crowd control

A whirlwind of activities yesterday - some planned for an extended period, some not. I had a ticket to the Dawes show last night at the 9:30 Club but doors were at 8p, the opener (Sara Watkins) at 9p, Dawes at 10p. Throughout the day I was trying desperately to figure out a way to avoid my normal show arrival (one hour prior to doors to get a sweet seat upstairs) because I didn't much feel like leaving work, hitting the city for a bite, and then spending almost five hours at the club. At about 4pm I was hit by a brilliant idea: I bought L. and I tickets to see Wes Anderson's newest, Moonrise Kingdom. We met in town about 5:30 grabbed dinner at Cedar (her early prom dinner), and caught the 7p show in Penn Quarter. Post-show timed out just right for me to skidaddle over to the club and arrive in a more timely manner.

L. and I both love Anderson so the movie was a pleasure, as expected. This was it's national opening and based on what I've read and seen (sold out last night) my suspicion is that this one will breakthrough and garner him, and his crew of actors, much more attention than what he's seen from the cultists over the last 15 years. I'm not going to ramble on with a review because if you like Anderson you'll love the film, if not, you won't. I think it's his best yet.

The Dawes show was excellent; the crowd was middling to poor. Not in a "they didn't enjoy the band" sense, in a shitty crowd sense. One thing that I've noticed at nearly every 9:30 Club show, and always in the summer, is that the floor crowd is horrid. I don't know if the transplants to D.C. are the worst of America, or if summer brings out the worst. I've covered the basic rules of floor spectation at concerts, but it appears the normal 9:30 crowd refuses to read my blog. Even if they don't, experience shows at concerts and if you attend more than one every five years you might get the swing of the deal. I've been to hundreds of club shows all over America and the 9:30 Club is head-and-shoulders above (worse?) than any place I've ever been; it always weighs on my mind before I decide to head to that venue.* The better part was the band - these guys are great live. Excellent mixing at the board, lyrics understandable, band simply up to the task of blasting it out on a Friday night. I'm happy to see them exploding and packing such a big club.

L. has her prom tonight so I'll try to update with pictures (steam punk theme) later tonight.

* I realize that a good bit of this is me - don't rant back. I've decided to move regions on the floor the next time I'm there. If you look around you can see pockets of fans who are often better than where I might end up standing, but sometimes the hatred of the group of jackasses is too gravitational strong to escape...

...to the gut

My summer concert series kicked off Friday night with The Punch Brothers at the 9:30 Club. Lord, I was tired but the show’s vibe made up for the long day. The deal with these five musicians, as one, is that instead of feeling as if they are pushing something out at the crowd instead they are pulling us along – something that’s never happened at shows I’ve attended. For the first haIf dozen songs you felt like the band was climbing a mountain and we were along for the ride, and the back side roll was going to be something. The Brothers were loaded from the get-go with Chris Thile letting the crowd know how long he’d waited to bring “this band to this club.” The music, including an early 9-10 minutes instrumental, was stunning – how five guys can create such a din is beyond me. This band is tight – and at least 10x better live than on CD; and the CD is exceptional. Their ability to move easily between classic bluegrass and some version of a pop/jam band is a thing of beauty; pure and simple talent. Having a chance to see this pinnacle of the decade long re-mapping of young string bands made for quite an evening. Well done to the band. I’m ecstatic to have seen them in a club before the onslaught of bigger shows over the coming years. Based on what I’ve seen with this new generation of bands the growth of fans and venues will be exponential; nothing but festivals on the docket for the coming summer and autumn.

In a rare confluence of events (if you know my background feelings about 9:30 shows), the crowd was the best I’ve experienced there, and the sound was impeccable. Between the band and the house system they perfectly balanced all the instruments and vocals which seems to happen only once every ten shows. Also, the club has taken to allowing the first 30 or so patrons into the basement bar and then letting us in at door time before the rest of the folks lined up outside. I got there about an hour before doors, had a beer, and cleared with the guy at the ‘front/stairs’ that I was heading up to the upper bar and a stool whist he was going for the center of the stage – always declare intentions. We were both happy with the outcome.

The only downside? I got hit was a 2 x 18 on the way home: a full 18-minute wait for the Green Line at Cardozo, followed by another full 18 at L’enfant Plaza. Sometimes you get a kick in the teeth, sometimes it doesn’t even hurt.

humdinger

Regardless of your political leanings, I think everyone should go out and canvass for a political campaign. The Eleven spend a beautiful Saturday heading into D.C. to pick up some G’town law students and then driving down to South Fairfax county to canvass for Obama. What the process gives you, and what you’ll realize if you take up the challenge, is a chance to interact and be a part of a process that’s horribly broken and left on the side of the road. We were together for our walk sheet, knocked on doors, and had some great conversations with undecided voters, Obama supporters, and homes with a bit of both McCain and Obama present. We were nervous at the outset as we sorted our goods and got parked to begin: how would we present ourselves? What stories did we have that might convince people to just talk? What would they think of a couple of newly-minted political campaigners? You know what? For the most part, whether they agree or not with your candidate, most are perfectly happy to stand on the porch and talk about what’s important to them – and just as often, what’s important to us. It’s a wholly different view of the process than the yelling and screaming you hear across the rest of the landscape. You know what? There are a lot of people out there that are struggling to decide who they’ll vote for in November. There’re a ton of issues pulling everyone this way and that. There are, hopefully, a few dozen that are happy that someone who cared came knocking on their door on a September Saturday to talk honestly about where we are and where we’re headed. I found that much like every other volunteer activity I’ve added to my life over the last two years, people care that you’re there. Obama has registered over 250,000 new voters in Virginia in 2008. If nothing else, getting everyone to the polls is something no one can argue against.

I headed to the 9:30 Club last night to catch another Old Crow Medicine Show concert. I happened to be first in line and meandered to the best seat in American music: upper level, dead center, with my can on one of the club’s eight or so barstools. I love the Crows but their 2006 show at the 9:30 was very disappointing; both for the sound of the performance and the shitty crowd. Last night was a whole new ballgame – they were on fire and the crowd was so much stronger. They ran about two hours with a 15-minute break and screamed through most of the new CD (out next week, but in my hot, little hands) and a good bit of the back catalog. What they’ve become is a band with enough material to not have to rely on playing everything from every album – they can pick-and-choose what’s to come. In fact, they didn’t play at least six songs that I was expecting to hear yet I didn’t miss any of them. With the exception of a few slow moments, the show was stunning. As I was standing outside before the show, Ketch (singer, writer, harmonica, fiddle player, banjo player, guitar player) was walking to the tour bus with his mother, who was visiting D.C. to see her son and last night’s show. I don’t know if his performance was that much more inspired but he was fantastic. If only I could do any of that stuff. Considering the dip that’d taken after the last outing, last night’s gig put them right back up at the peak of live bands.

Apparently there’s a cat coming to live with us tomorrow morning. I’ll see if I can get to the farmers’ market on a pass before the feline invades my life.



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thistle and that

There’s a timeless to-and-fro in the nether reaches of my mind that occasionally comes to the fore, or fro if you like, when I’m at a concert. The music is normally the trigger but it’s not necessarily the performer on stage that’s the subject – just my mind wandering between acts or songs. Last night it came up again and specifically about the performer on stage. I was at the 9:30 Club for The Pogues sold-out stop on their short American tour. The burning question in my brain as I watched lead singer (and songwriter) Shane MacGowan work (?) his way through the show was this: when does a band, or musician, decide that they are beholden to a member beyond any grand usefulness? The Pogues, if you’re unaware, are an iconic Irish folk, Celtic fusion, with dashes of punk band that came on the scene in the early 80s and thrived for about a dozen years before imploding with the firing of leader/founder MacGowan for unprofessional conduct, or some such. MacGowan drank a ton, did loads of drugs (apparently), and had issues with performing; things like showing up, not being drunk (or being drunk), etc. The band finally reformed in the early naughts and has toured intermittently over the last three or four years. They have a devoted following that travels the world to see them and I think at least half of the crowd last night was from beyond the greater D.C. area. My problem is primarily with MacGowan – not as an assessment of his person or life, but musically. First, The Pogues songs are anthemic (is that a word?) – the first chords of the MacGowan-penned songs are so recognizable as to cause screaming, jumping, singing, and stomping from fans – that the vocals and lyrics have become secondary to the music created when performed by MacGowan. Most everyone knows the lyrics, they sing them aloud, and the singer on stage almost becomes an afterthought. You wonder while watching if it’s really necessary for MacGowan to be ‘up there’ singing at all. Why not find a more reliable and functional performer? This is the question that rolls around in the head – in a right there in front of me way....watching. One of the parallels to what I was watching last night is the question of whether the Doors would have been what they were without the short, crazed life of Jim Morrison? You’ve got to believe that a sober Morrison wouldn’t have been half the presence either on record or live. The Pogues wouldn’t be what they are without the legend of Shane MacGowan and they certainly wouldn’t sell $150K in tickets over two in nights in D.C. without him propped up on the stage. The band is so good, the music so tight, that the loss of the lyrics – the singing that’s gone on the night – is counterproductive to the entire show. The answers to the question of instability in a musical front man is that in order to continue performing and working as a band that injects the kind of spirit for which The Pogues stand, they need a different singer. But, a different front man basically means the end of the band – it’s happened to them before and it would happen again.

Now that I’ve got that out in the open I’ll say that the show was memorable because the songs are so great. The best performances (particularly by MacGowan) came during two songs in the encores*; the vocals were better and it almost seemed like the old days. I’m glad I finally got a chance to them live, it was immensely enjoyable, but I’ve no need to see them again. What was horribly clear during the three or four songs that MacGowan was not on stage was that you were watching a band uncomfortable because the crowd no longer had visual contact with the heart of the group. There is, of course, nowhere for them to go. They’ll continue to play shows a few times a year until MacGowan is no longer able to perform and that will be the end. It’s not an unhappy ending for the band and the music…you can always throw on Rum or God and hear the fire they once carried.

*Since I know how much folk like my ideas on encores I’ll fire away again: seven songs over two encores is idiotic. In a show that runs maybe 20-22 songs total you’re holding a third for encores. I know – they were strong in the encore but they could have simply been strong and called it a night.

Seeing Shane last night also reminded of his appearance in this BBC video what was done back in 1997 - a lovely version of a great Lou Reed song, Perfect Day.



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