The Buzzcocks and Graham Parker, 7/16/06, Minneapolis

Just got back from the Buzzcocks at the Triple Rock. For so long I've been telling the story about seeing them and Gang Of Four at the Longhorn in 1979, while Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, and Paul Simonon looked on, that I'd almost gotten bored with the myth-details. It's a good fable, and I guess I always assumed it would be my greatest-ever Buzzcocks yarn.

Wrong.

They were flat-out amazing tonight: Old men and fire. "Orgasm Addict," "Harmony In My Head," and the top mosh-getter, "Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have Fallen In Love With)." That night in 1979, the Clash was buzzing around the Longhorn (they played the next night at the St. Paul Civic Center with David Johansen and the Undertones), and my brother asked Strummer if they were going to get up and jam.

"No, mate, this is a Buzzcocks gig," said the president of Garageland.

That was the stuff of legend, this was the stuff of life. Tonight was a Buzzcocks gig to beat all Buzzcocks gigs--heydays or history be hanged: Everyone who was there wanted to be there; everyone wanted to flail or nod along to the (seemingly) simple blitzkrieg choruses and Pete Shelley's romantic take on well, just about everything.

What's more, before the 'cocks tonight, I caught Graham Parker, outside, on the roof of Britt's Pub.

For free. Hype- and otherwise.

Unlike the youngish Buzzcocks crowd, tons of old punks and rockers were there, quaffing and eating dinner and coralling their kids and soaking up the sun before the harvest comes and we all hunker down to chill again.

I saw Parker at the old Guthrie Theater after Squeezing Out Sparks was released, and while it may have been a transcendent show for its time and place, it is also now a distant memory, for he laid to waste so much about the American Dream tonight, as only an empire-wary and USA-weary Brit can do, and sang songs from one, ten, and 20 years ago that proved to be spookily prophetic about the United States' leaders, environment, and wars.

It was a tremendous, unsettling, hopeful night. A re-meeting of the tribe and the tribes' chldren. People talked about new records and old records, casualities and up-and-comers, and everyone made fun of Katherine Kersten and the bullshit that passes for goverment, media, and religion these days.

And quite a few folks -- what else ya gonna do? -- danced.