Vitapup- Syphilis

Soph year of high school, early 1995 or so, this was the first underground/punk-ish song that really grabbed me. I heard it on WPRB Princeton... (maybe "Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn"?) and it led to me repeatedly calling in to request it with my cassette deck ready trying to tape it off the radio. While more off-kilter, this Vitapup track was my gateway drug to the glory of NJHC. Within a few months I was in basements and the Manville Elks seeing xBoundx, Shades Apart and Ensign. Finally found this 7" years later at Generation in NYC.

a new/old implication of poor time management

2010.04.11: Sunday afternoon played out like a slightly warped Sea & Cake tape from the early oh-ohs!.



Lazy & beautiful, with a tinge of ominousness, colored by the knowledge that there are real things I should be doing that I'm not doing, choosing instead to drift.

Phish is playing their first shows in 4 1/2 years this weekend.

Oh Honey, all the time I've wasted on the internet looking for tickets to Phish's 3 sold-out "comeback" shows this coming weekend at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. The tickets sold out immediately and while I tried valiantly, I wasn't one of the lucky ones. After sellout super-inflated tickets showed up on the internet . $500 and more for tickets face-valued at under $50.

(fyi: found this picture on the internet. I don't actually have tickets)

No way in hell would I pay that much for a ticket, especially for a band whose repertoire is based around improv. With Phish, it's kind of a crap shoot whether the band will be "on" or not, and of course the setlists and jams change every night. You never know what you're gonna get and that's half the fun. But it's a risk. It's a gamble. $500 could get me a lot of flubbed guitar-playing and forgotten lyrics.
But I'm always willing to wager face-value on a show because even an "off" show is a lot of fun for my ears, eyes, and dancing feet. And a show filled inspired jams and good set-construction can be transcendent!

I was lucky enough to get tickets to all 8 shows I want to go to for the band's subsequently announced June tour. But I got it into my head that I NEEDED to be at the Hampton shows . The thought of being there on Friday (March 6th )amidst an ecstatic crowd of 18,000 when the lights go down for the first time in nearly 5 years filled me with joy and excitement.

And there's nothing wrong with hoping that somehow a friend or a friend of a friend would offer me extra tickets to the shows. And there's nothing wrong with checking fan (or "phan") message boards for people looking to unload tickets at face value. And of course there's nothing wrong with checking Ticketmaster for unannounced re-releases of Phish Hampton tickets (tickets do often get rereleased for "sold out shows" as the show date draws near) But there IS something wrong with spending hours and hours each day trawling through the messageboards, asking and re-asking friends if they knew anyone with extras. And it definitely was wrong to check the Ticketmaster page 20+ times each day.

I became obsessive. It was no longer, "oh it'd be nice to get into these shows." It became I MUST get into the shows. A lot of time I could've been writing, making music, or just breathing deep and enjoying life was spent huffing, puffing and scheming vainly. The quest for Phish tickets became an easy way to self-sabotage. The endless red-eyed interneting got me nowhere except my desk chair, wearing out the cuhion, an animal ensnared in a net.

I felt very lonely by myself in my room refreshing pages. I looked for companionship on Phish fan messageboards, a bad place to hang out if one is looking for a sense of connection or a self-esteem boost. Sure the boards have some "normal"-acting friendly people who converse civilly, smiling in type in the same respectful accepting way they would if they were talking with you face-to-face. But the internet also provides a good mask. Viscious 16 year olds who have never seen the band before and bought their upcoming concert tickets using Mom's credit card can pose as veteran know-it-alls. These greenhorns can freely without repercussions unleash all the bile the net can bestow upon another person. Yeah it's only the internet. Yeah it's at least a full step removed from "real" life, but an online put-down still hurts. And somehow I took to heart the taunting of these online personae when they wrote that if I were a REAL fan, I would've already found a way to procure tickets to the comeback shows by now. Maybe so, maybe not.

This ticket obsession and message board time- sap almost made me forget two things:

1) Phish has thousands of hours of wonderful freely traded concert recordings I can enjoy any time i want. For a while I'd neglect to listen to he very thing that set off an obsessive spiral--- Phish's great live music! When I finally took step back and really listened to the band a few nights ago, I couldn't help but smile. The recordings will always be there for me. And while plenty of folks out there don't "get" Phish, I do and I can't help but feel a little lifted when I hear them.

2) I AM seeing Phish 8 times this summer. That's a lot of potential for great improvisations, oddball cover tunes, fist-in-the-air sing-alongs, whirling dervish dancing, and general merriment and/or as music as a spiritual enlightenment that escapes words. I was lucky enough to be able to obtain tickets to all these quickly sold-out performances, and was able to afford the not-so-cheap tickets ($50 for each ticket) and all the associated travel costs, and I will be able to take the time off to travel as far out as Alpine Valley, Wisconson to see the band. All this is a lot more than can be said for other fans. I'm sure many other Phish lovers got shut out of tickets, couldn't afford tickets, or couldn't take the time off to travel to an out of town concert ( there are NO shows currently scheduled for the South West or West Coast)

I won't say it's wrong for me to still wish for a miracle to happen to get me down to Virginia and in the door for the shows on March 6th, 7th, and 8th but I now think it's pretty selfish to think that I somehow need to be at the shows or deserve to be at them because of my fairly hardcore fan status.

Patience, dear Sebastian! In three months you WILL be seeing a slew of Phish shows and through the magic of modern technology you'll probably be able to download recordings of the Hampton concerts less than 24 hours after they happen.

I'm getting excited!

And here's an example of the very thing that gets me excited. Here's a clip of Phish playing "Piper"- one of my favorite songs--live in Vegas on Feb 16 2003:

Dancing Queen

"Dancing Queen" by ABBA is a song I love and fear.


It's undoubtedly a great dance song, completely overplayed and ABBA's greatest hit among a slew of hits.

For me, it's also the trigger for a lot of college memories and often the sign of a technological malfunction.

The song is tied to college for me firstly because it played during a painfully awkward orientation day the first week of first semester August of 1997. St. Joe's University bused us freshmen out to some YMCA-ish campground called Hawk Mountain, at Pottsville (home to Yuengling Brewery) an hour or two outside of Philly.

In hindsight, I shouldn' have gonet. The orientation was optional, but strongly recommended. I should've just wandered the near-empty campus instead. But I was hungry to meet people. The icebreakers and activities of the day seemed like they might provide an opportunity to meet some like minded punk/hardcore kids. Though of course the handful of punks were smart enough to spend the day elsewhere. So I boarded one of the chartered yellow school buses and began looking for patches and punk/hardcore t-shirts. I don't think I found any.

The Hawk Mountain day revolved around a lot of forgettable mixer activities, that involved small groups sitting in circles exchanging info. Most people however seemed to quickly give up on the activities and just sniff out their own kind. The high school caste system was still alive, though taking its final breath. The jocks found each other, so did the chess club kids. I mean, it wasn't completely groupings by the high school movie stereotypes, but without classes having begun yet and without having mixed yet with upperclassmen, it still felt like the society of high school.

There was a pool at the camp, domineered by beefy former football and future fratboy types showing off on the diving board. I made the mistake of going for a dip. I climbed to the top of the diving board ladder and stood there for a second. A few of these fratboy/football types were sitting in poolside chairs shouting negative things at me. I really forget wha,. but it wasn't personal. They were shouting at each and every person who climbed to the diving board. But of course it didn't make me feel any better about myself. I felt really scrawny and naked. I'm a naturally thin guy to begin with and still echoing in my head from sometime in high school was my Dad's remark when he saw me walking around the house with no shirt on:
"Jesus, son, you look like a concentration camp victim!"
So there I was on the diving board, getting harassed by the meaties and feeling very alone. I'd made no friends yet, so no one was there to comfort me. I knew at that point that trying to dive was a mistake, but I also knew that climbing backwards dryly down the ladder was an even greater mistake, sure to elicit a barrage of stinging comments from the poolside athletes. So I quite literally took the plunge. The water was cold, not at all refreshing. I made it to the shallow end, got out, dried off, and quickly walked away.

So far this has nothing to do with "Dancing Queen," I know. But to cap off the day, before busing us back to campus there was an outdoor dance. It was probably just like a Catholic high school dance with some middle-aged DJ playing relatively clean songs and the boys standing off to the side while the girls danced with each other. I don't remember a damn thing about it except that "Dancing Queen" was played.

Right when the song started, this tall beautiful blond guy next to me, Tim I think was his name, clapped his hands together and said "ooh 'Dancing Queen'. I lovvvve this song!" This Tim guy looked like one of those arrogant pretty boys you might see in a black and white full-page denim ad on the inside cover of the New York Times magazine. A group of girls was fanned out around him. I didn't know him, but I hated him already. He wasn't afraid to dance and already had a bevy of admirers. And I thought he was gay. As a product of a lifetime of Catholic School education and years away from my own post-college kissing of boys, I was still mildly homophobic.

That orientation dance was the first time I remember taking notice of "Dancing Queen". I'm pretty sure I'd heard it before then, but it struck me at that dance what a great song it was. It had a great beat and seemed so melancholy when applied to my life at that point, on that very day, standing alone and barely dancing on some outdoor basketball court.
"You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life!" I could but I didn't and at the time just wanted to be in my dorm room alone. The only thing that rang true about the song as applied to my life was "young [and sweet], only 17." I wouldn't hit 18 and nominal adulthood until the end of September that first semester.

Hearing that song brings the whole day back to me. It was dreadful to live through, but it's pretty amusing to me in hindsight.

"Dancing Queen" also makes me think of Liz O. She's now engaged and soon to be married, but she was a long standing crush of mine in college. She was tall, atypically pretty, skilled in sarcasm and a delicious nerd. She was the kind of girl who'd spend extra time in the library researching something that came up in a casual conversation totally unrelated to any class she was taking. She loved learning for the sake of learning and I found that dreadfully attractive. My interest was unrequited though. We became pretty good friends but the one-sided romantic interest was always a source of tension. I first met her on some sort of weekend spiritual retreat sponsored by the school that first semester. It was a Jesuit university and at the time I was still quite into Christianity. Somehow we got talking about "Dancing Queen" and she said that during the summer that had just ended, it was her theme song when she went dancing "down the shore" near her family's New Jersey beach timeshare. She said it was her theme because she was indeed, "young and sweet, only 17." She was one of the youngest freshmen, not hitting 18 til November or December of first semester.

In the song, the "Dancing Queen" is a "teaser [who] turn[s] 'em on." Liz definitely never teased me on purpose. She was pretty clear about "liking me as a friend" but I teased myself into thinking she might become interested in me and it turned into a sweet torture that lasted through senior year.

Also that fist semester I made a mixtape from CDs I borrowed from folks on my dorm floor. And sure enough, "Dancing Queen" was on there. I think I taped it off my roommate Dan's ABBA Gold CD. It was his favorite CD next to Fleetwood Mac's Rumors . I haven't seen him since graduation, though college acquaintances tell me Dan came out of the closet and was last known to be happily living with an older guy in Philly's "Gayborhood." I haven't verified this but of course it is the stereotype that only gay guys love ABBA.

A couple years ago, I ripped my own copy of ABBA Gold from a friend's collection. The album starts off with "Dancing Queen" and coincidentally ABBA is the first group alphabetically in my itunes/iPod. So "Dancing Queen" song #1. My first iPod was an old ailing hand-me-down unit that had a number of problems. It would often freeze without warning. A series of smacks and switching it on/off/on/off would eventually get it working again but it'd usually reset itself, abandoning the song that was in progress and going right back to to the first song in the music library, "Dancing Queen." Hearing that descending piano run intro would always remind me that my music player wasn't long for this world.

My iPod eventually did crap out. My new one has worked very well, though occasionally there's an inexplicable freeze up or buttons pressed that don''t seem to do anything. The only thing that always seems to work is going to the beginning of the library and it's "ohhhh-woah-ohhhh, oh-woah, oh-woah-woah-woah" intro that all at once gets me angry at technology, melancholy about Liz, and laughing at my freshman awkwardness.

the Led Zeppelin reunion, now a year past.

By looking through past entries, you can probably guess that I'm a big Zeppelin fan. That's an understatement.

Well we just passed the one year anniversary of the most import Zep-related thing to happen during my time as a fan: the Dec 10, 2007 reunion of the surviving members with Jason Bonham (son of the departed John) sitting in on drums. It was the first full concert the band gave since 1980. I've had an audio bootleg of the show since about a week after it happened, but just recently I downloaded a full video of the concert.

I really really enjoyed watching a DVD bootleg of the whole LZ 2007.12.10 performance. Of course I'd heard 4 different versions of the audio numerous times over the last year and I knew where the band excelled and where they faltered a bit in the performance. But it was fantastic actually seeing the whole thing for the first time earlier this month. I was totally sucked in!

I sat transfixed in my kitchen with my ear-eatting Sennheiser headphones on watching the whole thing on my laptop as the hour grew very late. I didn't finish the 2 hour show until nearly 3AM and had to work the next morning, but I couldn't pull myself away until the absolute last frame.

The 4 men on stage really sounded like Led Zeppelin, but a sort of nervous and very human Zeppelin. They didn't come across like the flashy, cocky rock gods of the 70s. From their body language it seemed they knew how important it was for their legend that they nail this performance (since the two 1980s sets were crap*) They seemed to be really concentrating, almost holding their collective breath. But every now and then, they'd loosen up and smile-- often when everything fell exactly into place for a few minutes or seconds and it sounded like 1973 all over again. It was in these moments of confidence that the old rock star moves would peak out a bit. Page or Plant would do a little flourish that called to mind the constant onstage dance of their heyday.

Watching the DVD I KNEW it would turn out okay, but it almost felt like I was there and the show was happening in real time. In the moments when they were a little less than together I felt nervous for them, thinking absurdly "come on, guys hold it together. Regain your footing!" The sound came from the best AUD sources (and actually gave you a few difference audio mix options like a REAL DVD release) and the picture came from 13 different sources mixing close ups, some BBC pro-shot stuff, and distant shaky camera phone style shots. The angles came from all over the vast venue so I really got a sense of the physical space of the show.

This is perhaps the best performance from the reunion. I never would've guessed this song would be included in the set.:


Watching this set, nearly fulfilled a dream for me: seeing a Led Zeppelin reunion in person. I became a fan in 1990, just after the second LZ reunion set and all throughout junior high I dreamed of them playing together again. I wrote about Zeppelin whenever I could in our daily "theme" pieces for English class. And once there was an assignment to design a poster for a pretend school concert. Well I figured that if the concert wasn't real then I could delve deep into fantasy and designed a poster for the 1990 reunion performance of Led Zeppelin at the Immaculate Conception Grammar School Gym in Somerville, NJ. It had "Led Zeppelin is BACK!" on the top and a drawing of Jimmy Page bowing his guitar a la 'Dazed & Confused.' I was very proud of my work, but when the assignment was handed back to me, written in red across the paper in my teacher's hand was "This is NOT what I meant!"

Oh well.

*( I blame the failure of the Live Aid July 1985 performance wholly on the presence of Phil Collins. He's an easy target. As for the 1988 set, it was marginally better but Jimmy Page was out of tune and out of sorts...)

Neil Young's Farewell(?) to the Philadelphia Spectrum

Getting to the faded Spectrum went really smoothly. We made our public transit connections without much wait time and the trolley operator wouldn't even take our tokens for some reason, so we got a free ride. The last stop on the southbound Broad Street subway line puts you about 200 feet from the Spectrum, and by luck, the "floor tickets only" entrance was the closest one to the subway exit. Nick, my companion for the show, realized that he had a slice of carrot cake in his jacket pocket that of course he couldn't bring inside. So we split it and got all sugared up on the the cake with cinnamon frosting before waltzing right in with no line and a very gentle pat down.


The tickets looked laughably like second-rate counterfeits: smudgy printing and only a barely perceptible "Comcast" watermark. But they scanned in fine. If I hadn't bought them right from the box office I would've thought they were fake. And yes, the tickets were really "$19.67" There was a very limited special first-day-of-sale deal in celebration of the Spectrum's final year (it was opened in 1967.)

Walking in the hall and on the floor I tried to soak in all its dingy outdated glory, thinking "this could be the last time I'm at the Spectrum." Though I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Phish will pay it a visit in 2009 before the building's implosion. I've only been there for concerts a handful of times, but I know its music history and have heard a lot of the shows through bootlegs. Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Pink Floyd, Springsteen, and most prominently the Grateful Dead. The old dingy brick of the place makes me think, this is about the same as what it looked like when the rock giants played here in their 1970s heyday. I'm reminded of that grainy picture on the back of the Kiss "Alive" record, with two shaggy headed teens on an arena floor. There are lots of benevolent ghosts still hanging around in the rafters of the Spectrum. Looking up, I smiled at the sight of the "Grateful Dead 53 Spectrum Sell-Outs" banner done like a Flyers hockey championship banner in black and orange, except the "53" was in tie-dye.

The ticket said show time was 7pm, so at exactly 7, Everest, the first opener, took the stage. And played for exactly 30 minutes to an arena that was no more than a third full. I really enjoyed their set. With their big-guitar country-tinged sound and reverbed vocals, they sounded very similar to My Morning Jacket (who in turn have been compared to Neil Young.) And I really like MMJ so I found myself head-bopping. And they got a surprisingly positive reaction from the crowd: moderate cheers after each song and only a single shout of "where's Neil?" Everest was arrayed in attire that looked as if it had been swiped from Neil's early 70s closet and one of the guitarists wore a poncho that looked liked it belonged to Stephen Stills a long time ago.

I thought about what carefree fun it might be to be the opening band in a situation like this. There's no pressure. No one is there to see you in particular, except a handful of guestlist friends, who probably love you no matter what you do. And the people shuffling into the arena aren't expecting much so it's hard to really let them down. And even though a band like Everest aren't rock stars and will probably never reach the popularity needed to headline a venue like the Spectrum, as the openers they can pretend to be rock stars. They were all smiles on stage. They seemed happy to be there. And if they messed up a solo or a verse, no one was gonna notice because no one knew what the songs wee supposed to sound like anyway. And maybe, just maybe they'd play a little something that'd grab the ears of some of the folks in the crowd; and this is exactly what happened in one of their last songs when one of the guitarists played a jangley outro figure that made me smile wide.

Everest set the mood for things to come.

Wilco was next and it was clear they had some fans in the steadily-filling arena. I've always enjoyed their music. I only have one of their early, more straightforward albums but have liked everything I've heard on the radio and from friends. And I enjoyed their performance even more than I expected. They started their 50 minute set with, "Via Chicago" a song that balanced a country pedal-steel and acoustic sound with a couple breaks of noisy chaos. During the racket the band didn't let on that all hell seemed to be breaking loose. Jeff Tweedy's vocals continued understated and sweet through the racket and the whole band snapped back together back into the melody right on cue.

The star of Wilco's set was lead guitarist Nels Cline. Kinda funny that he had a similar first name to the guitar god headliner, but there was never a Nels vs. Neil dual for ax-weilder supremacy during the show. Nels played everything from clear cleaning ringing tones, echoing shimmers, countryish lap steel and blips and distorted noise, processing his guitar through an effects board. When he soloed, a white spot light shone on him and often reflected off his shiny pick guard, sending a beam of light straight out onto the floor, hitting me right in the eyes; the perfect visual accompaniment to his sonic wizardry.

It was curious seeing Nels Cline in a huge arena on a high stage. The other time I saw him perform was in the Avant Gentlemen's Lodge* warehouse in West Philly where he played in a different ensemble as part of an evening of experimental music. The warehouse stage was about two feet high. That show was $5 at the door and I got to chat with Nels after the show as he milled about in the middle of the crowd.

The second Wilco tune featured harmonizing dual-lead guitars by Nels and Tweedy that worked the crowd into a froth and got people hooting and hollering. Their fourth tune had a Krautrock "motorik" beat to it that sounded like something from Can or Neu! I was dancing, smiling, floating on the sounds. Their music definitely tapped into a similar vein as Neil's but they could never be confused. They both sound very distinct but complementary. And by all the whoops and calling out of song titles it was obvious there were a lot of Neil/Wilco crossover fans in attendance. By the excited noise they made during Wilco's set, I figured the guys right behind me were teenagers. But when I looked back, I was truly surprised to see that they were approaching middle age, older than some of the guys in the band.

Wilco's set had a really warm positive feel to it, and by the time Neil came out I was really warmed up and ready to go. And Neil and his 5 piece band delivered. I've never heard Neil "phone it in" in the live setting. The sound and sightlines were excellent from my perspective, about 30 feet straight back from center stage. There was none of the boom and garbled echo that can come with arena shows.

It was difficult not to compare this show to seeing Neil last year. That show was definitely a cut above because of the beautiful old 2000-seat theatre venue (the Tower), the rarity-filled setlist, the solo acoustic set and the fact that it was my first time seeing Neil after being a fan for 15 years.
This 2 hour Spectrum set had a "greatest hits" focused list, but every single note seemed to be delivered with passion. And Neil's hits are hits for a reason: they're damn good.

"Hey Hey My My" may have been played to death on classic rock radio but I was bowled over by its power on stage. Neil convulsed with guitar in hands, struggling with it as if he were trying to wring the neck of some wild fowl. He was never still for a moment as he squeezed out growling, choking, crunching, heaviness.

"Powderfinger" is one of my favorite Neil songs of all time and it was great to sing along to it shouting passionately, "Red means run, son, numbers add up to nothing!" even though I've never figured out just what that means.

"Spirit Road" from the most recent LP fit in well with the old noisy guitar-jam classics and this seemed an even stronger performance than when I saw the song played last year.

"Cortez the Killer" was played very slow and heavy with mournful guitar leads sailing above the ominous sea that the rest of the band created. The instrumental section wandered, but never lost its way or intensity.

My experience listening to "Oh Lonesome, Me" and the solo pump-organ version of "Mother Earth" were marred somewhat by the Blah-blah cellphone man behind me (read the addendum "Rant" for more on this) but were still very moving to hear.

The new, acoustic "Light a Candle" was elevated by an unexpected and delicate pedal steel line by Ben Keith who continued his high lonesome moans on "Unknown Legend," and "Heart of Gold." He also played on the original classic sessions of these song. For "Old Man" a brief and precisely timed spotlight was shone on the mustachioed guitar tech Larry Cragg, so he could bust out the song's signature banjo line.

"Get Back to the Country" was a raucous pedal-steeled affair, much more lively and enjoyable than on the mediocre mid 80s "Old Ways" album. At less than 3 minutes though, it was all too brief.

Then Neil delivered a trio of new, unreleased rockers all about social change. For me, jury's still out on the first two. Neil is very prolific. He continues to release a new album almost every year, but his output is real hit or miss. It's rare that he puts out a truly bad song, but I think the first two of these new songs were just "OK." Maybe I'll get more into them as I hear them more. The last of the trio, "When Worlds Collide" was the strongest, with an ominous funk feel and minor key (intentionally?) strained chorus.

To close out the set, "Rockin' in the Free World" invoked the spirits of nearly 20 years of garage bands. The song is simple on a technical level so I've heard a lot of amateurs play it, but it's difficult to play and sing it with as much angry conviction as Neil. And though it's become a cliche, it still felt great to shout along to the chorus with fist in the air.



The encore was a very fresh take on the Beatles' classic/oddity, "A Day in the Life." I loved the sleighbells during the "Ahh-ahhh- ah-ahhhhh" break after "and I fell into a dream." And the echoing chord at the end of the Beatles' version became a noisefest in the Neil version. Neil sounded like Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth (himself influenced greatly by Neil's distorted proto-grunge.) Neil ended the noise by literally ripping the strings off his guitar and then leaning it up against an amp.

I thought this would be it, but after it quieted down Neil walked to the back of the stage to the raised platform with vibraphone that his wife and back-up singer Pegi Young had been playing earlier in the song. He picked up the mallets, looked mischievously at the crowd and then hit a single clean ringing note.

He then walked off the stage, signaling the true end of the show. I just had to laugh.

As the lights came up and we filed out of the arena, I again tried to soak in the ambiance of the venue, knowing I might not be there again.

set list.

Love And Only Love
Hey Hey, My My
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Powderfinger
Spirit Road
Cortez The Killer
Cinnamon Girl
Oh, Lonesome Me
Mother Earth
The Needle And The Damage Done
Light A Candle
Unknown Legend
Heart Of Gold
Old Man
Get Back To The Country
Just Singing A Song
Sea Change
When Worlds Collide
Cowgirl In The Sand
Rockin' In The Free World

e) A Day In The Life

---------------------------------
Addendum: the Rant

Him (gray hair, black shirt, black device held to ear) [loudly]: "blah blah, blah-blah, blah, blah"

Neil [somewhat distant]: "Oh-oh lonesome me."

Me [to black device blah-blah man]: "Hey, why don't you go out into the hall with that conversation. Your friend will hear you better and I'll hear Neil better."

Blah-blah man: "Fuck you!"

Me: "Why don't you ask the people around you 'Hey is ok if I talk on my cell through an entire song?'"

Blah-blah man: "Fuck you!"

I then turned around because the counter productivity was evident. I didn't want to argue. I didn't really care about winning a fight I just wanted mannerless Blah-blah man to shut up. It was certainly not every night I get to see Neil. By continuing to talk to him, I was just making matters worse.

He continued to make some rude comments directed towards my back, culminating in the ultimate comeback, "Hey why don't you stand in the back because you're so tall. You're blocking people's view. It's all about consideration." His prior comments negated any weight in this statement.

Throughout this incident, I felt a shaky tight feeling overtake me. It was the fight-or-flight feeling that I remember from the handful of schoolyard fights I've been in. I had this fear that at one point this guy's fist was gonna fly out and connect with my head or that he be waiting after the show to verbally assault me when the lights came up.

And funny, during the 2nd part of this incident, Neil was performing a solo take on "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)," a song about respecting the environment. But how could we respect the Earth when we couldn't even respect our fellow concert goers and I was getting showered by "Fuck You's"?

Thankfully nothing bad happened after the initial shouts. Blah-blah stopped blah-blah-ing and the ragged glory of the Neil concert overtook my senses once again.

Still, though, the memory lingers. In hindsight it's kinda funny, but it makes me angry that people would even consider holding a cellphone conversation in the middle of a rock concert.
At any sort of seated orchestral event, red-jacketed ushers would be pulling Blah-blah out towards the exits before he even got out the first sentence. But somehow it'dsOK to get all chatty with an off-site friend just 'cause there's an increased volume and some pot-smoke in the air? I don't buy that.

I can accept having to make an emergency call and I know it's difficult to extract one's self from a packed general admission crowd. I'll give cell talkers a one minute grace period before I get angry. But Blah-blah man was really chatting it up for 2,3,4 minutes of one of the quieter songs of the show.

I can also accept the "hey buddy I wish you were here with me. Neil's playing your song" At this point the caller holds his cell in the air so some distant friend can hear a snippet of the concert in very low audio quality. Heck, I might even do that if I had more minutes on my phone. But that doesn't really involve much talking. And I enjoy the feeling of overflowing excitement that it brings. The "Oh my God, this show is so good I just have to share it with someone right now!" For any extended exchange of information, though, there's a silent little thing called TEXT MESSAGING. I believe some of these new-fangled cellphones have this feature now, though maybe Blah-blah's Blackberry didn't have this option...


--------------------------------------------
*The Avant Gentlemen's Lodge ceased doing shows on a regular basis apparently after some fans, looking for the unmarked warehouse knocked on the wrong door, asking the surprised residents of a nearby house "Is this the Gentlemen's Lodge?" The residents heard "Gentlemen's Lodge" and thought, oh so there's an unlicensed strip club that those scruffy kids are running across the street. The police were called and busted through the door, but were surprised to find an unheated room full of a hundred or so kids in coats twitching to some non-melodic noise coming from some hunched over guys on stage and not a single nude woman. But since there were gross fire code violations and the building was not licensed as a performing venue the police had to shut thegood clean fun down anyway.

Or at least that's how I think it happened.

35 years ago: a dirigible dream.

I had a joyous, vivid Led Zeppelin dream the other night. The dream put me into the summer of 1973 as a shaggy-headed teenager. In the dream, this Zeppelin performance was my first big show. A sold out arena show was a novelty to me and I was also somehow fully aware of just how culturally/musically important Zeppelin was in 1973 and how legendary they'd become. My shaggy little head knew this was an event of a lifetime.

A 40-something lady ripped my ticket at the gate. She had a big permed-out hairdo. She wasn't a fan of the music per se, but she was living vicariously through all the young fans swarming the venue. She smiled at me. She didn't say anything, but with her eyes and smile she told me "kid, you're in for a treat."

I had floor tickets and made it about half way up to the stage with the lights still up. The crowd was as important as the band for the scene. The buzz of excited talk and kids drunk, stoned, high and happy swirled in the air and passed through me. My natural high oozed out of my pores and steamed from the top of my head and joined the cloud of raucous positive energy in the rafters.

The whole scene of the dream was bathed in the colors of the Song Remains the Same live Zeppelin album/film, which was also recorded in 1973.

The band didn't play much in my dream. The dream was more about anticipation: the wait for the band to start, the floor-stomping, and the gasp and cheer that catches people mid-sentence when the lights go down abruptly. That moment is one of the most joyous things one can experience. Contradictorily, perhaps even more joyous than hearing the performance itself.

Zeppelin called the crowd that swarmed the arenas to see them, "the ocean" and yes, they wrote a song about it that they indeed performed in 1973. This clip captures that joyous human ocean and band sailing on top it, full of themselves, cocky as all hell but sucking me in every time (in dreams and awake) with vicarious rock star exuberance.



(I'm pretty sure this dream of sold-out rock show anticipation was subconsciously inspired by the anticipation of the return to the stage of one of my favorite live acts, Phish, after a five year hiatus. They're playing three nights in a row in Hampton Beach, VA in March. The shows sold out in a fraction of a second. I got shut out. Scalpers are asking ridiculous prices
but I will somehow get in the door and be part of that joyous human ocean when the lights go down on March 6th 2009.)

And of course I'll get to live that joyous lights-go-down in the arena moment in just one more day, when Neil Young takes the stage at the Spectrum...