SHARING THE SHOWS
First: Happy Unmarried and Single Americans Week! The Singlehood Activist that’s been active this week appreciated that pic you see at the top. The third week of September is devoted to recognize us single folk; believe it or not, it started in Ohio in the 1980s, by the Buckeye Singles Council. I’ve used my Facebook and Twitter platforms to educating others about singles-related issues, had an outing at Medium Rare with some cool folks from my favorite Facebook group, Community of Single People, and I even added a Meetup to my usual monthly rotation on the Childfree Singles of the DMV Group.
Sadly, because people are flakes, it ended up being just me and Rolf. But we also have good intellectual discourse. We disagree about singles-related issues (I believe not everybody is meant to be partnered, and singlism is a real problem), but we’re capable of having a productive discussion on the issue. And we do agree on the Childfree by Choice thing, which is most important. We enjoyed some fine Indian cuisine at Masala Art, which is where I first met Pete pre-Trey. For an appetizer, we split some garlic chili Naan, and I tried Bhelpuri for the first time. After we parted ways, I headed to the Pearl Street Warehouse for my third round with the Allman Others Band. The place was close to empty, but the group started at 8:02, exactly two minutes after the start band. I like when groups start at the time they say they’re going to (two minutes is not a big deal in my book). The setlist included: Set One Don’t Want You No More Ain’t My Cross to Bear Statesboro Blues In Memory of Elizabeth Reed Tell the Truth (Eric Clapton) One Way Out Melissa Blue Sky Hoochie Coochie Man Come and Go Blues Southbound (which the singer dedicated to all the native New Yorkers in the room, me included) Woman Across the River Ramblin’ Man (which started with an a capella rendering of the song’s main chorus) Set Two Wasted Words Midnight Rider Jessica Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More (which the singer described as a protest song) Let it Rain (another Clapton tune) Black Hearted Woman (dedicated to the bassist’s first girlfriend) Revival (my favorite of the Allmans’s repertoire, which had me spinning round and round, baby, right round, like a record) Whipping Post Soulshine The show ended right at 11:02, which also made me happy. Jaime Lee Curtis’s call for earlier concerts really spoke to me. The Green and Red Lines were populated by Nationals fans despondent over their loss to the Atlanta Braves. At this point, I have to route for the Nats to lose; they’re competing with my Mets to stay out of last place. It’s kinda sad when that’s the goal you’re rooting for, but that’s where we are. I did drag for parts of the night, but I’m glad I made it. This was Show 5 of 5 in two weeks. At this point, I’m ready to do some other things. As I become more and more engrossed in my Singlehood Crusade (including some new projects), I’m starting to not feel as much of a need for shows, and to be honest, parts of the scene are a bit couples-centric. That’s not to say I won’t continue to rock out, but I’ll start to treat it like chocolate cake: best in small doses. My next one is in three weeks; it should be a nice breather. From that point, I’m on the one show per month plan. November: JRAD with Pete, Maggie, and possibly some other assorted folk I know. December: Allman Betts Family Revival with Pete. For my single brethren reading this page, keep on rockin’ your singlehood, whether it’s for now or forever (thanks, Peter McGraw, for the line).
0 Comments
Through my own impulsivity, I’d set up a gauntlet of five shows in two weeks. What was I thinking? was the refrain going through my brain. But I’d committed. And I’d never seen Jerry Tripsters, a Jerry Garcia Band (JGB) cover before, despite having heard about them. And I had this Saturday night free.
My friend Sarah fell ill, so our plans of dancing, making pet noises, and laughing at our own jokes for extended periods of time fell through. She did “miracle” her ticket to Rolf, whom you remember from last week’s Uncle Jesse show. I love Saturdays; I spent the day reading student journals, finalizing lesson plans I’d been putting off all week, reading, and conceptualizing my book on how discourse in cinema perpetuates singles. After that, I took a huge power nap, and yet I still woke up tired. So I pounded a 20-ounce Cherry Coke Zero on the Metro ride to Pearl Street Warehouse. Sometimes you hear a song that gives you such goosebumps (or a “skingasm” as we call in the jamband scene) that you have to play it over and over again. “Eventually,” off the new String Cheese Incident album, was that song. I had in my headphones, playing on repeat, as I walked to the venue. But my musical reverie was interrupted by Kathy; we spotted each other and chatted, as I made a pit stop at Colada to give Rolf his miracle. Once inside, I chatted with Lisa, a fellow Deadhead educator. We discussed our beginning-of-school year adventures between songs and agreed that we teachers need these shows to keep us centered. And Richard was there with his harmonica. I wasn’t all that familiar with JGB’s repertoire until I saw Dark Star Orchestra (DSO) cover a JGB show in Baltimore (3/31/18) when guitarist Rob Eaton couldn’t play with them. It turned me onto them. Some songs played by the Tripsters included:
During setbreak, Rolf and I had a nice intellectual dialectic about the political writings of George Orwell; Down and Out in Paris and London is now on my queue. I also got to talk about my work in Singles Studies and explained why singlism is a societal problem. Of course, “Second That Emotion” interrupted that discourse, and I was there for music. I started to fade at around 11, but told myself I was gonna hang on until 11:30. During that half hour, Kathy, Lisa, and Rolf had tapped out. But Richard was still blowing on that harp, and I was determined to crawl toward that finish line. And they stopped right at 11:30. My orange Dead/Mets tie-dye made me stick out like sore thumb (pardon the cliché) among all the well-dressed club-hoppers pervading the Waterfront. But sometimes it feels good being on the outside; I’ve always prided myself on going against the norm. On the Metro ride, I had a good chat with a dude named Ben, a realtor in the area. I had seen him wearing a Bruce Springsteen shirt at the venue; apparently, he’d been at the Patti Smith show at the Anthem and wanted to do a twofer. I dig that. We talked music and real estate, the latter of which has been a slight obsession of mine recently. As for the former, he’d been to a bunch of shows in New York, as well as that Gathering of the Vibes festival I attended in upstate New York back in 2001 and 2002, during which I had a transcendental experience that led me into education. Solo travel rocks. Once home, I flipped on an episode of Only Murders in the Building, which my friend and colleague Elizabeth delivered a presentation on at the Northeast Modern Language Association last year. I’m looking for the pro-singlehood angle, and all I can say is that Mabel annoys the hell out of me. Perhaps material for my book. We shall see. Show four of five complete. What the hell was I thinking?
That phrase ran through my mind as I drifted in and out of consciousness on the Amtrak from Newport News back to DC. When Henry emailed me in June about the Greta Van Fleet (GVF) show, I was in “summer mode” and feeling impulsive, so I bought a seat next to him and his friend Franco. The following week, as I was in Tampa drudging through those essays during the Advanced Placement reading, String Cheese Incident was finally playing a reasonable distance from DC, the night before, so Pete, Maggie, and I would make it happen. I had just gotten tenure and thought, Ehhhh, I haven’t taken a single sick day yet! I can get away with it! As I joked with John, “I was such a different person back then.” Translation: back-to-back shows. I had been up since 5 that morning (with a couple of quick power naps), and I had taken the afternoon off from work to recover from the trip. My personal battery was at about 8%; when I mentioned the last 24 hours to Franco, he asked, “How are you even awake?” The answer: I pounded a 12-oz Diet Coke followed by a 20-oz Diet Coke to get my energy level up. Rolf’s nickname for me, Diehard, seems to have some truth to it. I wasn’t too familiar with GVF before Henry suggested it. Drew had told me about their music, but after Henry’s email, I listened to their album, From the Fires, and I was hooked. The Led Zeppelin influence is obvious; in fact, if anybody did a parody of Zeppelin, GVF might fit the bill. I thought of this clip. They are awesome in their own way, and judging by the young crowd, they seem to be Led Zeppelin for Generation Z. And I love the fact that this brand of music transcends generations. I even saw older rock fans there, wearing T-shirts for iconic groups like Guns n’ Roses and Sepultura. Case in point: Henry, much younger than me, was also flying solo to Get the Led Out, the Zeppelin tribute, back in May. In the five years I’ve been writing Not Enough Concerts, I’ve given out this site, and Henry was the first person to respond, and from there, this union was born. During the break between Surf Curse, the opener, and GVF, we discussed our takes on Roger Waters’s performance style and Pink Floyd in general. Rock never dies. I couldn’t identify any of the songs by titles, but the show did rock just the same. Most of the crowd up in the nosebleeds sat, but Henry, Franco, and I moved around, banged our heads, sang along, and eventually, Section 416 followed suit. During the encore, a bunch of red and blue lights lit up among the crowd. It took me a minute to figure out how: people had the lights on their phones turned on. Back in the 1990s, we used cigarette lighters (the first memory that comes to mind was when Holly touched her lighter to the fire coming out of mine when Rusted Root played at SUNY Plattsburgh, our alma mater, back in 1998. How times have changed. The caffeine wore off as I laid down on my couch; Chester wasn’t happy about his Dad being gone for so long, so he sat on me a good while as I drifted off to sleep. This post is dedicated to Joseph Lionel Wynne, who passed away on September 10, 2012.
I’ve been waiting for the day String Cheese Incident would come to DC, or at least DC-adjacent on a night when I could actually make it. The show they played in Charlottesville last year was the day before a school event I had to make, so that would have been tough. But, having gotten tenure this year, Richmond on a Sunday night was doable, and I could always give an online lesson to students this year (I’m grateful at a place that’s flexible about that, within reason). When I got the news between my gay old time spent scoring exams in Tampa, I figured, let’s make a weekend out of it. So I took an Amtrak to Newport News, where I slept on Maggie’s couch. I spent the afternoon hiking with Maggie on the Noland Trail, an old favorite of mine. After a power nap on her couch, we made it to More Than Greek to meet up with Pete for our pre-show meal. I enjoyed some pita and hummus, and I ordered lamb for the first time in, well, I don’t know when. Virginia Credit Union Live has a mellow vibe, and it’s easy to get into and out of. I learned this back in 2019 when I saw Dark Star Orchestra with Maggie, Johnny Mac, Gary, Mark, Drew, Shannon, and Sandy. The pit and the seats were relatively empty, so we sat and chatted for a bit with our observations of the sparsely populated area. The band started at 7:30 as the venue filled up. As Pete put it, every SCI show feels like their best one. Even with Phish and Widespread Panic, some shows are better than others. But it always feels like SCI is on their game; they’re just so intensely passionate. And tonight was no exception. Favorites for me included “Got What He Wanted,” “Joyful Sound,” “Let’s Go Outside” (which mashed up with The Who’s “Eminence Front”), “Song in my Head,” and their debut of “Ain’t I Been Good to You” off their new album, Lend Me a Hand. Oftentimes, the people I see make the show. In addition to hanging out with Maggie (my old Hampton Roads life) and Pete (my new DC life), it was nice to see some familiar faces I hadn’t seen in a minute: Ashley, Lydia, Tom. And a cool one, Matt, who I see at DC shows. And as Maggie and I rode home, we had our usual deep philosophical question about human nature and relationships. I crashed out on Maggie’s couch a bit past midnight, and was up at 5:30 to catch an early train. As I alternate between typing on my laptop, staring out the window at the farmland of Suffolk, Virginia, and shutting my eyes, all with the 12/29/17 SCI show in my headphones, I wonder what I was thinking when I decided to do String Cheese and Greta Van Fleet back-to-back nights. But I’ll go into the reasoning in the next blog. In the meantime, I’m signing off to give my brain a nice lull. It needs it. I have a serious question: whatever happened to predictability? The milkman. The paperboy. Evening TV.
Those are the lyrics that came to mind when I first saw Rolf’s Meetup, a band called Uncle Jesse, which was playing at the Perch, a rather pristine outdoor venue with some nice views of the towering skyscrapers of Tysons Corner. I had seen Free Flowing Musical Experience (FFME) back in 2022, which I paid nil for, so I was happy for the price. After a long subway ride, I made way up to the Perch, where I saw Rolf, decked out in his red shirt and porkpie hat, gettin’ down to some “Kryptonite,” which brought me back to my early 20s. We were supposed to have six people show, but, people are flaky… Anyway, Rolf is good company. We philosophized about our musical choices; while they’re different, we can respect and appreciate them. Life as a single childfree person in a nuptial- and procreation-centered world also came up (it was a Childfree Singles Meetup, after all), as did this assclown named Matt Walsh, who thinks childfree single women are the destruction of society. We got to playing cornhole – my third game ever. And it was shown, as Rolf managed to dominate by a score of 21 to 2. Side note: I didn’t know anything about cornhole until I moved to Newport News. I went to a barbecue about a month after I moved there. When someone asked me if I wanted to play cornhole, I thought it was something pornographic. The rest of the night consisted of us grooving to the band, and the singer, Adriana, noticed Rolf’s kickass dance moves. While I couldn’t name all of the songs, I was able to note the following: “Semi Charmed Life” – Third-Eye Blind “Enter Sandman” – Metallica “You Belong With Me” – Taylor Swift[1] “I Feel Like a Woman” – Shania Twain “Cher” – I Believe “What’s Going On” – 4 Non-Blondes “I Want It That Way” – Backstreet Boys “All The Small Things” – Blink 182 “Zombie” – The Cranberries “My Own Worst Enemy” – Lit “Unwritten” – Natasha Bedingfield “Seven Nation Army” – White Stripes While it’s not the music that graces my headphones on a consistent basis, it was nice to be transported to my angsty teen and early 20s years, back when I was a hormone-fueled partier who thought he knew everything. And Adriana had energy, even walking into the crowd! Actually, I still think I’m pretty smart, but I try to be more humble about it these days. That said, I do try to educate others against the stigma on being single and childfree, which is one of the reasons I started this group in the first place. It was a pretty quiet ride back; I made sure to stop by the Wegmans on the first floor of that building to get some crackers to snack on during that ride back (and Rolf picked up some interesting-flavored sodas, which we drank, uhhh, when we left the venue. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2024
Categories |