CHARISMATIC MEGAFAUNA

By Quiconque

Don't get me started
2004-09-17

My Last Rock Concert, or I�m Getting Too Old for This

Prima has often said that she is not a big fan of live music. The sound quality, she argues, is better on the CD. Besides, one does not need to see the band to enjoy the sound. I will admit that, when she first presented this line of thinking to me, I was a little taken aback. For some reason, I considered a live performance more authentic than a recording mastered in a cold studio. The live show was the real music; the CD was just a product.

I remember my first rock concert: Peter Gabriel at the Brendan Byrne Arena in 1987. That was a great show. Granted, I was 16, and it was my first concert. What did I really know? Compared to the spectacle he put on for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, the So concert probably seemed more like a Raffi sing-along. But I do remember having a good time there; it�s not just nostalgia talking.

The best concert I ever attended was a quiet little show in Irvine Auditorium featuring a small band that was just beginning to emerge on the pop charts, 10,000 Maniacs. Their opening act was a complete unknown: Tracy Chapman. I went by myself. I sat in the first row balcony. It was bliss.

Since then I�ve seen Prince, Sting (twice), Peter Gabriel (again), and Terence Trent D�Arby (Don�t you judge me. This was right after Introducing the Hardline came out. And say what you will, that is a fantastic album). Going to the concert was the legitimate and expected extension of enjoying an album.

This began to fall apart in 1994. Do the math. If I was 16 in �87, I had not yet begun to be old in �94. But somehow I ended up asleep in the front row of A Tribe Called Quest�s Spring Fling performance. Asleep in the front row. Drunken and stoned teenagers had turned the orchestra pit in Irvine into a mosh pit, despite repeated warnings from the band that the structure was unsound. (Irvine in those days was in a constant, visible state of decay.) And yet I slept. I only woke up when a girl who was really having trouble controlling her substances sat on and nearly passed out on me. (Mama Ass, ever the nurse, took the chick�s vitals and made sure she stayed awake.)

Six years later, I officially became old. I felt it happening. Super Fudge and I were at the Ben Harper concert in Roseland. (Due to really poor planning on my part, La Belle H�l�ne never made it inside to pick up the ticket I left at the door for her. Sorry!) There was nothing in Ben Harper�s albums to indicate that we would be surrounded by overdosing children. At one point in the evening, the crowd scattered as a bouncer ran through the club, a young woman in his arms, her face and torso covered in blood. The guy on our left spent the night puking into his beer while his girlfriend kept kissing (YUCK!) him and asking him what was wrong. On our right another guy abandoned his semi-conscious female friend on the couch with the instructions that she �stay right there.� The air was thick with cigarette smoke and all manner of effluvia.

It was impossible to see the stage from where we sat. So, Super Fudge took out a pack of origami paper and made cranes, while I took out Diana Wynne Jones� Hexwood and caught up on my reading. Our only consolation for messing up La Belle H�l�ne�s ticket was the knowledge that she would have hated the concert more than we did.

But what about the music? The music was great. Ben Harper puts on a good show. Well, it sounded like a good show. We couldn�t see the stage. And, as I sat on the cigarette-scarred banquette, reading my book, I thought, �Wouldn�t it be better just to play the CD at home?� and Prima�s words echoed in my head.

Last night I gave rock concerts one more shot. La Belle H�l�ne and I went to the Bowery Ballroom to see Modest Mouse. It was a free event sponsored jointly by a music magazine, an extreme-sports-themed soda, and a beer company. Before I go into what I hated, let me be clear, the bands were great. Unfortunately, so much else was not great that by the time the Modest Mouse took the stage, my patience, sanity, and health were taxed almost beyond recovery.

I hate, more than taxation without representation, more than tourists in ill-fitting pants, more than land mines, more than air pollution, I hate to have my time wasted. I hate standing around, waiting for something to happen. That doesn�t mean that I need to be constantly productive. I am happy to waste my own time. But that is a matter of choice. I cannot stand being a prisoner of someone else�s inefficiency.

We stood around outside for 40 minutes, waiting for the bouncers and the organizers to figure out how to let us in. We stood in the basement bar for another 30 minutes waiting for some indication that a show was actually going to happen. (Luckily we got some beer-themed swag and a free magazine. Unluckily we also got to taste the new soda. It�s vile). We went upstairs and waited 30 more minutes on the dance floor while the dj played alternahits from the �80s and big-headed boys invaded our personal space.

By now we were very tired. It had been over 8 hours since either of us had eaten. I found myself getting light-headed and sweaty. My feet hurt incredibly, and yet there was no sign that anything was going to start anytime soon. A band came out around 9 o�clock. Of course it was just the opening act. (The guitarist/singer was awesome, by the way. But we never caught their name. We did learn that they were from Canada and very proud of it).

I felt myself being transformed by the music. I could swear that my heartbeat was being altered by the drums. My ribs hurt. Ever the anthropologist, I began to ruminate on the connections between music and �catching the spirit� and other forms of collective religious hysteria. My non-academic self was just extremely uncomfortable.

Finally, after 2 and a half hours, Modest Mouse came out. And they were all I wanted them to be, except late. This is what we came for. And then, suddenly, it was like someone set a bale of weed on fire. Clouds of pot smoke blew across the club in huge gusts. It could not have been the work of a few isolated spliffs. This was like crop dusting. After the second song I really felt ill.

We left the dance floor and went downstairs to sit on a squashy leather couch. We could still hear the music. Here we were, sitting on a couch in a basement, listening to a band we couldn�t see. Did we really need to go down the Lower East Side for that experience? We do that in our house every bloody day!

We left after a few more songs, and went to MacDo for a long-awaited snack. We agreed to keep to our own basement in the future.
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BLOGOPHILIA

addieplum
ashyknees
bevin
dumbokie
fresh peth
la belle helene
mr. snacks
my adult life
prettygirl
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rex kramer
shasta red
sooner
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totally knitting
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LINKS







tomato nation
cocktail
heartless bitches
miss manners
bunny survival tests
scary squirrel world
angry alien
not martha
my theme song
j.k. rowling
four word film reviews
chicklit

DIARYRINGS

napqueens
geek-love
anthropology

LISTENING TO: Modest Mouse. "We are hummingbirds who lost the plot and we will not move."

READING: Little, Big by John Crowley

WATCHING: Season premieres on the WB. The Mountain sure looks good, don't it?

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