And what better way to celebrate the conclusion of another brutal finals season than by trekking through the snow to see Neil Young at the Garden? (Answer: there is no better way)
My final ended at 5pm giving me just enough time to savor the sense of relief and the fleeting beauty of the first snowfall in the city (in the ten minutes before it turns to dirty slush) over a pint with fellow students before hopping the train to the show.
I walked in just before the start of Wilco (blowing off completely the first opening act Everest). I confess to only being a casual fan of Wilco, they are good and all but never got me going the way they do for so many people I know. Still there brief set was pretty solid
You Are My Face
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Handshake Drugs
A Shot In The Arm
Impossible Germany
Jesus, Etc.
The Late Greats
Hate It Here
Walken
I’m The Man Who Loves You
Norah Jones came out to sing on Jesus, Etc. and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco’s front man) brought out his son who was turning 11 (or 13, something like that) today and after leading the crowd in a rendition of Happy Birthday Jeff let his kid take over the drum kit for a song. Man as far as birthday presents go, playing to a full house at Madison Square Garden is pretty ridiculous. I think at my 11th birthday I was still excited about getting X-Men action figures. Shoot, I’m twice his age and he’s already accomplished way more than I will in my entire life. So good for him.
Then after a short setbreak in really cramped seats Neil came out. Now the last time I saw him was during his Greendale rock opera tour which was a rocking show but which regulated his hits to an extended encore only. He wasn’t backed this tour by Crazy Horse but the chance to actually get a full range of material not just an hour and half of his rock opera balanced it out.
And he delivered. It was a great great show. Or rather it was a great performance. Neil did everything that Neil is famous for doing. He played heartrending versions of the songs that have been staples of rock radio since before I was born. He played wild, string breaking, messy solos of his classic rock epics. And he played a couple song stretch of new material of vary quality that garnered mixed reactions that he ignored.
Really my only complaint about the show would be the audience. It was the exact same shit I ran into seeing Roger Waters in Budapest a couple years back. The crowd of baby boomers just sat there. Sure they’d clap and maybe even cheer a little but stand up and rock out to Down by the River? Not a chance. I just don’t get it. These people aren’t that old how can you possibly sit in these tiny cramped seats with your knees wedging into the people in the row in front of you while one of the greatest legends in American music is absolutely throwing himself around the stage putting on a show. It’s pathetic. And annoying as it prevented me from being able to stand cause of all the old assholes who complain about their view being blocked. Seriously, you are the people who should have died before they got old.
Still I’d endure water boarding to see Cortez the Killer and Old Man live. And by the time Everest, Wilco and Norah Jones came out to add vocals to Keep on Rockin in the Free World even a couple of the old farts actually staggered to their feet. Shoot, even A Day in the Life was pretty sweet and I hate it when acts cover The Beatles.
And walking out of the Garden, back into the snow with finals behind me and Neil’s feedback still making my ears ring, life felt pretty damn good.
Love And Only Love
Hey Hey, My My
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Powderfinger
Spirit Road
Cortez The Killer
Cinnamon Girl
Oh, Lonesome Me
Mother Earth
The Needle And The Damage Done
Light A Candle
Cough Up The Bucks
Fuel Line
Hit The Road
You Don’t Need A Map
Unknown Legend
Heart Of Gold
Old Man
Get Back To The Country
Off The Road
When Worlds Collide
Just Singing A Song
Cowgirl In The Sand
Rockin’ In The Free World w/ Wilco & Everest
E-
Get Behind The Wheel
A Day In The Life
Alright so once again I’ve been remiss in posting. It’s been a reoccurring problem this semester. Seems like I did even less interesting this fall than I did last. I saw fewer friends, went to fewer concerts, and checked out fewer spectacles. Can’t rightly tell you why, sure doesn’t seem like all that time spent being boring improved my readiness for final exams. What I can tell you is that this spring is looking better. There are already a few exciting things lined up and there should be a big announcement soon that will guarantee some serious blogging in the future. So bear with me. In the meantime I will be publishing daily to cover what was a very hectic holiday season; these posts will even have photos thanks to an exceptionally awesome Christmas gift.
Also, as if I wasn’t already continuously behind on posting here I have joined the staff of The Listening Room, the music blog of LoHud.com, New York’s Lower Hudson Valley news source. Diana, an old friend and the most passionate female music fan I know, is a reporter out there and invited me to take part. My first post, a review of My Morning Jacket’s NYE show at the Garden is up already for those of you tired of waiting on me to update WhereDaveIs.
Alright so finals start Tues and I have done little in the previous week and a half but study (without the necessary urgency) or be irritated cause I wasn’t studying (while simultaneously feeling it absolutely necessary to check Slate.com one more time in case any breaking news occurred in the 4 mins since I was last online.) So that’s why there is the big gap in dates.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending, I had more help than Slate in getting distracted from the books today. This weekend I am dog sitting one more time (they always seem to go out of town immediately preceding finals) and I got back up to their place a little after five this afternoon after finishing my last course.I run up and grab Indy and take him downstairs to go for his walk. And we hadn’t made it very far, just down to the next building over which houses The Colbert Report, when Indy tries to take advantage of the fact that I am paying more attention to my IPod than him and goes as if to piss on a guy’s leg. I look up enough to go, “Dog, don’t piss on…(look up a little further)…Stephen Colbert.”
To which the man himself looks down at Indy, and says very cheerfully, “Yes, please try not to,” then gives me a smile and runs after a cab. It’s been awhile since I have a celeb encounter, either too much time in the library or an ever increasing obliviousness to the world when I am walking around so that was a fun little moment. In retrospect I wonder if I might not have been better off letting Indy piss on him in the hopes of it somehow being mentioned on the show.
You would think that was plenty of entertainment for a Friday evening expected to consist of nothing but property review. And for most the night it was, while others caroused I half heartedly read through intimidating long property outlines. Finally at 11:30 I was like, fuck it, I’m done this is terrible. And I stood up from the table. As I did so I looked out the window to my left and I’ll be damned if the couple in the apartment across the street weren’t going at it.
And when I say going at it I mean going at it and when I say apartment across the street I mean floor to ceiling windows, fully lit apartment across the street. I can’t remember if I said, “Holy Shit” or “You’ve got to be kidding me” but the sentiment was much the same.
Now it shouldn’t have been such a surprise, I spent Thanksgiving over here with my cousins and Jan had mentioned to her daughter that the couple across the street had an exhibitionist streak. I remember this distinctly cause I asked her why the hell she had never brought this to my attention the two dozen times I had dog sat. I mean giving me free reign of the fridge and laundry machine is cool and all but c’mon, neighbors going at it? It’s a quintessential New York moment and one that after nine years I had still yet to experience.
I’d like to say I stood and stared but I didn’t, I moved to a window with a better view and stared mouth agape. They were just uh finishing up which had me cursing my meager attention span for not being meager enough to get to call it quits on studying three minutes earlier. I then preceded to call people and try to explain the hysterical awesomeness of what just occurred. Don’t get me wrong, I also had a brief internal debate about the peeping Tom question but ultimately decided I deserved no guilt. I hadn’t gone looking for this, I was minding my own business when it was thrust (so to speak) upon me. It’s the voyeur equivalent of entrapment. I mean floor to ceiling windows? With all the lights on? In an apartment building across the street from another high rise apartment building? They knew what they were doing. Or else they are the most oblivious people in the world.
It might actually be the latter to be honest. Cause they didn’t have the shades down in any room in the apartment so post-coitus you could see him watch TV in his underwear and her putter around the kitchen. (Their apartment was aligned all along the wall facing my building so you could see all bedroom/kitchen/living room and watch them walk between them it felt almost like a sitcom or Broadway stage set up where one wall is just completely removed so the audience can peer in.
Ridiculous. And distracting as all hell. For the rest of the weekend whenever I’d get up from studying to get some Kool-Aid or walk the dog I’d have to look across the street to see what they were up to. They watch a lot of TV. And the wife spends a lot of time without pants on for no apparent reason. Oh and she actually really attractive. Damn I can’t wait to get back to the library where the only distractions I have to combat are Slate.com and this stupid blog.
I found that out this evening when I was leaving the library. The streets were pretty busy with people celebrating their lack of work tomorrow. Amongst them was a crowd tumbling off a party bus parked on West 3rd. Cleary bridge and tunnelers and clearly hammered the crowd of girls were falling all over.
I was still a ways away walking toward them when one girl made a beeline for me.
“What’s your name?” she said. When I replied Dave she put her arm around me and led me back towards her group so I went with it and put my arm around her. As we walked back to her group she told me, “We’re going to Town Tavern,” like it was some kind of achievement. Town Tavern is a generic boring frat type bar, pretty much identical to the vast majority of bars in Long Island and Jersey so I dunno why this group decided to rent a party bus to come into the city to go there but I gave her a sort of indulgent, “oh yeah?”
Then she asks me how old I am and when I say twenty-six she pulls her arm back like I’m suddenly scaldingly hot or infected with leprosy. She turns to me and goes, “I’m young. Ta-ta.” AND WAVES ME ON MY WAY!
Wow, I was blown away. Too old? At twenty-six? I’m already past my prime? I haven’t had a prime yet. Or rather if that was my prime I am in some serious, serious trouble. But it was pretty damn funny nonetheless. I’ve never had that happen before. Too old? To get into the tavern you have to be 21. Even if she was using a fake she’d have to be 19ish and I thought women always went for older men.
Meanwhile my brother, who at twenty-two is apparently in his prime, is in Hawaii having cougars leave him notes at the front desk of the spa asking if he wants to come to their room to watch election results and “see what happens”. As if I needed further illustration of the fact that Max is Vincent Chase to my Johnny Drama.
While Teem Wolf was kept out of the playoffs for the second straight year we did win the only prize worth having. Ours was the only team to respond to a promotion by Westlaw that offered free beers to the team that gets the most players to come to a Westlaw training. So we sent a few players to learn the subtleties of Westlaw and as a result we got some happy hour booze paid for at the Stoned Crow.
While Teem Wolf was enjoying free suds other “more successful” teams were slogging it out in the cold over in East River Park. Amongst them was friend Kevin who got in a nasty collision with a teammate while playing defense in their semifinal round loss.
He shook it off and finished the game but ended up passing out on the floor of his apartment and then passing out every time he tried to stagger to the bathroom. His roommates found him sprawled on the floor. He ended the night in the emergency room with a lacerated spleen and a lot of internal bleeding. In fact he ended up spending the next couple days in ICU and another couple days in the not-ICU but still for real wing and was only finally released on Tues.
Free beer or lacerated spleen? Once again Teem Wolf wins.
At Widespread Panic at the Bill Graham Memorial Foundation Benefit at Irving Plaza.
Yeah as if the news this morning wasn’t enough of a pick me up today was Panic’s big benefit performance at Irving Plaza a venue they outgrew in the late ‘90s. The last three other venues they’ve played in the city were United Palace Theater, Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden. Quite a shift from the roughly 1500 person capacity of Irving. And that’s if you pack it in.
Which they always do and the line outside suggested from the moment I walked up that packed wasn’t going to begin to describe it tonight. You see Panic goes on a yearlong break after New Years, presumably to lend guitarist Jimmy Herring back to the surviving members of the Grateful Dead who supposedly are touring this summer and so this is one of the last five shows before that break and the only one in the north east since April. Add to that the fact it’s at such an intimate venue that they have such a history at and tickets were in high demand. In fact the only way I got one was by scouring the message boards till I found someone who got a hold of pre-sale password that was supposed to only be available to attendees of the Billboard concert tour industry conference that’s going on this week. And even then the guy who gave it to me told me he thought the pre-sale had sold out.
All that luck though and it turns out the assholes at Irving (my least favorite venue in the city for over five years, though Terminal 5 has been making a run at the title recently) were selling tickets at the box office for an extra $25. The last thing this place needed was more people.
But I waited it out through the crowd and finally got in. I had cut it kind of close to the published start time so I was lucky to snake my way in deep enough to get about 10 feet out from under the balcony overhang and secure a spot on the railing guarding the right side of the soundboard. Good spot acoustically and cause of the way the guardrail was set I had great sight lines to the stage and was totally shielded from the flow of people to and from the bar which is pretty clutch in a joint described by prominent scene journalist, Scott Bernstein, as “buns to franks”. I mean it was wall to wall people. And not just people in close proximity but pressed flesh and that was before Panic came out and people started dancing then it just became uncomfortably intimate.
Cause I knew going in it was gonna be like this I eschewed any beverages cause getting a drink and then taking the request piss in this crowd would be a miserable experience akin to cutting your way through the densest African jungle only if that jungle consisted of drunk people angry that you knocked into their beer. And going solo tonight meant that there was no going back to your spot if you left it, even if you were willing to fight your way upstream. Without an anchor if you tried to stop whoever was wedged up behind you would kill you and no one would notice your corpse under all those feet. It really was that packed.
As much as its cool to see big bands in small venues it generally means you really have to earn it. But the boys seemed to realize that and came out blistering. This wasn’t going to be any, couldn’t live up to the hype Halloween on the bayou show, nah this one was just gonna be a big time band cutting it loose in a small time joint.
Set I:
Heroes > Disco > Angels on High , Smokin Factory > Fixin to Die > Henry Parsons > Green Onions > Henry Parsons > Dark Day Program , Pigeons , Ain’t Life Grand *
The Disco was awesome and drawn out just a great rocking instrumental, Pigeons is always a beast and Aint Life Grand is a fan favorite but this set belonged to that Henry Parsons into Green Onions into Henry Parsons. Know I knew they did Green Onions but had never heard them perform it. For me that song is always going to be associated purely with Get Shorty (great movie, great soundtrack) and it made for combination that would have knocked me flat on my ass if we weren’t packed in like sardines. You really didn’t think about it much though, other than wishing the idiot in front of me would quite dancing into me so much, cause Panic was just that good.
In fact they actually blew the roof off the joint. That’s not just hyperbole. Right at the very end of the set the ceiling under the balcony about ten feet behind me…collapsed. Yeah the dropped ceiling all along the front edge that ran the width of the floor collapsed with a big crack and was suddenly hanging down two feet or more. The row of fans standing there were suddenly thrust into the role of pillars, a whole line of people holding up the ceiling. Ultimately it turns out some fan, definitely a dipshit and presumably drunk decided to try to hang from it.
Security moved in and shoved everyone in front of the overhang further forward into the already compressed masses and pushed everyone else back towards the bar. Cept of course for the dozen or so guys who were holding the ceiling up. They didn’t seem to know what to do after that but eventually someone showed up with some 2×4s and another guy showed up with the little cherry picker crane the venue must use to rig lights and they raised that enough to hold up one half of the ceiling and nailed in the 2×4s to hold up the other side and then wrapped the whole thing in caution tape and stationed a wall of bouncers to keep people from knocking into any of it.
Of course that made for an excessively long set break and made for even more congestion on the floor. And that’s how I almost got in a fight. I was just close enough to the overhang that when they brought in the crane security made me move out of the way this pushed me off the railing and into the scrum. I was standing there in the midst of this group of wannabe southern frat kind of people. The kind that are from Long Island but went to college in South Carolina and now speak with a southern accent and chew tobacco. (All this is true I heard them talking at break and I watched them pack in chaw during the show which is just gross.) Anyway while I was standing there watching the repair effort with the hope of getting my old spot back, one of their ilk, the douche who had been bouncing in to me without any consideration for the entire first set comes back from a beer run and without a word gives me a savage hip check to get me to move. When I said, “What the fuck?” more in surprise than anger the fucker turns around and snarls, “I said step back”, and then started telling me off cause they had been standing there all night and this was their space and so I needed to go back where I belong.
Now I didn’t want to be standing there. I wasn’t huge on these people before this asshole opened his mouth but I sure as shit wasn’t letting this mope dictate to me. So I returned with a chill the fuck out and an explanation of what general admission meant and pointed out that perhaps the ceiling collapsing might have altered the situation. He didn’t react well to that at all and we spent a few minutes jawing at each other, he calling me a fucking asshole and asking what my problem was and me politely but quite firmly telling him to relax and asking if he saw footprints with his name on it painted on the floor reserving him that spot. His girlfriend finally pulled him back but he continued to turn around and try to restart shit well into the first couple songs of the second set which was not just annoying but actively kept me from shaking the anger he’d built up in me.
Still, the exigencies of the crowd were such that our spots were constantly shifting as people shoved their way back and forth to the bar and eventually I even managed to snag my old spot, yes behind the douche but also on the rail out of the general flow and with a great sight line again. And hell, not even I could stay pissed off with the way Panic played in the second set.
Set II
Space Wrangler , North > Smokestack Lightning > Jam > Protein Drink/Sewing Machine, Let’s Get the Show on the Road > Airplane > Jam > Papa’s Home , Holden Oversoul > Conrad
- E -
Expiration Day, Pilgrims, Goin Out West
Now I complained a lot about the song selection at the New Orleans shows and finally they gave me a setlist with enough gems and personal favorites to match the quality of their playing. No fan can help but get excited when they open a set with Wrangler and North is a long time favorite and absolute rocker that the crowd responded to way more than I expected. Now I’m not too familiar with Smokestack Lightening but they jammed it out impressively and I know people have complained about the number of songs they have repeated during their last couple NYC runs (Protein>Sewing, LGTSOTR) but if that means another Airplane then I am totally fine with it.
Ah Airplane, one of the best feel good, sunny day type songs ever written and one of those songs that can keep you chasing the band for show after show hoping to hear it. It’s never not put a huge shit eating grin on my face or elicited a “Fuck you” text from my brother when told what he was missing. So I would’ve been happy if the show ended then but to jam the song out for over ten minutes and then turn it into Papa’s Home a song that I have only recently begun to truly appreciate and close it out with energizing fan favorites Holden>Conrad made for an absolutely monster set. One completely worthy of an hour plus ceiling setbreak and a venue so beyond capacity the fire marshals should have shut it down.
And then just to ice it they come out with the best encore I have seen them do in years. Normally this isn’t a band that makes great encore selections in my opinion and I was less than enthused when they came out with Expiration Day, a song I loved on their album with Vic Chesnut but that I have seen them encore with way too many times, but they followed that with Pilgrims which is a much better song and one that signaled the real possibility of a three song encore (both ED and ‘Grims being slow songs). I didn’t expect Goin Out West though which is an absolute killer song, one that I used to blast when I was driving the US. If the ceiling hadn’t already collapsed that would have brought it down. They were scorching all night and they still managed to ratchet it up for the last song.
Just a great great show. My only even quasi disappointment was that I was hoping, since it was for the Bill Graham Foundation, to maybe get the elusive Morning Dew cover they have busted out a couple times this year. Otherwise pretty perfect. Shoot this was my third straight show without having to hear Drums; I even got a free poster for the event on my way out the door and got serenaded by a guy who lugged his piano down to the N,R,W, platform at 14th street and was playing jazzy versions of Stevie Wonder hits. I almost didn’t care that it took me an hour and a half to get home. Almost.
Sorry for subjecting you to all that whiny emo crap yesterday.
So turns out I made the interview stage for both those fellowships. The email telling me that didn’t get through for some reason and they didn’t know that until they got the email I sent yesterday seeking confirmation that I really was that undesirable.
I swear to god, this school. There are so many good reasons to hate yourself at this place they really don’t need to go creating fake ones. I wasted some pretty awesome self-loathing and self-pity yesterday. There’s not a lot of time to rebuild those reserves before finals start.
Cento-Matic still pretty solid though, that wasn’t bullshit.
Believe it or not before I came to law school I actually liked myself. But damn this place is one enormous engine designed to make you feel stupid, incompetent and lazy and then amplify that feeling till it’s all consuming.
Everyone here feels like everyone else is naturally smarter, more driven, more accomplished, has a better grasp on the course material, does more substantive and in depth extracurricular work and has a brighter future. Course even if everyone feels like this (and they all do cept the 5% or so that are true arrogant gunners and their unbelievable arrogance overwhelms those feels of fear that lurk deep inside their obnoxious hearts too) cept its only true about a few. The dregs, the wretched law school refuse, eeking along best they can constantly aware of the fact they don’t really belong.
More often than not I feel like I fit into that category, just barely scraping a long by the skin of my teeth. Always a step behind, a concept behind and without the smarts or the work ethic to catch up. It’s incredibly wearying. Now not to say it’s not my fault. I sincerely doubt that most of my classmates blog at such length about nonsense, or run off to observe such nonsense in the first place but it’s not like I don’t work between web surfing and it’s not like I don’t do any extracurricular work and it’s not like I won’t study for finals. But I am sure there are people already studying as hard for finals right now as I will be when I start around Thanksgiving.
So no matter how hard I may be working at a given moment or how much I may be slacking off at the back of my mind is the knowledge someone is working harder and doing better and I tell you that little bit of knowledge at the back of your mind weighs on you day after day, month after month and there are times when it threatens to just pull you down.
Days like today. There is a series of fellowships offered by the law school in conjunction with Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ). They offer a wide variety of placements from the Refugee Law Project in Uganda to the UN International Law Commission in Geneva. They are available only to NYU Law students so that instantly makes them a lot more achievable than in the wild where every bleeding heart law student is competing for these kind of jobs.
Last year I applied to one with the tribunal in Liberia. I didn’t get it. I didn’t even make the interview stage. Not a big deal and not a huge surprise. I was a one-L with only a couple years at an internet M&A facilitation company on my resume. No reason to think I would be a viable candidate. But I did know a number of kids who did get fellowships. My good friend Brian got one with the Rwandan tribunal based in Arusha, Tanzania. But he has two years in the Peace Corps. It all worked out though, I ended up in Cameroon, had a phenomenal time, became a chief, the whole nine yards.
But this year I figured I was competitive. I mean I went deep off the beaten path to work for a human rights organization last summer, my transcript shows me cramming human rights and international law courses crammed into every slot that isn’t taken by a requirement, I didn’t even do the necessary paperwork to be eligible to interview with law firms this summer and I came back to the fellowship board, chief’s hat in hand, for another go round. Figured this time I had a pretty good shot. After I think the majority of people who go for these things are one-Ls and LLM students (its their only chance to get school summer funding) and while the LLMs are tough competition because of their years or real experience in the field it’s still a small candidate pool and two dozen placements to further dilute that.
Now the fellowships aren’t perfect. If you get accepted you have to take it even if some other offer comes in to you and considering that most public interest and especially international organizations don’t look for summer interns till at least Jan if not later you potentially shut yourself out of opportunities you might really want. It’s a calculated risk. But at the same time, like I said, the percentages are a lot higher here and it’s got to feel great to have your summer squared away in December as opposed to sweating it sending aps well into March.
Because of that I only applied to two fellowships, both with the International Center for Transitional Justice, one in their New York office one in Cape Town. It’s my primary area of interest (other than church and state issues) and my class with the ICTJ vice president is easily the most inspirational class I have had since NYU President Sexton’s seminar my freshman year of undergrad. It’s a phenomenal opportunity and one worth the risk of missing out on the (distant) chance of working on the ACLU’s religion project or at the Center for Constitutional Rights on ATS lawsuits.
Unfortunately for the second year in a row I appear to not have made the interview round. Applications were due last week, with invitations to interview following at some indeterminate point in the near future. I hadn’t heard back on anything but a one-L I met last night at a scholarship reception mentioned he had one and tonight I was on a panel of upperclassmen discussing our summer job experiences for one-Ls and heard a couple others talking about getting interviews.
Christ. Excluding the three-Ls who are obviously looking for real employment there are maybe 800 kids eligible for these two dozen fellowships. Of that maybe 200-250 one-Ls and maybe 50-80 two-Ls don’t go the firm route in the summer. Of that easily more than half, probably closer to two thirds (estimate) will go domestic internships. That leaves maybe a 100 or so looking international. Even if all of those people applied there are still 25 different postings and even if the two I picked were amongst the most popular (certainly a possibility and certainly amongst LLM’s) that still means there can’t be more than 10-20 people applying to the same ones I did. And if I can’t make the 5 or so people they interview then what the hell chance do I have of ever getting an internship much less a job next year in the real world. Fuck I mean that is a depressing thought.
I’m not asking to be the one, I’m not basing my already meager law school self esteem on getting the post, but it definitely took a pretty nasty hit not even making the list. That tells me that a year’s worth of work and study on the field still wasn’t enough to beat out first semester one-Ls who haven’t had time here yet to do anything but be beaten up by the Erie Doctrine.
So all this sinks in following the panel. And Brian helps by letting me rant a little but even after that I was in no mood to crack open a book, I just had to get out of this place (self defeating really when you think about it but there it is). So I went deep into Brooklyn to see Centro-Matic.
Centro-Matic is a band from Texas that does sort of a mellow southern rock thing. I only know about them cause Patterson Hood of the Drive by Truckers raves about them constantly in interviews. I downloaded an album a while back and it’s alright. Tonight is the second night of a two night stint at the Bell House a newish joint in Gowanus.
I’ve seen a decent amount of live music this year but it’s been a while since I have gone to one of those cheap, back room of the bar type $10 or less shows. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a flyer on a band. Seemed like it’d be a nice throwback to the undergrad days when I would do that a couple times a week, running all over southern Manhattan discovering new music in dirty little venues, most of which no longer exist.
The Bell House is anything but dingy, in fact it’s beautiful. A classy old bar style to it, some Victorian kind of touches the bar is big and roomy with Victorian era looking couches and seats to push the vibe and some microbrews reasonably priced on draft. Shows go on in an equally spacious room in the back, with a nice stage, a few standing tables and its own bar. Really this place is absolutely great.
Centro-Matic weren’t up quite yet so I got a beer, a comfy seat in the pretty empty bar and tried to piece my confidence back together. It sort of worked. I may carry lingering sense of inferiority around consistently but complete crisis of confidence, while savage in their intensity are correspondingly brief.
Cento-Matic pulled me further back to some sense of equilibrium. It was a short set, an indie rock showcase kind of set. Only an hour with encore but a good hour. It was exactly what I expected, pretty mellow a great sort of soothing rock (if such a thing exists) that complimented the vibe of the room and the small relaxed crowd.
In fact it was a pretty solid restorative, if it wasn’t for the fact that the walk back to the subway afterwards was brutally cold and the subway ride from Gowanus to Astoria, already a considerable length was doubled because of the construction going on the N,R,W lines late night for the next few weeks. I actually ended up going deeper into Queens and then coming back on a Manhattan bound train to get to my stop.
Still, even that late after that kind of delay I felt better than I did earlier. And for right now that’s all that matters.
Well it may be Shomer Shabbas but the achievers were out in force at Irving Plaza tonight for the first day of Lebowskifest NY ’08. Lebowskifest is the wildly successful grass roots festival in celebration of the cult classic The Big Lebowski. It started in Louisville and now occurs in a bunch of cities on several continents. The NYC one got a write up this week in the Times and the Guardian and there is a documentary coming out called The Achievers on the whole fest experience.
Members of the band Autobahn in the foreground with the shadow of a Valkyrie.
The fests are usually broken down into two days. The first day features a band or two that suit the mentality of the movie and is followed by a screening. The second night is bowling and includes costume and trivia contests. People drink white Russians, talk only in quotes and dress as not only characters but inanimate objects (the ringer, Donny’s ashes, a Creedence tape), never seen characters only referenced in the movie (Marty Ackerman) and even popular quotes (from Moses to Sandy Koufax).
The Louisville fest, the biggest of the year, is a little fancier and includes ridiculous events like throw the ringer from the car etc. Shoot they even had My Morning Jacket as the festival band one year. And when you’re lucky some celebs from the movie will show up. Jeff Bridges himself showed up at the one in LA a while back and everyone from Liam to the check out girl in the opening scene have been guests of honor. Lebowskifest NYC in ’05 featured Jeff “the Dude” Dowd, the man who inspired Jeff Bridges character (an indie movie producers and actually one of the Seattle Seven). Rob and I went to that (at a bowling alley way the fuck out in Far Rockaway ) and got the great above shot with him.
The kid dressed as the Dude was awesome.
This year I opted to see what the other day of the fest looks like. The party this year included performances by Creedence Clearwater Revival Revival, a reenactment of the landlord’s dance cycle, Tragedy, “the greatest heavy metal tribute to the Bee Gees in the tri-state area” and then the movie screening.
I was hoping to roll up there with a crew but everyone, and I mean everyone a list of interested people who dropped out stretched from the depths of the law school library to the dark reaches of my undergraduate friends, so I got in line behind a couple cardigan wearing Dudes a little after 9pm. CCRR was onstage when I came in and they weren’t bad. I like CCR and the original band certainly played a prominent role in the movie but I was more focused on getting some oat soadies or a Caucasian than listening to the band.
And my little Lebowski urban achiever focus on getting a drink resulted in the continuation of Old Home Week here in NYC. I was proudly sporting my t-shirt from Springfield’s Big Lebowski Experience ’08 (See this thing is so big even Springfield has a fest, though it’s unaffiliated with the official Lebowskifest. I do have to give all credit to Dan the Man though for the shirt. He absolutely hooked me up with it after I expressed despair at missing Land of Lincoln Lebowski.) And as I was standing in line a girl excitedly tapped me on the back. Turns out SHES from Springfield and so is her husband who was in the next beer line over. They were both out of Springfield High and graduated a few years before I did. Shoot they even know Steve Puglia who was ahead of me at Griffin and whom I worked with in the Illinois State Fair press office for a couple summers. Damn, toss in Courtney and Rotello who live in Hoboken, JK in Brooklyn and the O’Hara whose floating around here somewhere and suddenly half of Springfield appears to have moved out here. I used to give my roommate endless amounts of shit cause he was always raving about how awesome Cleveland is yet 75% of his friends are Cleveland ex-pats who moved out here but I guess now I’ll have to stop pointing fingers.
Me and Matt
Jennifer and Matt been working out here for a couple years but Jen is leaving tomorrow to move to a new job in Milwaukee and Matt follows her in a few weeks. So coming to Lebowskifest was sort of her going away celebration. Nice choice. We were so excited we ended up hanging out the rest of the night reminiscing about horseshoes and high school. They even bought me a beer. Truly Midwestern hospitality.
The three of us got a nice spot just as CCRR was finishing up so we could watch the landlord’s dance cycle. It was being performed, for the first time in Lebowskifest history, by Paul Green the man who founded the School of Rock upon which the movie of the same name was based. I don’t think it lasted much longer than the one in the movie did but it was faithfully recreated, and hysterical.
Nothing like a grown man in a unitard and leaves. The crowd gave him notes. (VIDEO HERE)
Up right after him was one of the real reasons I was so excited to come to the movie screening night, which I normally think sounds way less fun than bowling night, Tragedy. I’ve talked about this band before. Jay, Kyler and I discovered them last year when they opened for Umphrey’s McGee at the Nokia and blew them away. They are the self proclaimed “greatest heavy metal Bee Gees tribute band in the tri-state area” though I think there is precious little competition for the title. There should be though. I’d go see every single band. Hell, I’d go on tour with Tragedy right now if it wasn’t for law school. And I don’t even like the Bee Gees.
But these guys are awesome. Fronted by Jake Szufnarowski, who used to book for the famous rock club The Wetlands, they take every heavy hair metal cliché to the limit with tight white spandex over fat hairy chests, bandanas tied to their guitars, unison head banging and even an incompetent roadie who comes out to towel down their armpits when they raise there are arms to rock. The show is sheer genius. Truly the kind of ridiculous spectacle I came to the tri-state area to see cause this shit just doesn’t happen in Springfield. My god they are awesome. I’ve already requested their album for Christmas. Listen to them HERE. (I tried desperately to find a track I could post but you’ll have to go to their site to hear them.)
After our faces had been sufficiently melted off by the hardest Barry Gibb’s creations have ever rocked it was time to settle in for the main event – The Movie. Now I hadn’t watched it in a while just to make it that much more fun to watch. And it was great, everyone was screaming out key lines that were coming up and then cheering wildly when they were said onscreen. The place shook at Jesus’ first appearance.
It was a strange evening, a sort of old home week tonight. It began with Stapleton, a kid I know from high school. He was a couple years younger than me but one of those “cool” younger kids who hung out with the in crowd. Shoot he was more in than me. Hell of a nice guy, he’s spent some time out in Colorado and is now living in Florida.
I hadn’t seen him in a couple years but he’s up here this weekend with his girlfriend Ashley so we did a little crawl. McSorely’s, Ace Bar (skee ball), Crocodile Lounge. The three of us plus another ex Springfield girl down from Boston and a random conglomerate of South Africans and some girl from Parsons. It was a damn good time and I owe Stapes for introducing me to Dale’s Pale Ale. The first pale ale I’ve ever seen sold in cans but damn tasty.
Ultimately I had to bail on the group at the Fat Black Pussycat to go even deeper back into the past. From K-4th grade at St Joseph’s Grade School on North Fifth back in Springfield me and this girl Melissa were arch rivals. We were very friendly but we competed over every single grade right down to the lowliest quiz. It was intense. We were known for it. She moved schools in 5th grade and ultimately ended up going to school in Petersburg a small town less than ten minutes from my log cabin in the woods. But other than one very brief drunken encounter in a bar at 3am five years ago we hadn’t seen each other since. So this summer while I was in Cameroon my old man emailed me. Anne, a friend of my parents was at a wedding in Petersburg and in the course of conversation with one of the bridesmaids learned she was living in New York. Anne mentioned she knew someone who lived in New York and that’s how Melissa I learned we were both out here. (Funny side note, Melissa told Anne how competitive we were back in the day.)
I was unforgivably negligent in taking a photo so I stole this from Facebook.
About the time I got that email Melissa, presumably spurred by that conversation, found me on Facebook. Turns out she lives in Astoria too. The world just gets smaller and smaller. So once I got home we tried to connect up but kept missing each other. Tonight though she was throwing a party cause her roommate is moving out. Cause I was having so much fun with Stapleton I was real late getting back out to Queens but when I did it turns out she lives off the same subway stop, a scant seven blocks from my place. Really that’s fairly insane. With her roommate moving out I was concerned that she’d be out too but her boyfriend is moving in so Menard County and the Northend will be represented in Astoria for a little while longer.
I was too late to be a part of the auction of her roommates stuff but late enough that everyone there was already reasonably buzzed which is really helpful when you are walking in to a room when you know no one. But everyone was really friendly and it was a really good time seeing Melissa again, almost twenty years but we still felt pretty comfortable with each other.
I was only there for a drink or so before it was time for the whole party to move on. Around the corner from the apartment on 31st St. is this go-go bar called Mermaids and I guess Melissa and her roommate have talked about it for a long time and since her roommate was leaving they decided to finally go. So that is how my evening ended with me at a go-go bar six blocks from my house watching girls dance around in their underwear on the bar with my arch rival from kindergarten who I had seen once in 20 years. When you think about it that’s really a bizarre evening.
