happy rock stars, crowds that dance, and the survival of high school
Just back from the Rainer Maria show and I am wired. Really wired. It was an amazing show, from the opening of "Long Knives Drawn" to the final crash of "Tinfoil" as Bill knocked his drums right the fuck over. I got to tell Kyle that the band is going to be in the acknowledgements for the forthcoming book, which was fun. And I have the satisfaction of knowing that my beloved little city kicks Cleveland's ass, which, okay, I already knew, but I'm happy to keep piling up the proof. Check out renenet's review if you don't believe me.
Owen opened, or at least he tried to; whoever was running the pre-show music wasn't paying attention and just let Spoon's "Believing Is Art" keep chugging along as Owen was sitting up there strumming chords and saying "Uh... um... hey there..." into the mic. Finally they turned the music off and he got started. His voice sounded a little worse for wear, but ultimately a nice quiet little set, and featuring the sweetest paean to tawdry post-adolescent lust that I've ever heard ("Poor Souls").
Mates Of State followed up, and damned if they aren't just as quirky and adorable as renenet claimed. And it's a good thing, too, because other than being cute and perky they don't have the stage presence god gave a wombat; they powered through an hour-long set in forty-five minutes, with nary a scrap of stage patter. I'm not a fan of artists who babble on and on and take ten minutes to tune the goddamn guitar (not a problem for MOS, since they're just drums & keyboard), but I do like it when clever people chat a bit between songs. Still, the set was fun, and I had the added amusement of watching one of my students and his girlfriend (who had found me sitting alone and insisted that I come hang with them) bop around to the music along with a dozen other people who had clearly come just for MOS and were having a fabulous time.
Sometime during the set, Kyle of RM (the guy I knew in high school) came out of the back room and lurked by the edge of the stage in his gray hoodie sweatshirt. I caught his eye and waved; he smiled hugely and charged over to hug me. "I gotta go change into my work clothes," he said, "but let's hang for a minute after the show, okay?" Well, do I need to be told twice to hang out, however briefly, with a sweetheart rock star? I think not. So I spent the rest of the MOS set basking in the glow of knowing somebody more or less famous. Hey, scoff if you want -- I was delighted.
The RM set was great -- a nice mix of stuff, going all the way back to Past Worn Searching for the encore. Lots of stuff from Long Knives Drawn. of course: the title track, "Mystery and Misery," "The Imperatives," "CT Catholic," and "Ears Ring" (which apparently has a video out now). Off Better Version...: "Artificial Light," "Thought I Was," and an astonishing rendition of "Hell and High Water" that disappeared into a wash of feedback from which "Seven Sisters" emerged in all its crystalline beauty. "Atlantic," off the EP. And the marvelous "Planetary"/"Broken Radio" combo from Look Now Look Again: "and I'm certain if I drive into those trees / it'd make less of a mess than you've made of me."
And the band. Oh, the band. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone look so purely delighted to be playing a show as Kyle did tonight, rabbiting around the stage, swinging his guitar, jumping off the drum set, and generally working the rock star schtick for all it's worth, but without a jot of irony or cynicism. Kyle's a pretty odd-looking boy, but he was beautiful tonight, his ripped jeans and pink Chucks and sleeveless black t-shirt and desperate need of a haircut and all, transfigured by the fact of performance. And Caithlin, so earnest, closing her eyes to sing and looking astonished every time she opened them, eyes crinkling with laughter as she sang "oh you're wicked, you look so wicked," and occasionally chasing Kyle around the stage in an elaborate hopping little dance. And Bill, whaling away on those drums like all our lives depended on it. Which, you know, maybe they did. We sure as hell looked like it, or at least the front couple of rows did, swaying and stomping and bouncing with the music.
Kyle and I did chat afterwards; he'd heard about my now-long-past health problems, so we cleared that out, and I asked about being a rock star and he smiled: "Well, it's better than sitting in a cubicle, or being in school. I mean, a lot better. I guess I kind of love it," he said, and I said that I could tell. And we checked in about people we know or have known, and passed greetings along for various people, and I found out that someone I worried wasn't going to make it to 19 is now in law school at Syracuse and closer to okay than she's ever been.
One of my best memories of Kyle is that, a few days after our high school's literary magazine came out my junior / his sophomore year, he stopped me in the hall with a big grin and quoted the last few lines of the poem of mine that had made it in. And here I was at his band's show, singing along with every song. It felt good, to do that -- like completing a circle -- and good to say to him afterwards, "Hey, I cribbed a line from 'Ceremony' for the end of this book, I want to talk about it in the acknowledgements." And there was that smile again, and he hugged me and said "I want a signed copy of it."
Two such amazing things: to have that show, and then to have this feeling of rescuing a piece of the past ("our past lives were too heavy and too expensive"): just to be there with someone else who got out of that town of -- as Kyle sings -- redhead boys selling nosebleeds and sleepless nights, of daughters who hang themselves with sheets and die of AIDS. To know that two of us are happy -- not just good enough, but happy...
Well. It's a lucky thing.
And now at last I'm tired enough for bed: "momentum makes my head ponderous and heavy; / planetary rotation is time winding down."