Slosh `n Roll
I've been going to concerts on a regular basis since I was 14 years old, from my first big arena show in 1998 (David Lee Roth, opening act was Poison) all the way up to a club show last night/early this morning in Portland (Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers). Twenty-three years, probably somewhere from 75 to 100 shows (maybe more), and all of them, whether in an arena, theater, club or outdoor venue, have one thing in common: I saw all of them sober. Every single one of them.
Maybe it's because my earliest concert experiences were ones I more often than not paid for with my own teenage part-time work earned dollars. Maybe it was because I was, after all, still a kid and it was a bit of a challenge to get some booze before or during a show. It wasn't as though I was a total prudish kid; I spent my other teenage weekend nights more than happy to fill my plastic cup with whatever kind of beer the backyard keg was holding. But if it was Friday or Saturday night (or a weekday night in summer) and I had my ticket to see a band I loved I never once thought, "Ya know, I'd like to get really fucked up and not be able to remember half of what they played by morning." So I remember looking around at people who would get wasted at Metallica (saw them 5 times) or Nirvana (saw them twice) or, more recently, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers and thinking to myself, "You could get wasted at home listening to a live CD and have saved yourself the $25 (or more) ticket." I had this thought for the zillionth time last night at my 4th time seeing RCPM (5th if you count seeing 1/2 of them as The Refreshments).
To be fair to the drunk and disorderly -- and there were not that many, all told -- of Portland, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers are a straight ahead rock & roll band with themes of good times and celebration, complete with choruses of "If your bottle's empty, help yourself to mine" and "May your heart and your cup overflow with the glow of the moonshine". So I get why people want to raise a bottle or a shot to this band. And I certainly understand that the venue they were playing (Dante's in downtown PDX) is a 21 and over dual bar establishment that surely booked the band for a Friday night knowing it would be excellent for the bar tab. What I don't get is why anyone would, as I saw numerous times last night, come to the show and be barely able to stand by the time the largely unknown opening band was done? Why would anyone get there so early as to be near the front of the stage (truly the best place to experience Roger Clyne) only to have to have their friends help escort them out through the crowd 10 songs in to the parking lot so they could throw up or pass out? This has NEVER made any sense to me. As my wife put it on the way home, "Do they even listen to the music?"
Her point is a broad one. One of the reasons we love Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers so much is that their music has both it's surface sound and themes of good times and moving forward and then the deeper messages and explorations that take hold on repeated listening. For every call out for another round there is cry for understanding. For every trip south of the border as a "semi professional tourist" there is another exploration of the human spirit and wanting to make sense of the internal and external world. So when Kelly asks "Do you even listen to the music?" she is asking, I think, just how closely have you listened? Because it seemed to her, as it seems to me, that if you're getting FUBAR'd at one of the band's shows then you're not experiencing the band. By all means, have a drink... hell, have two or three... the venue is counting on it, the guys in the band sip beers through the set, they take celebratory shots as their fans leave them at the foot of the stage (an RCPM tradition). But the band isn't slurring the words or falling down. They're not bumping into each other left and right because they're dizzy from the last drink. They aren't accidentally elbowing the woman behind them. In fact, last night they were playing in a venue with a pretty warm indoor temperature under some bright hot lights, sweating their asses off, and yet playing as great as I've seen them play and for about 2 hours and 15 fifteen minutes to boot! So, yeah, they're a party band and, yeah, they like their whiskey, tequila, and beer (they seem to prefer Dos Equis, btw, so stay thirsty my friends...) too but they've got it together. I'm all for having a few to loosen up. Then cheer, then dance, then sing, then high five random strangers when a song you love comes up in the set... all of that. But don't let your need to get wasted diminish the experience of those around you. Sadly this happens too often.
I guess ultimately what I don't understand about the getting utterly sloshed at a show thing goes right back to the music. Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers and their loyal, cult-like following date all the way back to the mid 90's with the Refreshments. They still play a lot of tunes from their former band's nearly gold selling album Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy and what makes being part of their fan base (known as 'The Peace Core') so special is that on a night like last night virtually 95 percent of the crowd knows every word to every song. And the crowd in quesion ranges from 40 and 50-somethings to those barely over 21; people who probably discovered The Refreshments when they were new circa 1996 and have stayed loyal as Clyne formed the new band and then went on to record 6 studio albums as RCPM. Even the songs from he new album released just 6 weeks ago were memorized to the word!
Last night's show closed with an older number, all the way back to The Refreshments. They did the surging anthemic song "Nada" and on the final verse and chorus Clyne stepped back from the mic as the hundreds in the crowd sang every word perfectly. This song was a not a hit. It was never on radio, never released as a single or a video. But it's been around for 15 years and clearly is so loved by the people at Dante's last night. And the look on Clyne's face as he watched the people he called his "home away from home" singing his anthem... well, it was special. It was kick ass. I looked at Clyne and saw a guy who seems truly grateful to be able to do what he does night in and night out. And, I should add, on his own terms, without a label or a corporate machine. 100 percent indie. God bless him. :)
Ya know who didn't get to sing that chorus or get to look up and see that glow from Clyne's drenched-sweat brow? The jackass who didn't make it midway through the set list before he had to be escorted out. The people who were too wasted to stay near the front or lost their spot because they had to make another trip to the bar or the can. And then there are those who saw it happen but won't remember it this morning. They paid for the same ticket I did, probably own the same RCPM/Refreshments CDs I own, and yet their experience is less than mine. Call me judgmental but they failed last night. They missed a simple but beautiful moment. Like me, they have probably spent all or part of the last 15 years -- from The Refreshments to Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers -- evolving with this songwriter and his various bandmates as part of their lives.
And yet last night my thoughts on the way home were of how much this band's music -- and particularly Clyne's observational themes as a songwriter -- have echoed my adult life and been the soundtrack to experience and wisdom, while clearly for others it has been something else entirely. I've listened, they've heard, I'll remember, they won't... and as much of a 'familia' as Clyne might like to believe his loyal audience is, only some of us can actually say we're "grown up" on this music. The rest have just gotten older to it.
What a shame.
J
Maybe it's because my earliest concert experiences were ones I more often than not paid for with my own teenage part-time work earned dollars. Maybe it was because I was, after all, still a kid and it was a bit of a challenge to get some booze before or during a show. It wasn't as though I was a total prudish kid; I spent my other teenage weekend nights more than happy to fill my plastic cup with whatever kind of beer the backyard keg was holding. But if it was Friday or Saturday night (or a weekday night in summer) and I had my ticket to see a band I loved I never once thought, "Ya know, I'd like to get really fucked up and not be able to remember half of what they played by morning." So I remember looking around at people who would get wasted at Metallica (saw them 5 times) or Nirvana (saw them twice) or, more recently, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers and thinking to myself, "You could get wasted at home listening to a live CD and have saved yourself the $25 (or more) ticket." I had this thought for the zillionth time last night at my 4th time seeing RCPM (5th if you count seeing 1/2 of them as The Refreshments).
To be fair to the drunk and disorderly -- and there were not that many, all told -- of Portland, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers are a straight ahead rock & roll band with themes of good times and celebration, complete with choruses of "If your bottle's empty, help yourself to mine" and "May your heart and your cup overflow with the glow of the moonshine". So I get why people want to raise a bottle or a shot to this band. And I certainly understand that the venue they were playing (Dante's in downtown PDX) is a 21 and over dual bar establishment that surely booked the band for a Friday night knowing it would be excellent for the bar tab. What I don't get is why anyone would, as I saw numerous times last night, come to the show and be barely able to stand by the time the largely unknown opening band was done? Why would anyone get there so early as to be near the front of the stage (truly the best place to experience Roger Clyne) only to have to have their friends help escort them out through the crowd 10 songs in to the parking lot so they could throw up or pass out? This has NEVER made any sense to me. As my wife put it on the way home, "Do they even listen to the music?"
Her point is a broad one. One of the reasons we love Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers so much is that their music has both it's surface sound and themes of good times and moving forward and then the deeper messages and explorations that take hold on repeated listening. For every call out for another round there is cry for understanding. For every trip south of the border as a "semi professional tourist" there is another exploration of the human spirit and wanting to make sense of the internal and external world. So when Kelly asks "Do you even listen to the music?" she is asking, I think, just how closely have you listened? Because it seemed to her, as it seems to me, that if you're getting FUBAR'd at one of the band's shows then you're not experiencing the band. By all means, have a drink... hell, have two or three... the venue is counting on it, the guys in the band sip beers through the set, they take celebratory shots as their fans leave them at the foot of the stage (an RCPM tradition). But the band isn't slurring the words or falling down. They're not bumping into each other left and right because they're dizzy from the last drink. They aren't accidentally elbowing the woman behind them. In fact, last night they were playing in a venue with a pretty warm indoor temperature under some bright hot lights, sweating their asses off, and yet playing as great as I've seen them play and for about 2 hours and 15 fifteen minutes to boot! So, yeah, they're a party band and, yeah, they like their whiskey, tequila, and beer (they seem to prefer Dos Equis, btw, so stay thirsty my friends...) too but they've got it together. I'm all for having a few to loosen up. Then cheer, then dance, then sing, then high five random strangers when a song you love comes up in the set... all of that. But don't let your need to get wasted diminish the experience of those around you. Sadly this happens too often.
I guess ultimately what I don't understand about the getting utterly sloshed at a show thing goes right back to the music. Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers and their loyal, cult-like following date all the way back to the mid 90's with the Refreshments. They still play a lot of tunes from their former band's nearly gold selling album Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy and what makes being part of their fan base (known as 'The Peace Core') so special is that on a night like last night virtually 95 percent of the crowd knows every word to every song. And the crowd in quesion ranges from 40 and 50-somethings to those barely over 21; people who probably discovered The Refreshments when they were new circa 1996 and have stayed loyal as Clyne formed the new band and then went on to record 6 studio albums as RCPM. Even the songs from he new album released just 6 weeks ago were memorized to the word!
Last night's show closed with an older number, all the way back to The Refreshments. They did the surging anthemic song "Nada" and on the final verse and chorus Clyne stepped back from the mic as the hundreds in the crowd sang every word perfectly. This song was a not a hit. It was never on radio, never released as a single or a video. But it's been around for 15 years and clearly is so loved by the people at Dante's last night. And the look on Clyne's face as he watched the people he called his "home away from home" singing his anthem... well, it was special. It was kick ass. I looked at Clyne and saw a guy who seems truly grateful to be able to do what he does night in and night out. And, I should add, on his own terms, without a label or a corporate machine. 100 percent indie. God bless him. :)
Ya know who didn't get to sing that chorus or get to look up and see that glow from Clyne's drenched-sweat brow? The jackass who didn't make it midway through the set list before he had to be escorted out. The people who were too wasted to stay near the front or lost their spot because they had to make another trip to the bar or the can. And then there are those who saw it happen but won't remember it this morning. They paid for the same ticket I did, probably own the same RCPM/Refreshments CDs I own, and yet their experience is less than mine. Call me judgmental but they failed last night. They missed a simple but beautiful moment. Like me, they have probably spent all or part of the last 15 years -- from The Refreshments to Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers -- evolving with this songwriter and his various bandmates as part of their lives.
And yet last night my thoughts on the way home were of how much this band's music -- and particularly Clyne's observational themes as a songwriter -- have echoed my adult life and been the soundtrack to experience and wisdom, while clearly for others it has been something else entirely. I've listened, they've heard, I'll remember, they won't... and as much of a 'familia' as Clyne might like to believe his loyal audience is, only some of us can actually say we're "grown up" on this music. The rest have just gotten older to it.
What a shame.
J