The Last List from Me

I've made two resolutions for New Year's Day this year.

First, this will be the last "list" blog I do for 2003. I'm sick of both reading and writing them. So sick in fact, that I didn't even write this one. I just compiled it from stuff I've already written.

Second, I'm not going to put down Shania Twain anymore in 2004. I was looking back through some of the things I've written, and it's apparent A) That I think she sucks, and B) I've said it so much that it's almost as boring, dull, and overdone as her music. Viva la plastic surgery and voice modulation!

That being said, it was a great year for live music. Make a mini resolution to get out more.

Jack's Top Ten Live Gigs of 2003:

1. Drive By Truckers, 400 Bar, 8/6/03
It's refreshing sometimes to see a band that plays with a kind of deadly urgency. It's as if they'd be killing themselves or others if they weren't onstage several nights a week. Performance intensity can be created through soaring voices, gritty lyrics, or expert musicianship; but you can't fake it, and sometimes, it just comes from plugging in 3 guitars and seeing how strong the walls are. My ears are still ringing, some 11 hours later. If you ever want proof that there is a God who is angry and is punishing the wicked, then make sure you amble down to whatever local club is hosting a Drive By Truckers show in your town. Patterson Hood saved my life last night, and I didn't even ask him to do it.
2. The Gourds, Davey's Uptown, Kansas City, MO, 3/20/03
In town for the debauchery that is the annual NCAA Championship Wrestling Tournament, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the best band in the world had a gig scheduled at a famous hideout for good music in Cowtown, Davey's Uptown at 31st & Main. Being a Thursday night gig, it was cozy and friendly, beautiful acoustics coupled with an outstanding PA system delivered an almost mythical Gourds experience; maybe, having not seen them in almost 2 years, I'd a-ate a pile of shit and called it sweet potato pie. But, I really don't think that was the case. Bouncing in and out of current and past favorites, this band of genuine men making genuine music floored the KC crowd and left them clamoring for more. I gave up about 30 seconds into the set and began dancing around about halfway back from the stage, willy nilly, completely given over to my hillbilly ancestry, stomping out tunes written long ago, but only committed to digital media in recent years.
3. Steve Earle, First Avenue Mainroom, 2/6/03
I once saw Jesse Jackson speak as an undergrad in college, and although I didn't really agree with his politics on every level, it was hard not to feel the energy and passion of the man and his followers at the time. So it was on Thursday night with Steve Earle at First Ave. Adorning various amps and equipment with "No Iraq War" signs, and getting off more than one "Fuck 'em" during his nearly 2 hour set, Earle married politics with music throughout the evening, without making the blunder of failing to entertain. Taken out of context and off the stage, Earle might come across as some sort of paranoid leftist. But, as he wove a few stories into his scratchy voiced songs, it was easy to see that he's simply a man who's tired of greedy liars greedily lying to him. Backing band The Dukes served up an aural assault that allowed Earle to equally translate his modern-day confusion with the world, and, his "Go-to-hell" attitude of his earlier work. So, even if you don't really agree with one side of the political spectrum or the other, it's not hard to be pissed off about the world after leaving an Earle show. As he said at the end of his encore, power chords ringing in the background, a sea of applause rising from the packed floor, "Remember, there's nothing more American or Patriotic than to criticize your leaders, and don't let anybody tell ya diff'ernt."
4. Emmylou Harris, State Theatre, 10/13/03
Part of the appeal of twangy country music to me is the interplay between the secular and the sacred, the bluesy voices from the gutter that know nothing of God, and the voices of angels from on high. People like Buddy Miller interview the guy at the end of the bar, and sing his life through bent strings and brushed drums to noisy audiences craving a cigarette and a fresh drink. People like Emmylou Harris vibrate strings of guitars and the sinews of your soul, amplifying the very humming of God himself, making you afraid to die, both because you haven't prepared yourself properly, and also because you might not hear her sing again.

Miller's conversational set was throaty and real, a hot sidewalk hello, bumming a light to lay the latest news on ya' about what his old lady did last night, a slap on the back and a "have a good day." He and bandmates Spyboy laid a good foundation of beat and melody, southern mood for a northern crowd, so that the headliner could take the stage with contextual ease.

When the angel took the stage, you didn't sing with her, but, as you mouthed the words you knew, the roof of your mouth vibrated anyway, the breath of life expelling from your lungs maybe for the first time, maybe for the first time since the last time you saw her sing. The soft twang like Christmas divinity candy floated across the air, craning you gently forward to soak in God's words. Even the sad songs made you smile, and the happy songs made your heart leap right out of your chest.

It's amazing how she synthesizes and melts world styles and appears before us to tell us the good news in Emmylou-eze. It's back porch friendly and burning bush awesome, and you feel like you've just been plugged into a light socket for a couple of hours after you've left the room, but your hair isn't messed up and your clothes aren't smoldering.
5. Drag the River, Seventh Street Entry, 12/13/03
The best country record of 2002 was CLOSED., by Drag the River from Fort Collins, Colorado. Recorded in more or less a week, the album leaks whiskey and regret from turned over plastic cups, clouds of anger rise from overflowing ashtrays that should have been dumped out many days ago, and the hangover of redemption greets bloodshot eyes as the sun rises the next morning. I was terribly excited that they were playing a Saturday night gig with my buddies from Anchorhead at the 7th Street Entry. There's something electric about this band and its music. You typically dont get encores if you're not the headliner in a club; but music that reaches people and whips them into a place they don't go very often demands such things. The principal songwriters are Chad Price and Jon Snodgrass; one a seemingly laid-back Colorado hippie type, all hair and torn jeans, the other some kind of happy-go-lucky bar room regular that belies a horn-rimmed, bug-eyed intensity. Together, they aren't afraid to draw each other out, and somehow their canvas of the Americana genre produces something that drills into the core of existence. Why booze? Why pain? Why rebirth?

I truly love going to clubs and dissecting this music for my blog and radio show audiences. Most of the music I see reinforces the idea that Country doesn't have to be some asshole in a black hat and designer clothes singing about a truck. But, I find renewal when I see bands like Drag the River. They're authentically dirty, authentically tired, authentically angry, authentically optimistic, and authentically country.
6. Lucinda Williams, First Avenue Mainroom, 10/19/03
Lucinda Williams is going to hell. Had I not seen Emmylou Harris at the State Theatre last Monday, I probably would have never known that. Monday night, about 11:59pm, I was pretty sure that Emmylou was the closest thing to an angel from God that I had ever seen. Her strangely alluring twangy voice lulls you right up to the altar, where you renew all your vows of temperance, chastity, and moderation.

And then, a cherub from Louisiana stumbles out onto the mainstage at First Avenue, wearing a black tank top, with obvious black bra straps, and begins to sing polypped voice vibratos of fallen paradise, with a fresh cigarette and caramel sauce, and you realize that she is absolutely damned to eternal hellfire. The subtle break of her voice, delicate behind the seafoam as her words rush over you in the wave, you have no defense. You HAVE to climb into the rail car, down, down, down, to the master of lies. I almost cried when the innocent son of the prairie, Gary Louris lent harmony and guitar to "Essence" while she cavorted and mashed with Mr. Anonymous onstage. Milton never scratched something so real out of the blindness.

Asian chicks in Western shirts smoking Marlboros and drinking whiskey, Eden Prairie suburbanite divorcess hitting on the bartenders and looking for personal space, 20-something spikey haired single women in tight T-shirts travelling in 3's, and neatly cut silver haired "hippies," with tucked in shirts, all crowded the floor, drawn to the smooth, smokey evil...so sweet going down, so hot on the way back up.
7. The Jayhawks, First Avenue Mainroom, 9/20/03
While white teenagers from Wayzata named Trevor and Rebecca were being whipped into a "rap" frenzy by the Insane Clown Posse at the Target Center, we adults with less of a theatrical taste were being pushed to the edges of Minnesota Nice in the Mainroom at First Ave by the Jayhawks. Paul Westerberg's mellow sobriety spawned a kind of fearlessly sensitive, six-string, White-guy songwriter fry pond here in town, and Gary Louris has kind of either backed into or outright grabbed the "big fish" title, I still haven't made up mind which. He delivers those love songs with a kind of 500-pound-brass-balls attitude that people like John Denver, James Taylor, and Cat Stevens never seemed to have. I think it gets back to what I was saying about him yesterday on the air; I've just sort of run into him at Mayslack's, Elsie's, and other kinds of neighborhood haunts, and for someone who's such a big wheel, he's a really unassuming and seemingly normal guy. It seems to me if a normal guy were given the lead mic, a cranked up guitar, and a packed-to-the-rafters First Ave, he'd leave everything he had on stage, which is what the band did. It's possible for highly melodic, achingly tenor love songs to have forceful, dark, music-club balls, and the Jayhawks are living proof. It's chilling to hear several thousand people--truck drivers, secretaries, accountants, lawyers, doctors, pimps, pushers, hookers--reach for the falsetto of "bluuuuuuue," and then look up at Gary who seems to be blushing behind the glare of his glasses, while at the same time, reaching for more to give. Last night ranks right up there with the best shows I've ever seen.
8. Wayne "The Train" Hancock, Lee's Liquor Lounge, 11/1/03
There are a lot of music clubs in this town. People in Minneapolis sometimes take it for granted that this IS a "live music town." All you have to do is drive up to St. Cloud, down to Des Moines, or, over to Fargo on a Friday night, to watch your umpteenth Blue Oyster Cult cover band, and then you realize that this little confederacy of club owners, who'd all cross the street if they saw another walking down the sidewalk, have created one of the live music Nirvanas in the grand old U.S. of A., that other pundits, authors, journalists, and bloggers lament is not THEIR town.

The Minneapolis Star and Tribune unfortunately sent Jon Bream, a fine American, down to the Xcel Energy Center this past week to watch, and, try to produce a few thousand words on one Shania Twain, and her shallow, hollow, domo arigato mr. roboto, form of "country" music. His review, while finely crafted, was more predictable than the Bears' win over the Pats in Super Bowl XX. BUT, dear readers, not one to shake it off and zip it up without a thought of flushing, I'm always willing to entertain theories.

I'll never cross the street and say that Shania is good, worthwhile, or talented. She sucks. That's that.

The question is, are the acts that I pimp good, worthwhile, or talented? Is what we profess merely a scene, another kind of club or clique, full of people so hip on being hip, they forgot to be good? Hmmmm.

Enter one Wayne "The Train" Hancock. Hancock's schtick is decidely retro. It's also decidely simple. It's also decidely a lot of other shit. Basically, you have a wild-eyed Texas hillbilly up there wailing about all sorts of things, while a standard slap-bassist does nothing dramatic in particular, and, the only musician in the group creates the only recordable sounds with a tricked out Telecaster out of the whole mess, for something like 2 hours.

So, is this purely honkytonk mania of twitchy eyeball looks and non-sequitur song intros somehow BETTER than a bulemic, Prozac� queen in a Wild jersey singing about cliche things that never happen to her at her palace in Switzerland? Yes.

Just read Bream's review. She had to drag some little girl in some bullshit cowgirl outfit onstage to placate her about things she couldn't possibly understand, and things she DIDN'T want to possibly understand. Wayne "The Train" was a little buzzed, a little tired, and a whole lot real. And, more than anything else, he was Country. He coulda greased his hair back, put on his boots, and hooked up his wallet to chain, but fuck all that. Tonight was a Hawaiian shirt, tennis shoe night. Play until Louie pulled the plug. If your reality is nothing but $65 dollar seats to some truck rally concert of pussies like Kenny Chesney in muscle T's singing Eagles' songs in borrowed Vikings jerseys, well then folks, steer clear of 11th and Glenwood. There are places in the world where music happens, and sometimes, it happens for less than $10 at the door.
9. The Reverend Horton Heat, BR549 and Throwrag, First Avenue Mainroom, 9/17/03
Wednesday night started off with a bang as California based Throwrag hit the stage to warm things up for BR549 and Reverend Horton Heat. First Avenue is Horton Heat's territory, they play the club like they own it, and they should. There's always been a carnival huckster quality to Jim Heath's smile, and filling the spot vacated by The Blasters with Throwrag really brought that to the forefront. What looked like a late 30-something version of Buckcherry took the stage and proceeded to howl through a 45 minute set of mostly unintelligible lyrics and who-the-fuck-ordered-this bodily gyrations. They were like some over-the-hill college party band that someone forgot to tell to go ahead and graduate. It was all kind of annoying until the overweight "washboard player" took off his shirt and started jiggling himself at the crowd. Annoyance turned into entertainment when he ran down into the crowd and brought up a pretty straightlaced girl and made her play his washboard while the band played on around her...capped off by her playing his ass cheeks with spoons. Indeed, this was the perfect band to start this evening.

For those who were fretting (namely, me), BR549 just might be better without Smilin' Jay and Gary Bennet. Chris Scruggs appears to be a better guitar player than Chuck Mead, and he took a lot of the lead parts while Mead stepped out front and coursed the band through it's leaner, meaner honkytonk route. Oh, and by the way, Donnie Herron is still one of the best pickers on the entire planet, and he produces a stunning wall of sound as he deftly switches his pickup chord between 3 instruments, making it all look effortless. Like The Fat Guy, I was wondering what a matchup of BR549 and Reverend Horton Heat would be like; but it became fairly apparent that a Horton Heat crowd is almost perfect for these guys. The can alternately "Hank" it out or screw it on as they please, and the crowd that paid good money for hillbilly madness will instantly make all the right connections.

So why was that sea of people in the Mainroom Wednesday night? They were there to see a red suit with silver flames and a jett black shirt. They were there to see one of the best guitarists in the world ditch the bullshit, screw up the volume knob, and keep the noise coming until the cigarettes ran out. It used to be that these shows were mostly greasers with spider-web elbow tattoos and girlfriends that resembled Betty Paige in hair-do only. But, there's a kind of universal, shine-runner, kickoff's-at-noon-on-Sunday, whip-a-hooked-3-wood-250-and-down-out-of-the-wind, that-bass-is-as-big-as-a-goddamned-baby, vibe to what these guys do. So you had your college frat punks, your way too pretty and obviously lost single girls, your hillbillies, your Fonzies, Richies, and Potsies...a really good soup, which the boys whipped into a frenzy before the clock ever struck 11. You really have to walk around the club to get a hold on this phenomenon. There were old people in the back with ear plugs; the psychobillies were in the wings bobbing their heads and comparing lighters, and up front, by the end of the evening, there was a full scale mosh pit. Bill Haley would have been flumoxed.

But that's just what the ol' girl can deliver: a crowd, probably differing in age from top to bottom by 30 or 40 years, all gathered together to hear a driving guitar sound and rub elbows with yer fellow honkies as 3 almost completely different bands try to deliver whatever it is they do best.
10. Fred Eaglesmith, Cedar Cultural Centre, 10/16/03
Now that the Yankees have ruined baseball for everyone again, it was a good time for me to walk downstairs and write a review of tonight's Fred Eaglesmith show at the The Cedar Cultural Center. Somewhere in all the hype of the hard times this country has gone through recently, this band of overpaid bastards has become synonymous in some peoples' minds with the spirit of America. But, if you take away Posada, Jeter, Soriano, Williams and Rivera, the rest of this squad is the worst kind of mercenary piece of shit. This highly paid band of knuckleheads who failed so miserably last year against the Angels, were once again shorn up by their megalomaniacal owner, who went out and purloined the highest priced free agents available, so that his numbskull manager and coaching staff couldn't possibly screw up another season. These aren't hard hat guys. They aren't hard luck stories turned 'round by one last big break. They aren't even compelling individuals sacrificing personal gain for the good of the ballclub. If you live in New York, were born there, spent most of your adult life there, or are the child of a similar individual, then fine, they're your team. But they aren't my team, there is no set of circumstances that could be dreamed up where anyone outside their fan base should ever root for them at any time. And their greedy, lowlife, front-office philosophies don't fucking represent ANYTHING about the America I like to think that I live in.

Ironically, the America that I love is articulated quite well by Fred Eaglesmith, a Canadian hillbilly singer from Southern Ontario. Fred's songs of tractors, dogs, hot dog stands, murder, love gone wrong, and lust gone weird, have more to do with your average Joe's everyday reality than anything done by a mercenary jackass professional athlete, paid more than $10 (ten) million dollars a year to be successful less than 30 (thirty) per cent of the time during his typical work day.

Fred was in strange form tonight, kind of more mellow than he's been on previous stops to the Cities. He told a lot of good stories to introduce his songs, and a lot of good cornball jokes:

Two Canadian cows were on a grassy knoll in Alberta. One cow said to the other, "what do ya think of this mad cow stuff?" The other replied, "what do I care, I'm a helicopter."

He seems to have shed a drummer somewhere along the way, but his music was always acoustic enough in its roots that constant percussion wasn't really missed.

Still, it was an uneasy crowd. The Cedar typically means a lot of "calm," silver-haired ponytails and well-fed vegetarian women in comfortable shoes. But, there were a few obviously chemically agitated spectators sprinkled throughout the room for the first time in my recent memory. If Fred had been playing at one of the local whiskey-and-cigarettes type watering holes, these pilgrims would have melted into the fog, formica, and wood-panelling. Instead, they supplied Fred with a few ill-timed shouts and hollers that caused a few awkward moments of audience play.

Fred and his band overcame this and put on a very crisp, clean show, concentrating more on his personal tunes rather than the raucous, rural Canadian eruptions that didn't jibe too well with the folk circuit, but made him a darling of the alt crowd. The Cedar crowd is always so polite, he seemed to be tailoring the material to a more low key climax, choosing to go it alone on his encores. Regardless of which Fred you get, he remains a must-see gig, like a crazy cousin who whips into to town only a few times a year, the best and worst parts of the family history packed into his guitar case, just looking for an audience and a place to crash.