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A random list of influential live shows

Unlike my very methodical co-editor, I do not keep a log of the concerts I've attended. In any event, I'm quite certain that he's seen more music than I have, though I'm his senior by half a generation. But I've seen a lot, regardless. I do not now miss going to shows three or four nights a week in part because I've seen a lot, and in part because I have too often been disappointed by what I did see.

A lot of writing about music is about one's proximity to celebrity. Too many live shows -- particularly arena concerts -- are about that, as well. I am not interested in celebrity, and this isn't meant as a list of brags.

But I got trading e-mails with my friend Tom, up Jersey way, about how we came up and what we saw that really mattered. Mine seems an odd mix of memories, but perhaps it'll explain something. Or not.

In something like chronological order, then (and leaving out my first three concerts: Jethro Tull at the Seattle Center Coliseum the summer of 1975 and the summer of 1976, and Gary Wright opening for Rick Wakeman at the Paramount in Seattle, the fall of 1976; we all have to start somewhere)...

(1) Pearl Harbour & the Explosions with The Jitters at the Showbox in Seattle, probably 1979. The Jitters were a Seattle cow-punk band, of sorts. Really it was PK Dwyer and Donna Beck, converting from street singing hippies to new wave punks, but it came out cow punk. (They were also, I believe, the first musicians I interviewed.) Anyway, I still love their one and only album, if only as a memory piece. But Pearl Harbour...I'd never heard of her, nor of them, and I can't figure out why the rest of the band seems to have fallen from sight. She was spectacular. She could sing, she could put on a show (I have a hunch she'd been an exotic dancer in San Francisco, but that could have been hype), and the three-piece behind her were tight and inventive.

(2) John Cale at CBGBs in New York, late December 1979. My dad bought me a plane ticket to New York as a Christmas present. I spent a night at Eddie Condon's jazz club because they didn't care that I was underage as long as I drank, which I didn't really do back then. And then I looked in the Village Voice to see what was happening in Manhattan. I thought John Cale was JJ Cale, whose albums I'd been buying on cutout at Peaches. Instead, I was treated to a really dreadful set from an opening act called The The, and a stunningly furious set from Cale. He'd recorded a live album at CBGBs, Live Sabotage, which barely figures in his discography, and this was the release party stand. It was a fairly bleak and political album, angry with bombs dropping. The Russians had just invaded Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan was about to take power, and Cale was charged with energy. Snarling but hardly moving. I had never seen anything like it. I bought every one of his records I could find and went to see him another handful of times before I came to understand that what I'd seen that night would never happen again.

(3) Tina Turner at the HUB Ballroom, University of Washington, probably 1980. I had become friends with Annie Rose & The Thrillers, who were opening. Tina was between hits, and a couple years from Private Dancer. The Ballroom was maybe half-full, and it should have been a desultory performance. But Turner was an exacting professional of the old school, I now know. And her piano player, a young man whose name I wish I knew, was such a strong, knowing, joyful force on stage that he kept pushing her deeper into the songs. It was the first time I really understood how powerful the interplay between musicians onstage could be.

(4) Pere Ubu at the Paramount Theater, Seattle, WA, 1981? The show that probably broke Modern Productions, who had sold out two nights with Devo at the Showbox just before, and were handing out free tickets in line. It was a four-band bill that included Magazine and, I think, the Dead Boys, and maybe the Members? Or the Undertones? I don't remember. What I know is there were about 200 people there and I ended up running into most of them later on. And Pere Ubu's blend of jazz and punk and new wave and sheer exuberant dissonance was transcendent. "I'm a big pink ball under the ocean."

(5) John Prine at Parker's Ballroom, Seattle, Washington, probably about 1984. I had almost entirely given up on music, had quit going, quit buying albums. Today I say that hardcore punk drove me out, but mostly I'd started a typesetting business after college and was trying manfully to grow up. And failing. Anyhow, my roommate wanted to go, it was an $18 ticket (why I remember that I don't know, except that our third friend still owes me for his), and though I couldn't afford it, we went. It's the only time I've seen Prine, the only time I need to. Just John Prine, those songs, a spotlight, a microphone, a beer or two. Those songs. That voice.

(6) The Ganelin Trio, the Fabulous Rainbow Tavern, Seattle, WA, probably July 1986, and Charles Gayle, the Alligator in Santa Monica, CA, probably 1996. The Ganelin Trio were Russian jazz players. Piano, sax, drums. The pianist emigrated to Israel; the sax player I saw in a Russian art film later. Not too many came. Nobody knew who they were, not really. They wouldn't spend their meal money because hard currency was more valuable than food, and one of them was a collector of modern art. I don't know from jazz -- it's never been a language I had time to learn, nor a way into -- but it was a special and spectacular show that ended with the drummer continuing his solo around the club on every single object he could find. Years later Paul Semel turned me on to Charles Gayle. And if I don't know from jazz, I really don't know from free jazz, except that it seems odd to me that this music which began in New Orleans whorehouses has moved so far from the groin. Gayle plays with almost pure emotion, with and against his band. Sometimes it was magical, sometimes it was a struggle. He paused for a long soliloquy against abortion that was remarkable for its emotional force and eloquence. He didn't change my mind, but he opened it.

(7) Lyle Lovett at Parker's Ballroom, Seattle, Washington, probably 1986. Mary Schuh, who is ND's office manager, was part of the new crew I joined at The Rocket that year. As I remember, the fellow who lived in the apartment she and her husband rented behind their house, the fellow before Peter Blackstock, backed out at the last minute, and they had this extra front row seat. I had no idea who Lyle Lovett was, but Mary's taste has always been pretty good (she also introduced me to the Paladins and the Tailgators). It was just Lyle with a cello and a percussionist. And those songs, the ones he's still known for. I've seen him a bunch, since, but he never has been better.

(8) Seattle takes New York: Screaming Trees at CBGBs, Soundgarden at NYU, and Mudhoney at some converted church on St. Mark's Place opening for GWAR. This all happened in and around CMJ in the years before grunge broke. I saw all those bands a lot in those years. These shows are memorable because it was in New York we came to realize that the music which so powerfully moved us back home had a national audience. Screaming Trees mopped up Galaxy 500; Chris Cornell got in a trance and took his microphone stand to the ceiling over the stage; hundreds of white t-shirt kids in the front half of the venue knew every word to every song Mudhoney sang, which was perhaps more than the band did some nights. Kurt Cobain was one of the two or three best singers I've ever seen or heard, but I never saw him at his best, never made it through the doors to his most famous Seattle shows.

(9) Jimmie Dale Gilmore at the Backstage in Seattle, ca. 1992. With Mudhoney in the audience, before their split-EP. The closest I will ever get to hearing Hank Williams sing.

(10) Whiskeytown, wherever they played during SXSW 1996. We had just started this damn'd alt.country magazine, and they were everything we dreamed them to be. I'm still waiting for Ryan Adams to be as good and focused as he was on that first album. And he never will be. It'll never matter that much and that little again.

(11) Steve Earle with the Del McCoury Band, The Station Inn, Nashville, TN, 1999. They played, I believe, four nights in a row. I saw three of them. I've seen a lot of Steve, and I've written about him a lot. He ain't perfect, and I don't care. He's one hell of a songwriter, a phenomenal performer, and he thinks hard all the time. The Del McCoury Band were at the top of their game. The last night some guys came to the door asking them to shut the concert down because they had a house to move down the street. They'd never heard of Steve Earle, which was a pity. The show went on. It was almost over, anyhow. More than I knew.

(12) Down From The Mountain at the Ryman Auditorium. What was that, 2000? Susan and I were given tickets at the last minute, and almost didn't go. Nobody knew it would be a phenomenon, but...the Fairfield Four in full voice. And that magnificent trio: Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch, and Emmylou Harris. I still wish they'd make a record together, but I suppose they won't.

That all leaves some stuff out. It leaves out the Seldom Scene at the Backstage, when I got to show my dad what the perks of being a music critic were. It leaves out seeing Lucinda Williams do "Car Weels" during SXSW years before the album came out. It leaves out the time I saw Tom House at the Sutler after too many glasses of whiskey and told him exactly how good I thought he was. It leaves out the break-up show when Caitlin and Ryan and two bananas played the Exit-In. It leaves out every time Emmylou Harris casually walked onstage when we lived in Nashville. It leaves out how great Blood Circus were the night Nirvana opened for them at the Central Tavern. It leaves out Buddy and Julie Miller and Jon Dee Graham. And the Bad Livers. And Love Battery. And some more I'll probably come back and add in an hour. Like the time we played bridge waiting in line for the Grateful Dead. Or the first NIne Inch Nails show at a stupid teen disco in Seattle.

It's a big sweet world some nights.

This list even leaves out the night I went to the Sutler to see Steve Young and Bob Neuwirth and met my wife. But I remember nothing about the music.

It's a big sweet world, and I'm grateful.

Posted by grant on June 9, 2007 9:58 AM | Permalink