Dan Mooney

For once in a long while, things worked out. I was doing some research for an essay on Marshall Crenshaw’s debut album and wondered just what Mr. Crenshaw was up to nowadays. I knew he had put an album out a few years back, and that he continued to play shows, but hadn’t checked in on him in a while and would soon be glad I had.

Just so happens, Marshall Crenshaw had signed up to play three shows at the City Winery, a wine bar/restaurant/performance space in downtown New York. And I hadn’t just missed those shows, either – they were a few weeks away, and would be in celebration of the 30th anniversary of that very same self-titled debut album, where it would be played straight-through. That the album came out in 1982 and this was only 2011 didn’t matter at all to me, because it was already like magic that this coincidence had arisen and when stuff like that happens I don’t ask questions.

I had been to the City Winery once before, to see the magician Ricky Jay be interviewed for the New Yorker Festival. The crowd was fine, skewed older, though the beautiful venue was a cut above my usual cultural tastes. But I also write about hamburgers, so my tastes run wide, if occasionally shallow. I do like the idea of it, a kind of dinner theatre without the probably unfair connotations. The venue caters to a particular kind of sensibility, I think, and the thoughtful pop of Marshall Crenshaw fit in well with the sophistication of the surroundings.

I was also excited for the show because, as with these artists who have been around awhile, I asked my father to go. I arranged for seats in the back, raised up a little bit, for a better view and for another special reason. But those seats reminded me of another concert I took my dad to, a Gin Blossoms show back at, yes, the Downtown in Farmingdale (of the ‘02 Almost Queen and Tonic shows). The artists had pleasant, brisk music in common, to the point where Crenshaw wrote at least one song with the Gin Blossoms.

For about twenty minutes before the concert, a screen in front of the stage showed us performance clips and interviews with Marshall Crenshaw from the early 1980s. We saw him play Buddy Holly in the movie La Bamba (during which he vaguely resembles an older version of the Mighty Ducks‘ Les Averman) and we caught glimpses of his wry sense of humor and cool midwestern confidence, the same confidence that would propel an artist to make music somewhat independent of the dominant style of its time, as long as it was good music. And it was.

Crenshaw and his drummer, guitarist and bassist didn’t hop right into the album. They set the stage by playing four songs from earlier in Crenshaw’s career that were only released later, if at all. And after the album, as a sort of encore, the band did other favorites, cushioning the main event at the center of the evening.

It was a genuine thrill to hear the album live, with a fuller band sound. Funny how that happens when it’s live. But the drums seemed heavier, the bass richer, really making some of the tracks stand out very much more than they usually do. “Someday, Someway” was the biggest hit from the record, but “Cynical Girl” and “Mary Anne” were the songs I heard most often growing up. I wouldn’t know the other tracks as well, not having heard them as much, but eventually I became familiar with them and it was pleasantly surprising to hear those fleshed out. “Girls…” and “Rockin’ Around in NYC” were those that benefited most from the heavier sound of the live show. But as for the ones I knew best, “Cynical Girl” was a bucket-list type song to have heard and enjoyed. I believe that one is now played down a step to G from the A of the record version, owing to vocal changes I suppose, but that downshift contributed to the fullness with little compromise to the melody.

As an added bonus, I had signed us up to meet-and-greet Marshall Crenshaw after the show. I had no burning questions to ask, but I shook the hand that strummed those chords and he did sign my CD. I could only say that I’ve enjoyed those songs since I was a kid, too dumbfounded to think of anything else. My dad did engage him in conversation and that was a treat to watch. Mr. Crenshaw said he dug the father-and-son thing. Down to earth. Kind of surreal.

Then on the way home, I got a text from my friend and turned on the radio and heard that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

Interesting night.

Until the fall of my senior year of high school, I knew as much about Queen as just about everyone else in my high school: They did the song in the car in Wayne’s World, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions,” not least from The Mighty Ducks, and their lead singer passed away when we were kids.

A friend of mine dug further. His parents had the maroon Greatest Hits compilation as well as the navy blue Classic Queen collection. So he commandeered those and listened to them and even before getting really into Queen’s regular output, he knew there was a lot to these guys, a heck of a range, a hell of a vocal range, and enough talent to merit an even deeper look.

One thing led to another, as things do, and my friend and my girlfriend at the time and a few other people went to the Downtown, in Farmingdale (site of that Tonic show the very same summer) to see what we’d otherwise likely never see in our lives: a group that was Almost Queen.

Opening for Almost Queen that night nine years ago was Mammoth, a Van Halen tribute band. Opening for Almost Queen in July of 2011 at the Jones Beach Boardwalk Bandshell was Toxin – not, believe it or not, a Poison tribute band. A Long Island band with a hair metal sound that predates their own births, they tried a little too hard to get the audience out of their seats at first – these hard-working folks lugged those beach chairs all the way from their cars, so they’ll be damned if some kid’s gonna tell them to stand up. But the resistance faded somewhat, and they outperformed all expectations. I applauded the specificity of their niche and overlooked the Poison confusion and once I remembered that spectacle would be a big part of the evening, even I enjoyed them, because they were good.

Toxin

And then, out came Almost Queen. They looked passably like the originals, John the least, probably, then Roger, then Brian (even though he had a Brian May-style guitar of which I was and remain envious). Freddie looked like early-80s Freddie (that short description makes him sound like an action figure): slick hair, sunglasses, pushbroom mustache, white t-shirt under a (removable!) leather jacket. When it comes to the tribute bands who dress like their counterparts, Queen is a tough one: Theirs is an image easy to imitate but similarly easy to half-ass. Combined with the musicality, it’s a precarious thing to pull off, but these guys wouldn’t still be around and touring if it was terrible. With the high risk came the high reward, and a wonderfully entertaining evening.

The highlights of the evening were many. The hits were all there, and my favorites of those were “Killer Queen,” “Fat Bottomed Girls” (including the incredible drum fill), and pre-encore set closer “Somebody to Love,” which was fueled by a thrilled audience and more than a little beer, at least in our row of the bleachers. “Dragon Attack” is a bass-heavy song I was surprised to hear, and surprised to hear sound so good. It was a savvy, accomplished addition to a compilation of many much more famous songs.

I have to devote a separate paragraph to the evening’s most special surprise for me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when the opening guitar strums signaled in “It’s Late,” one of my most favorite songs ever by anyone ever, “definitive” in a way that defies enumeration, multiplied by the summery wistfulness of the window-fogging variety. For a guy who’s maybe too often and deeply touched by the nostalgia of it all, this was a singular shock. So much of memory is stored in some dusty corner of the brain. Not this time, embedded firmly and no longer secretly between the pit of my stomach and the center of my heart. The purity of the moment dissipated somewhat as I heard that they abridged the song nearly beyond recognition, excising the solo and the ensuing explosion, but almost apologetically they explained it was a request, probably quickly learned. No problem.

The evening would be special for the band and the rest of the audience as well. As an encore, they had decided to play Queen’s set from Live Aid, the performance often hailed as the best of all time. I think it was Faux John who had set the whole thing up, who had wanted to play that particular set, and it was a fantastic idea well articulated. That part of the performance began, as at Live Aid, with a police officer voicing a noise complaint from a nearby town. Then the band started “Bohemian Rhapsody,” moving on to the next right before the operatic middle section. As they played through and finished up with “We Are The Champions,” we had all been singing along the whole time, the concert experience being closer to an arms-on-shoulders pub singalong than any I’ve ever seen, probably, with me singing along to words I thought I’d long forgotten, and nearly every one of those.

Finally, as yet another extra treat, Almost Queen finished what they started. As explained onstage, something was missing: They then finished off “Bohemian Rhapsody,” through the riff and straight through to the blast of the gong that had yet to be touched all evening. A perfect end to a tremendous night at the beach.

SETLIST

1. Tie Your Mother Down
2. Stone Cold Crazy
3. Don’t Stop Me Now
4. You’re My Best Friend
5. I Want to Break Free
6. Dragon Attack
7. Save Me
8. It’s Late [abridged]
9. Tenement Funster
10. Fat Bottomed Girls
11. Killer Queen
12. Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
13. Need Your Loving Tonight
14. Bicycle Race
15. Another One Bites the Dust
16. Under Pressure
17. Somebody to Love

Live Aid
18. Bohemian Rhapsody [beginning]
19. Radio Ga Ga
[Dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy-o etc]
20. Hammer to Fall
21. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
22. We Will Rock You
23. We Are The Champions

“Encore”
24. Bohemian Rhapsody [middle & end]

I had an extra ticket to this Against Me! show and one night was hanging out with some friends and some friends of friends. One of them and I get to talking, about a bunch of things and about music, and I wonder if he’s going to this show, or if he wants to go. He was reluctant. He had been a fan of theirs before they got popular. Not really because of their success but because of the refinements in the production of their music, and the subjects of their songs, he had in fact actively decided against going, if by a small margin. So I assumed.

That brought a couple of things into focus for me, and reiterated others: There fully exist folks who prefer bands’ earlier work, to the point of giving up on the band. Against Me! was apparently one of these bands. I, for one, was now apparently a bandwagon jumper for having heard the band on the radio when I otherwise would never have ever heard of them. Finally, it seemed tacky of me that I was going, bankrolling their overproduced albums of the near future.

None of this was implied, necessarily, I was doing the inferring. Mostly I was curious that a band such as Against Me!, who has achieved moderate but not huge success, I guess, would be successful enough to earn themselves a backlash. Good for them, anyway. Maybe it’s not the size of the offense but the offense itself. Nevertheless, my knowledge of their discography coincides with that backlash, thorough for the recent material, sketchier the further back we go. The shame, in the end, shouldn’t be on me for having heard of them later in their career, after I was out of college, but on them, for getting more talented, writing more tuneful songs, singing in harmony, and maturing to the point where they’re not howling at the moon but focused on putting their thoughts and emotions into a slightly but significantly more aesthetically pleasing package. It’s the same old argument.

However the story goes, the concert itself should have very much pleased those longer-term fans, ironically enough. The setlist was pretty much evenly divided among each of their albums. Having no brand new material to push, their most recent release coming about a year previous, it seems to have been the perfect opportunity to play some older stuff, perhaps getting some of that lost credibility back, perhaps just having some fun and in fact introducing a new audience to those older songs.

That all being said: Their audience was an impressive, impressive bunch. Same as it was at the Dropkick Murphys show at which they opened – these punk audiences (no longer willing to parse that term, am I) know their lyrics, man. I don’t know them as well, because in general I don’t know lyrics as well. I either can’t understand them or don’t look them up, or more likely, I’m paying more attention to the music. And not music in italics like I’m a damn snob, but because I’m trying to learn the chords. Besides, Against Me!’s lead singer Tom Gabel often screams at a pitch I can’t reach, so not being able to sing along as perfectly as I like leads me not to sing. But judging by everyone else, by any measure it was an enjoyable show. One day I might be able to appreciate it like the rest of them, even if I was one of the last guys in the pool.

I missed most of the first opener, Lemuria, but the second opener was a band from New Jersey called Screaming Females. The singer/guitarist, the only female in the band, had a dark bob and a black dress and played the hell out of her guitar. She got everyone’s attention, actually played some solos, and clued me in that there’s still actual physical talent out there. They were the ideal opener for the show: In and out, but good enough and memorable enough to stick with you. Here’s a picture:

I’d lived in New York City for seven years, downtown for nearly two, and I’d never been on the PATH train to New Jersey. With its primary color scheme (plus green) and its simple cars it all reminded me of the subway up in Boston. One day I’ll take the PATH somewhere other than Newark, but regarding Newark, it wasn’t a terrible place for the PATH to end up. Like all cities Newark has its dodgier parts but the short walk from the train to the Prudential Center didn’t seem to run through any of those. The proximity and ease of transportation were early bonuses, and the venue itself was a good place to see a show.

We ponied up for floor space, and it was very cool to stand under the big scoreboard right at what would be center ice, watching Coheed and Cambria sing about outer space. Their bass player got into a bit of trouble soon after the show, which was impressive and which I liked more than I thought I might. Sometimes progressive-type music is so cerebral that it forgets to also awaken the body, but with their volume and aggression that would be no problem for these guys.

It was an easy walk up through the first deck of seats to get to the bar area, which had dark curtains pulled whenever music was going on. The first round of drinks was easy and quick, but the opening set continued on, and more people filed in. In the time between sets, we had considered hitting the beer kiosk on the outer concourse but the line seemed too long. The joke was on us, on me really: The inner bar became so full of concertgoers, especially female concertgoers, that the few staff members available were bogged down by mixed drink after mixed drink. With no apparent line the dicks in the corner got served first for no reason, and we waited, more and more impatiently, as showtime grew nearer. My buddy said fuck it and we went out to the beer kiosk. The wait was only a few minutes thanks to the lovely and efficient pourers outside. We tipped them well and complimented them and hurried back inside and down for the show.

I missed the first wave of Soundgarden. Longtime readers will know I paid no real attention to popular music between 1991 and 1994, not having MTV and playing too much roller hockey to know what I was missing. So my loyalties were shaped after Nirvana had disbanded, after Soundgarden had their biggest hits, as the second wave of loud popular music hit the shores. I knew of this band but actually didn’t like the new songs of theirs when they showed up with Jim Carrey on the season finale of Saturday Night Live in 1996. I wondered what all the shrieking was about. Some months later I asked for Down on the Upside for my birthday. Then, they broke up. But over the years I’ve pieced together a solid if slightly top-layer respect for the band.

With pop culture turning itself around, and 90s bands returning to the scene after nearly 20 years to release some new music and to make a lot of money, I finally had a chance to see them and had to, at least once. It’s sort of like how I never owned The Legend of Zelda, but beat the game on an emulator on my old laptop (this in 2005), almost making up for lost time, which one can try but can never seamlessly pull off.

We were far enough away not see to up close if they were long in the tooth, which in their 40s at least, they are fast becoming. They got onstage and took their spots and with little exception, they stayed in place for nearly the whole show. Chris Cornell, with long hair and a beard, resembled the Dave Grohl of today more than the Chris Cornell of years ago. Cornell and these guys didn’t have the overt showmanship (salesmanship?) of the Foo Fighters, for example, but that sort of fits in with their aesthetic, rawer, not as sweet. The unusual time signatures speak to the music being more about the band than about the audience, I’d say, but I’m not faulting them for it. They stood their ground in more ways than one.

They opened with the slow-burning “Searching With My Good Eye Closed,” and kept it up for 20+ songs. “Blow Up The Outside World” has been a favorite of mine and I was happy to hear it. “Outshined” might have been the best played and received song of the evening. No sign of “Pretty Noose” or “Let Me Drown,” but plenty of good stuff from the meaty part of the bell curve of their career. I didn’t and don’t know them well enough to speak to what songs were included, and which were left out, but for this show more than for others I’ve seen of late, this was about as much for having seen them as for seeing them. Fair enough, I hope.

SETLIST

It’s a little thing, but I couldn’t have been happier that my first trip to the new Yankee Stadium would not be to watch the Yankees, who have summoned so much of my disgust over the years, but to watch Paul McCartney, who has brought forth so much joy.

The beautiful weather helped, as it was not too hot for a summer night, and the smooth train ride started the evening off right. I was excited to see the show for many reasons: it was McCartney, in New York, at a second show that had been added, at a not entirely unreasonable price, and yes, in a new stadium I hadn’t been to that probably will never be for me as Yankee-free as it was that night. I had seen McCartney perform once before, in Boston, when I was in college, but in this case we’d both be ten years older, the songs a little more historic now, the nostalgia tugging a little more firmly. I went with my dad all those years ago as I was about to that night in July, and that’s always been a significant part of this journey. Capping it, though, was that we were seeing a Beatle, live, after several years now of seeing more or less effective Beatles tribute bands. Those bands have pulled off tricks even the Beatles never did live, for one reason or another, but in comparison I’d argue that we were about to see the most authentic Beatles tribute band possible.

Wings, too: The middle of the set featured a bunch of songs from That Other Band he was in, the one just before my time, the one that was also hugely popular and lasted for about a decade. A truly enjoyable aftereffect of the show was rediscovering that portion of post-Beatle McCartney I knew, and even more so, checking out those albums that would fill in the gaps. I’m a petty man for pointing out it’s not quite as lucrative a cache as the Beatles’ discography, as if that wouldn’t be obvious, but there’s enough there to make you keep digging, and that’s a small but meaningful pleasure.

For a band led by a guy who’s nearly 70, even if he is a healthful vegetarian, even I was surprised that they played for almost three hours, about 35 songs worth (depending how you count). There was a pretty good mix within those songs, mostly stuff from 30 or more years ago, and this included separate tributes for George (a ukulele “Something” leading into a full-band ending) and John (“Here Today”). It’s tough to break new ground as a musician when most everyone’s favorite work of yours was done when you were in your 20s: If he’s tired of playing these songs, it doesn’t quite seem it, because it also looked like he was having a great old time playing favorites to a welcoming audience in the tens of thousands. Once in a while, though, McCartney would finishing playing a world-famous song, then stand up with a ho-hum expression like he’s done it all before. I’m sure that was more modesty than boredom because I’d imagine that kind of adulation is always a rush.

The two most memorable songs, without checking out my list, were “Let Me Roll It” and “I’ve Got a Feeling.” The first was, as it has been for years, a more fleshed-out arrangement than the spare, slow, emptier-sounding record version. Still a pretty melody around the chorus, but when played live, with the organ up top, that was the song that solidified the concert as a religious experience in the one-with-everyone sense (and also in the organy-churchy sense, without all the dogma). “I’ve Got a Feeling” is one of my top five Beatles songs and even though I got a text message right as it began, it was a great thrill to hear the song. I can’t neglect to mention his playing of “The Night Before” which was rare and new and a treat, while the playing and production of “Back in the U.S.S.R.” was most memorable.

A tiny frustration: I checked out the setlist for the previous night, and in place of the “I’m Looking Through You” that we heard, the band did “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” one of my top three Beatles songs. I’d have fallen out of my chair if I’d heard that, so maybe it’s for the best. But on our night, there was a special guest for the encore: Billy Joel. He played piano on the second song of the encore, “I Saw Her Standing There,” and quickly left: I might have expected him to stay for a couple of songs, but no matter. The point was made, I’d seen a musician I hadn’t seen before, and the evening chugged along to its end.

In 12 months full of good concerts, including most of my favorite bands ever and also of artists I’d never think I’d see, this was a special one. Not soon forgotten.

SETLIST
Magical Mystery Tour
Jet
All My Loving
Junior’s Farm
Drive My Car
Sing the Changes
The Night Before
Let Me Roll It (into Foxey Lady jam)
Paperback Writer
The Long and Winding Road
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Let ‘Em In
Maybe I’m Amazed
I’m Looking Through You
I Will
Blackbird
Here Today
Dance Tonight
Mrs. Vandebilt
Eleanor Rigby
Something
Band on the Run
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Back in the U.S.S.R.
I’ve Got a Feeling
A Day in the Life/Give Peace a Chance
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude

ENCORE
Lady Madonna
I Saw Her Standing There
Get Back

2nd ENCORE
Yesterday
Helter Skelter
Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End