiful moment at a show by one of my favorite performers that my eyes will well up or I will feel like (and I know how dorky this sounds) I've entered another plane of existence and nothing else in the world exists in that moment.

I went to the Grand Ballroom on 34th Street Wednesday night to see the Nick Lowe show. Well, I went to see Robyn Hitchcock open for Nick Lowe. Robyn is not someone I miss when he comes to the town where I'm living, having seen him 40-something times. I probably wouldn't have been going to see Nick Lowe without Robyn opening. Lowe is one of those guys who I like a lot but have never gotten around to owning any of his records. I think everyone has somebody like that, legendary musicians whose records you feel like you should own but don't. I'm always kicking myself for never having bought any Tom Waits either.

I was pretty excited about seeing Robyn again and getting the chance to check out a Nick Lowe show. I haven't seen Robyn as an opening act since that REM show back in '89 so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Was he going to just play his songs that a non-Hitchcock crowd might know, his minor hits, like Balloon Man and Madonna Of The Wasps? Or would he just go ahead and play the same kind of set, though shorter, that he would for one of his own gigs?

I didn't get my answer from the first song as he opened with Heaven, which is fairly accessible and known. But then he followed with Daisy Bomb, which is not even one he plays very often, so I thought, "OK this is going to be a real Robyn Hitchcock experience."

He also started off with one of his rambling stories in all its wonderful weirdness, which I would think is pretty daring for an opener to do. By the middle of the set he really dared the audience to come along with him on this journey when he threw in some of his odder songs. Throwing The Cheese Alarm at them was quite a sight to see. A song that mentions about a dozen types of cheese would be a real test of how much the Nick Lowe crowd was into it. And if that didn't drive them away then maybe Wax Doll, with its line "If I was man enough I'd come on your stump," would. But the crowd stayed with him.

I knew I liked Nick Lowe fans a lot by this point in the show. During the whole set, including Robyn's ramblings, the crowd was so quiet and listening intently. This was a completely different experience than the one Billy Bragg had with the idiot Pogues fans last month.

By the end he had played a wonderfully varied set of eight or nine songs that spanned his career from about 1980 (I Got The Hots) to a brand new song he said he had just written. Right before the new song he played probably two of his finest compositions, One Long Pair Of Eyes and Glass Hotel, that gave me goose bumps and a lump in my throat.

I called my buddy Mikey in Seattle to tell him about the show, I wasn't sure if my wife would be in bed so I didn't want to wake her up with my giddy exuberance about the show. The show was short but a great performance as usual for Mr. Hitchcock.

I talked with Mike for a while and then went up to see Nick Lowe's set. Like I said, I don't own any Nick Lowe but I figured it would be a good show even without knowing the songs. I was also guessing I could look forward to hearing him play several songs that I would recognize since the man is responsible for a few legendary songs, like (What's So Funny "Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding, I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock and Roll) and Cruel To Be Kind.

A good show was an understatement. It was a great show! The songs I didn't know were fabulous and the ones I recognized sounded better than any version I had heard before. He closed the main set with an acoustic version of Peace, Love & Understanding that was beyond amazing. With all due respect to Elvis Costello, his version doesn't even come close to speaking to me the same way that Nick's did on Wednesday. And I love Costello's version.

At that point he walked off stage for the encore break (still the part of a show I hate the most, the fake encore) and the crowd was going nuts. After hearing such and incredible version of that song to end the set I thought about leaving. "It couldn't get any better than that ," I thought. I really considered letting that be the last moment for me. I am glad I didn't.

He came back out and played The Beast In Me, a song I kind of know, and then invited Robyn out on stage to do a song with him. This was why I didn't leave, knowing this was a possibility. Nick and Robyn covered a fun, obscure early 60's song and then Nick said something like, "We'd like to bring out a friend..." and out walked fucking Elvis Costello! Needless to say the crowd went absolutely nuts.

Elvis and Nick did a song called Indoor Fireworks that Elvis wrote, which was quite beautiful. Then Robyn came back out the three of them finished the show with Robyn singing lead on If I Fell by the Beatles and Mystery Train, a song made famous by the other Elvis.

Really glad I decided to stay.

After the show I was really pumped up and had to call as many of my music-loving friends as I could. Since it was so late I had to stick to the West Coast so I was on the phone to Seattle, San Francisco and L.A. My friend Martha in San Francisco got on the computer right away and bought tickets to Saturday's show at the Fillmore.

I just love that a concert can still take me to another place like that. It's even better than it used to be, I can get the same feeling I got as a teen without all the baggage that goes along with, well, being a teen.

God I love music.

--------------------------------

Roquefort and grueyere and slippery Brie
All of these cheeses they happen to me
Oh please

Rough pecorino and moody Rams Hall
Stop me before I just swallow it all
Oh please

Somebody ring the cheese alarm
Oh please
Somebody ring the cheese alarm

Goats' cheese cylinder, tangy and white
Roll over me in the flickering night
Oh please

Chaume and Jarlsberg, applewood smoked
"The pleasure is mine," he obligingly joked
Oh please

Somebody ring the cheese alarm
Oh please
Somebody ring the cheese alarm

Hey now, Fletcher, don't keep me up late
I can't even fit into size thirty-eights
Oh please

Juddering Stilton with your blue-blooded veins
You can't build a palace without any drains
Oh please
Oh please
Oh please

Half the world starving and half the world bloats
Half the world sits on the other and gloats
Oh please

Truckle of cheddar in a muslin rind
Would you give it all up for some real peace of mind?
Oh no.

---The Cheese Alarm by Robyn Hitchcock

Records Were Made To Be

I bought a new record the other day. Really. An actual new vinyl record.

Let me qualify that a little bit. I did not buy a brand new album on vinyl or a record that was pressed this year. I bought an album from 1996. But I got it still in its factory seal and I was the first person to put a needle down on the grooves.

It's been a while since I've bought a new record. Most of the vinyl purchases I've made over the last decade or more have been random finds of used records in various stages of wear and tear. One of the best times I had finding records was a few years ago when I was stopping at antique stores with my wife several years ago, before we got married, on our way through Vermont after I had dragged her to a Wilco show in Burlington.

I tell ya, nothing makes you stop and say "Oh shit, I'm an adult now" like actually going antiquing. Or even using the word "antiquing". It was the price to pay for making her travel hundreds of miles to see a band that I had probably seen just a few days earlier anyway.

While my fiance was looking at furniture pieces at one place I stumbled on a great collection of records. I ended up getting some great albums like Elton John's Madman Across The Water, the first Split Enz album (with a really cool design carved right on the black vinyl), Fleetwood Mac Rumors, a live Warren Zevon, a Jefferson Airplane collection and Lenny Bruce at Carnegie Hall (a triple record!!!).

And picking up some great used treasures is great. But I had forgotten what it was like to get a new record.

I wanted for a long time to get a copy of Robyn Hitchcock's Mossy Liquor, a companion piece to his album Moss Elixir from 1996, one of my top three Robyn albums. He released the limited edition, vinyl only Mossy Liquor with six demo versions of songs from the album (one sung in Swedish) and six other songs unavailable anywhere else. I of course had the regular album on CD because, well , it came out in 1996. But I never got the limited edition vinyl at the time because I was probably broke or whatever other reason. I thought I had missed my chance to get it years ago but I did a quick search on Amazon just to see if any of the secondary sellers had a used copy, and much to my surprise I found a new one.

I probably hadn't opened a new record since I was like seventeen or eighteen, and that would have been a twelve-inch single. The last vinyl album I bought was probably The Unforgettable Fire when I was fifteen.

Man, what a rush. I love getting new CDs and all, opening the case and looking at the booklet and studying the art will make me all giddy when I pick up a new album. But I had forgotten how cool the tactical sensation is when opening a record. A CD has it, but not quite as much. An iPod download obviously doesn't have even a smidgen of that.

Ripping open the record and looking at the big artwork, touching the edge of the vinyl, looking at the shiny grooves that carries your music, giving it a sniff (yes I smelled it). Man, there is not too much better than that. The whole package just brings so much to the music listening experience.

I'm not the Luddite that I'm sometimes accused of being. I mean, I only found this record I've been wanting to find for years because of the Internet. The means by which I collect my live bootlegs (I'm well over 200 shows now), BitTorrent, is probably the most advanced file sharing program that exist today. Hell, I wouldn't even have a live show collection without it. The only live show traders I ever met before the Internet trading started was the Dead Heads in college, and that didn't do me any damn good. So thank god for the Internet helping me become a bootleg geek. And I'm not even saying that I'm going to go back to vinyl, which would be impossible anyway. CDs are a great way to listen to music. Fantastic sound, you get artwork, albeit smaller than it used to be with records, and it is portable.

But getting a new record reminded me of just how precious the whole experience of listening to music is to me. It's why I can't get an iPod. Not having anything to open or the lack of having a cover to look at the first time you sit and listen to an album just doesn't appeal to me. That's without even taking in to account the fact that listening to your music on an iPod makes it sound like you are listening to it on an AM radio. Music is just too important to treat like that. It really is the worst thing to happen to music since the cassette player.

It might have something to do with why records are making something of a comeback. I read the other day that there are more records pressed today than ten years ago. And the sound quality is even better than ever, with 180 gram technology (if you can use that word for vinyl) being all the rage. They also make listening so much more of an active instead of a passive experience.

My main music listening is still going to be in CD form but I think I'll make more of an effort to pick up a special album here and there on vinyl.

Gotta go. Time to flip to side two.

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

Geekspotting - Episode III: Revenge Of The Aging Boomer

I quit once before. Really I did. After all the arguments around election time and being accused of being a "neocon" by some dumbfuck Baby Boomer because I talked about John Kerry being a crappy candidate, I decided it was enough. Besides the fact that I would get into arguments with an idiot college kid from some southern Christian school when he would compare homosexuality to pedophilia and bigamy (gay marriage issue was being pushed by the right during the election you remember) or the moron conservative from Kansas claiming that the NAACP is a racist organization, there was the attacks and diatribes from the aging Boomer. It wasn't that one had to be left to get his respect, it was that one had to agree with every one of his ideas and be his kind of lefty or you were just "helping the right." LouieB was trying to hold onto some sort of semblance of his past coolness, if it ever actually existed, that bagging on other people made him feel better about himself. He tried to use the words of the great anarchist Emma Goldman to prop up his reasons for voting for John Kerry. (I had a picture of her as my "avatar" - a picture that accompanies all of a person's posts - for a while, which is why he tried this tactic) I tried to explain to him that he was crazy if he was trying to argue that Emma Goldman would endorse a guy who lives in a $12 million home among other expensive vacation property. I would get long rants about how he knows so much more about anarchist than me or whatever other bullshit he would say, and then for some weird reason he then kept calling me comrade for a while. I'm telling you, he is a bizarre little man.

He actually preferred that others not be as liberal as him because it made him feel special to be the old lefty voice of reason or something. It made him the king of the board and woe to anyone who appeared to want to knock him off his throne. He loves being the old guy on the board, he thinks it makes him wise by comparison or something. He loves to tell us "young liberal" that we don't know how to have a good protest. He obviously missed the news during the week of the WTO protest in Seattle a few years back, when I choked down more tear gas in a week than he probably did during the entire Vietnam years. But it didn't matter to the dipshit, you had no lefty cred unless you did the exact same things as him, during the same time frame. This is a common illness among many in his over-hyped and under-achieved generation.

It was funny during the build up to the election because he got so frustrated with other people from the left who didn't see things exactly his way that he posted another long post that included the promise that this was the last he had to say and was going to stay out of the political threads until after the election. This of course lasted about an hour before he was back in it. My favorite thing to do was quote his promise every time he posted something in the political threads. He got really angry with me and accused me of stalking him because I was reminding him that he promised to stay out of the political topics. He really never had any intention of staying out, he just post things like that so others on the board would say "Oh Lou come on, stick around we like you" and other stupid shit like that. He would also call people something like "neocon and then ten minutes later claim he didn't do that. Someone would then show him the post where he did it and he a lot of the time would still deny it.

So I had enough of the headache and stopped checking in at viachicago.org.

And I was really good for a while. It had a lot to do with me starting this blog, which was the purpose of it at first. But I eventually fell back in. Really I just started checking back in to see things like tour dates that this guy who calls himself Solace (probably the one guy I would actually want to meet from the geekboard) would post and would often be the first place I heard about somebody on tour. But I made the mistake of checking out the threads again and I eventually was just sucked right back in. And this lead to more insane arguments with the southern Christian kid who calls himself "ikol" (apparently the name of some angel backwards. Who knew? Who cared?), or the Kansas Christian who calls himself "Uncle Wilco" and would claim that he was an "independent" even though you could get him to admit that he never voted for anything other than Republicans in his entire life. It still boggles my mind that Wilco has fans like this. My rejoining the fray also lead to the previously mentioned confrontation with the white-middle-class-fratboy with low self esteem, EL FAMOUS.

Then there were the music arguments that are just stupid. The whole "I know more than you" attitude just got so annoying. You know those record store clerk characters from High Fidelity? Funny, right? But imagine an internet message board full of them. Not so funny and cute in real (or virtual) life as they are in movies. Jamming an icepick in your eye can be more enjoyable that talking to these people. And a lot of them love Wilco, which is just a shame. I was talking to my buddy Trevor not too long ago, a guy who is a musician and also promotes shows for his job. He said something that really struck me as right on. We were talking about music, and Wilco in general, when he said something about avoiding getting into a conversation about music with a guy in a Wilco shirt because you're just asking for trouble. Trouble meaning basically about an hour long treatise on music where you don't get a word in edgewise and when you do you are told you're wrong. About everything. Our friendly neighborhood Baby Boomer was awesome at this too.

In my final days LouieB posted a long monologue/diatribe about the newest Wilco release, a double-disc live album called Kicking Television: Live In Chicago. His rant went on forever (like most of his postings) about how dare people call it "non-essential" and it is the greatest recording of an event ever and if you don't like the set list you are not a real Wilco fan and blah blah fucking blah. Someone would then post a short something about why they didn't like it very much but if LouieB does then that's cool by them. LouieB then would post another long rant questioning the persons taste, sanity, and intelligence. And he also did one of his favorite things to do when arguing any point about Wilco. He started a sentence with "When I was talking to Jeff (Tweedy, lead singer of Wilco) after the Otto's show last year, I said to him...." And then he would tell us what Jeff said back. He would do that a lot, somehow thinking that because he's one of those backstage hangers-on it gives him some sort of credibility. Or that if he says Jeff agrees with him that that somehow proves he's right. Yea, the guy who leads the band is at all likely to say "You know Lou, I disagree with you about this being the best version of Wilco ever, this line-up is just really weak and I'm really disappointed with myself."

It would go on like this forever, but I stayed out of it. The new live album had already become a tired argument. Basically, Wilco has put out the most boring live album since Depeche Mode's 101, or maybe even since Frampton Comes Alive, but if you dared say so you would feel the wrath of the old hippy wannabe. Seriously, I'm the biggest Wilco fan in the world, as most of my friends would attest, and this live album is a snooze-fest. Just like their most recent shows have been.

Mr. Generation Vietnam could even combine the music and politics idiocy from time to time. During the build up to the presidential election, Jeff Tweedy had taken to making a lot of funny jabs at Bush during Wilco shows. I, of course, think they were great. There were some people that weren't a big fan of him doing this. Wilco has never been a particularly vocal political band and a lot of people liked it that way. Some people don't go for the Bono treatment at concerts. To each their own. But if anyone said that on the message board they caught the grief of Mr. B. There were some people who said that even though they agreed with Jeff's politics, they just wanted to hear the music, not any political rants. LouieB attacked these people mercilessly, calling them neocons or "not real liberals" or even Bush supporters. Even after they would explain that they hated Bush and Republicans, they just didn't like their music and politics combined, the stupid Boomer just didn't get it. He continued to accuse people of exactly the opposite of what they said they believed. He then brought out his "big guns" of "When I talked to Jeff after the last show, I thanked him for his political speeches."

Well good for you fuckhead. I began to think how sick of this guy Mr. Tweedy must be, with Lou lurking backstage waiting to talk to him all the time.

But the straw that broke my back would come right after this. LouieB had been posting for some time for a get together of the Chicago based people on the board at a club on Chicago's South Side. He was basically unsuccessful, as a lot of people expressed interest, but nobody else went. The funny thing was him writing a review of the night after he went by himself. I was mildly interested in the thread because I miss Chicago and like reading about places I've been to. One thing that he said at one point bothered me. He mentioned at one point that there was no good way to get there on the CTA and he wouldn't suggest that anyone try it. My public transit geekiness kicked in at this point. Now, there is virtually no place in Chicago you can't get to on the CTA so I took issue with this. I wrote that this was bullshit and then wrote detailed instructions on how to get to the club with a combination of "L" train and bus, which would include getting off the bus at the stop right in front of the club's door. I also explained how you could call a cab from the club after the show, since it would be so late, to get to the L station for only a couple of bucks. A completely doable situation that I had done before. I ended my post with a flippant remark, "I swear, North Siders act like the South Side is a Third World country some times." This set off a fire storm. By the time I checked back in LouieB had already responded with two long posts, which means he responded to himself before I even wrote a second thing about it and was basically debating himself. He started off by saying that this was just my way of "dumping on" him like I always do. He also defended himself against some sort of charge that he was a racist. A couple of others chimed in to say that LouieB wasn't a racist and I couldn't figure out what the fuck they were talking about. So I responded that I didn't call anybody a racist (what I had meant by the "Third World" comment was that North Siders act like the South Side is a far away distant land with no modern conveniences or transportation), and even put more details in about the public transit options there are to that particular place. LouieB then posted another long diatribe that basically accused me of wanting the girls of VC to get raped and also repeated that he wasn't a racist. Then me again: "I didn't call anyone a racist, nor did I imply that anyone was a racist."

Then LouieB wrote another monologue that again accused me of wanting people to get raped, that I was ridiculous, idiotic, delusional and that I in fact did mean that he was a racist.

Me: "I didn't call you a racist. And all I'm doing is sharing information about how someone could go to this club on the CTA and be just as safe as driving down there and parking a block away and I've been down there many times this way"

LouieB: Looong monologue explaining to me how I implied that he was a racist, questioning my claim that I've ever even been to that neighborhood, let alone that club and wanting me to prove it, and trying to prove that he knows the neighborhood is not a safe one by bringing up a murder that happened on that street - 20 years ago. I shit you not, he really used a murder from two decades earlier as his only example of how unsafe the area is.

Me: I explained I don't care if he thinks I've been there or not, I'm just trying to let people know that you can get there by public transit if they want to and be relatively safe at the same time. If he disagrees that's fine, I said, but just like the argument over the Wilco record, his view is not the only one and there's no reason to call me names or accuse me of calling him a racist.

Other people chime in to say that LouieB is not a racist. Holy Fuck! I post again that I didn't call him a racist and that just because he claims that's what I meant that doesn't make it so. Then LouieB post another long diatribe calling me foolish and what not, and thanking people for defending his honor, saying shit like he's been riding the CTA since before I was born, and that I've probably never even been to that neighborhood (again with that claim, even though I knew exactly where the bus stop was), and then saying something about my wife going to that neighborhood by herself and would I want her to get raped or something along those lines. This got me really pissed. I started a long reply to tell him to leave my wife out of any conversations we have because she's none of his business and how this is another example of what a weasel he is for doing that and I would never bring his family into one of our arguments. I was pretty livid.

But then in the middle of writing it hit me. It wasn't that I was letting some pathetic aging Baby Boomer on a message board piss me off that was getting to me. Or that I was caring so much about what this guy was telling other people about getting around Chicago, even if he was wrong (but that was a sign of the addiction to be sure). It was that I realized I was in danger of possibly becoming this guy. It was then that I had the same feeling as the moment I decided to quit smoking for good. It was a feeling of "this isn't what I'm about, so I'm going to stop." I finished my post with a "So long VC, it's been unreal," and I got out. I didn't go back to check the Boomer's idiotic responses or anything. I just signed out and walked away from the computer.

The sorry part is that I know exactly how he responded anyway, without even looking.



Epilogue
It has been almost a month now since I last logged on to ViaChicago. I think I finally have it beat. Sometimes I find myself looking it up on the favorites menu, but I always stop myself. It's like when I quit smoking and would find myself reaching into my pocket when I got off the subway or while waiting for the bus. Old habits die hard. But I really don't miss it. The number of hours that I wasted on there was staggering. When I left the board I had passed the 2000 posts mark, accumulated over the course of 2+ years. Someone congratulated me when I hit it, or I may not have even realized. I certainly didn't want to become one of the people who bragged about it like it was some sort of accomplishment. Seriously, some people at that place have celebrated their 10,000th or 15,000th post (like LouieB and EL FAMOUS, just to name two) and the site has only been around since about 2002 or so. And they wear it like a badge of honor, even to the point of people trying to catch the leader all the time (usually a guy called Analogman). I always wondered what they are so proud of. It seems to me like saying "Hey, I'm so cool! I watched my millionth hour of TV!"

But it is over for me now. Every day I'm getting stronger and stronger.....

Geekspotting - Episode I: Loserdom Begins

Hi, my name's Out Of Tune (everyone together now: Hi Out Of Tune!), and I'm a internet message board addict. It's been five days since my last toke on the Wilco fan-geek site. I have a problem. But I'm trying to stop.

It all seemed innocent enough at the beginning. Just having a few laughs trading some live shows, talking about the tour, and other random music musings. Nothing to heavy, and I always said to myself that I could stop at anytime. It was only supposed to be a temporary form of entertainment. I signed on to ViaChicago after I moved to Boston, a town where I don't know anybody except for my wife. I figured until I got settled I could waste some time talking to fellow Wilco fans and collecting live bootlegs. And it was OK for a while. I got my first little taste from Texas, with a note saying there's more where that came from and I know where I can get it. It was three shows I think. Jeff Tweedy solo in Chicago from January 2003, legendary shows that I had attended. Oh the euphoria of those first hits on the bootleg pipe! I was hooked. More and more shows came my way. Post a request on the board (something like, "looking for 7/4/01 in Grant Park, Jay's last show with the band") and you'd get a "PM on the way" message. (PM standing for "private message", your own little mailbox on the board, for you uninitiated folks). You would arrange for a trade, and your "dealer" would soon have something waiting for you in your mailbox a few days later. Pure bliss. But soon, that's not enough. The high is good but I start craving a bigger fix. I wanted something harder than my gateway drug live shows. Soon, I'm joining conversations on the board.

Now I'm entering territory I never thought I would. I had a roommate a few years earlier that I used to make fun of for this. Hers was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 board. She would watch the show while posting conversations with fellow MST3K junkies. I thought to myself, "I'll never get into things like that," and thought how pathetic it was for an otherwise well-adjusted person to be wasting their time communicating with people on the internet that she didn't know. It seemed to be such a waste of a lovely person's talent and personality. And people on the internet give themselves weird names. It's like the stupid CB handles in the 70s, except even dumber than "Bandit" or "Country Weasel." And on music boards it can be ridiculous. About the only thing I hate more than hip-hop names is white twenty-somethings from the suburbs who went to Ivy League schools with hip-hop names. Calling yourself Def Ice Notorious Slim Daddy DJ Jazzman Freshy Cool when your name is really Gilbert just seems stupid. No way did I want to enter a world where these people hung out. If I had only listened to my own admonitions.

I suppose every addict has an excuse for how it started. I guess mine was loneliness. Boston is a tough town to meet people and at the beginning I wasn't working much except for trips down to New York to direct a play twice a week. In between, I was home alone a lot during the day. It started slow, as all addictions do. If you've never been on a message board, here is a little description of how it works: Someone starts a topic of conversation called a "thread" and writes a little something about the topic in a "post." Others on the board can then reply to the post and so on and so on. It becomes something like a conversation at a party but without interruptions. I eventually began to think of the threads as "lines" of the drug that I would soon not be able to kick. The next step up from the gateway was doing lines about the band. It was your general pedestrian conversations. "Put in order, from favorite to least favorite, all of the Wilco albums." "Favorite show you ever saw?" "What will the next album be like?" "What do you think of the new lineup?" "Why did Jay really get kicked out of the band?"

Soon I needed more and more lines and I strayed into the other music topics. And the high got even more intense. Conversations about he Decemberists, long dissertations about why The The is such a great band, posting the lyrics to one of your favorite songs (but not identifying it, that is too unhip. They should be able to figure that out on their own), even a thread where you could post a picture of the album cover that you were listening to. It was called the "now playing" thread, or "NP" for those on the in. And there was always some info on an upcoming tour of somebody I wanted to see. It was ecstasy. Hours disappeared. After this I figured I had already gone this far, so why not take the full plunge? I already went from smoking to snorting, so what the hell, why not just start mainlining? It was time to jump head first into the general topics threads.

Oh my god! As soon as the needle went into the vein I was taken away to another world. Movies, books, hobbies, baseball, politics (oh boy, especially politics). Anything and everything you'd want to talk about and there it was. No need to leave the apartment for social interaction or go out and have a real life or actual relationships. All I needed was here, except maybe beer (but somebody would usually post a "Now Drinking" topic much like the NP thread and would post pictures of the can or bottle of the beverage they were currently enjoying.) There were even a few Republicans hanging around for me to get into arguments with.

Life seemed good.

I was completely unaware of the descent into madness that awaited me.


To be continued...

Hitchcockian Evening

Random notes from the Robyn Hitchcock show at T.T. The Bears Place in Cambridge.

I think only Robyn Hitchcock could get away with walking into the crowd doing a medley that included When Your In Love With a Beautiful Woman by Dr. Hook, Sound And Vision by Bowie, and end it with a Kung-Fu Fighting crowd sing-along (complete with "woah, oh, oh , ohs"), without being hokey.

Sitting at the bar toward the back and looking around at the crowd and there was a lot of gray hair. It dawned on me that a a lot of the bands/musicians that I like to go see are now those shows that are filled with the 40+ crowd. At first that depressed me, but then it made me happy because it means concert life doesn't have to end in middle age.

So I was at the show by myself as my wife couldn't go because for some odd reason he was playing at an ungodly early 7:00pm show. This being Boston, whenever I go out around here I've pretty much given up on the possibility of striking up a conversation with anyone. People here don't talk to people they don't know in bars like they do in, well, everywhere else. It's one of the things I miss about Chicago. But toward the end of the night there was a couple of people who sat next to me and I actually did end up chatting with them. After talking about how many times we've seen Robyn one girl asked me where I had seen him and I mentioned Seattle and Chicago shows. She asked me why on earth I would move to Boston and talked about how she hated it here too. She was also from Chicago and has plans to move back. This seems to be a recurring thing in Boston, every time I meet someone who seems really nice they turn out to be from the Midwest.

Robyn also covered Roxy Music's Oh Yeah(On The Radio) and the Beatles' Dear Prudence and ended the night with A Day In The Life.

I actually hung around long enough that I got to hang around Robyn at the end of the night with just a couple of other people. I like to do this even though it actually makes me feel like a nerd instead of cool. I just shut up and listened to him talk. His description of his music: "What I do is what everyone does in their dreams, I just do it while I'm awake". I found that so cool. I'm such a geek.

I then called my friend Mike to brag when I got home.