Amazing, Even Without the Didgeridoo
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life
And that’s exactly what this concert was about. Lyrics like “Remind me that we'll always have each other/When everything else is gone” from “Dig,” a song they did acoustically with a Latin twinge that gave the song a new life altogether; “The day you were born, you were born free,” from the opening “Privilege,” which charged hard and established the pace of the show; and of course “When will we change?/Just in time to see it all come down/Those left standing will make millions/Writing books on the way it should have been,” from the powerfully poignant yet still in-your-face “Warning.”
Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here to tell you
There's something else
The afterworld
A world of never-ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night
As Boyd said on stage, “I just love making music.” Happiness was clearly the point of the show. Bright grins broke out often on stage, from the lead singer to Ben Kenney, the bassist toward Jose Pasillas II, the hardest-working drummer in the biz. The rare teasing smirk from Einziger revealed itself, but he was too busy setting the guitar alight with solos, and for the audience the happiness was in these richly intertwined notes and effects that seemed to come from his guitar without any effort. Without any movement whatsoever.
There wasn’t much interaction verbally other than the occasional “how are you doing boys and girls?” But the connection from the lead singer was obvious and constant. In his stage presence, he writhed and twisted around the stage, climbing on the blocks of amps covered in grey cloth, randomly breaking out a didgeridoo solo, and pumping his microphone away from his mouth and back during the many energized parts of his vocal lines, as if shaking the message into it just like he was doing to the audience. His range was shown throughout, from the manic rage of “A Certain Shade of Green” to the hypnotic, ironically seductive “Quicksand.” In his artistic consciousness, the projections behind them were illustrations depicting the songs they were singing, such as two people connected at the heart during “A Kiss to Send Us Off” and the female silhouette drifting lazily toward a giant, brutal, snarling fish.
If you don't like the world you're living in
Take a look around you
At least you got friends
As is the magic of rock shows, when the band gets onstage, the audience becomes a unified force, ready to show appreciation for the creators of the music that was the soundtrack to their every day. Shaking fists and bobbing heads were the waves in the giant sea, gently cajoled and parted by the band and the moment. It was with a sort of fascism that is common at concerts that we became louder and softer with the rise or fall of Boyd’s hand. On this night, for this length of time, we were all friends connected by the notes and lyrics of a band formed a decade ago, in a city thousands of miles away. And in that same moment, with a sideways glance and a knowing grin, the five friends on stage did what they knew best, what they loved. In an all-inclusive acoustic set, the band had a chance to sit down and jam around their roots, with just a few thousand admirers looking on. In this they could remember where they had been, what had brought them through the years, and how far they had come.
You see I called my old lady
For a friendly word
She picked up the phone
Dropped it on the floor
(Sex, sex) is all I heard
With the occasional (and in my opinion, well-placed) expletive and a few innuendoes, this wasn’t a Disney show. It wasn’t an accident that the cheering (or most of the female cheering) lifted a decibel when Boyd finally peeled off his undershirt, leaving him free to writhe shirtlessly and certain onlookers to ogle shamelessly. Massive musical experience as it may be, the boy still had sex appeal.
Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Let's look for the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!
Bottom line, rock concerts are about having a blast and going a little nuts. With few down beats and lots of heavy-handed, driving melodies, a moment when one didn’t want to dance was hard to find. As a consequence of the existence of Einziger the word “ridiculous” should be thrown in with “crazy” and “nuts.” Though he hardly ever looked up (save for the occasional smirk), and confined his rocking out to a few hasty nods of his head, the speed of his fingers and the epic clouds of notes erupting from his guitar communicated everything he needed to say and the audience wanted to hear. There was nothing unsatisfying about this underrated guitarist, and he was as consistent as any of the most recognized players out today. He showed complete prowess and mastery of his instrument (and a few others), and had jaws on the floor with his brain-bleeding, face-melting solos (“Anna Molly,” “Sick Sad Little World,” this Prince cover) and even with his intricate rhythm work, like on “Talk Shows on Mute,” “Megalomaniac,” “A Crow Left of the Murder,” and “Love Hurts.” The only thoughts about him at the end of show had to be “is there nothing he can’t do/sound he can’t recreate/make look like child’s play?” The way he (bashfully) left the stage is answer enough: the guitar was leaning against the amps, alone, still resonating and reverberating the last note of the night. Like the audience, it looked happily exhausted.
Take me away!