Review of Live Show by Chris Cooper
On 15 Apr 2004 at 21:58, Chris Cooper wrote:
> If you wade through the first third of this (or skip over it), it
> becomes a review of Slaid's Portland show last Sunday night. This was
> published in the Wiscasset Newspaper, Wiscasset, Maine, on 15 April.
> It's this week's iteration of my column, Fixtures And Forces And
> Friends.
>
> If you can use it for anything, you have my permission to do as you like
> with it, although I'd appreciate attribution.
>
> Chris Cooper
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
>
>
> Fixtures And Forces And Friends
>
> Christopher Cooper
>
> 15 April, 2004
>
>
>
> 'Cause All I Ever Have: Redemption Songs
>
>
>
>
> I believe I may have achieved physiological perfection. I exist in a
> state of metabolic grace. This body in which I move through the days and
> nights of my middle years, and within which sits the soul that tries
> fortnightly to round up enough stray impulses and tender nuances to
> communicate to you my understanding of our shared struggle, may well be
> the body that all the desperate, sweating, stair-stepping,
> program-joining, carbohydrate-counting, bad cholesterol-compromised
> victims of the Internal Combustion Age wish they could have.
>
>
>
>
> I can take no credit for this. It just happened; it may not be
> replicatable. I am the result of a life-long series of errors, poor
> choices, hasty decisions, wrong turns, retrogressions, misperceptions
> and defaults that have led, not to an MBA, a BMW, and an IRA, common
> indicators of a successful life, but to a BMI of 18.7, at the very low
> edge of the normal range, and a lifetime of lethargy and bad food from
> the 25 (overweight) or 30 or more (obese) where two-thirds of Americans
> gasp and grunt.
>
>
>
>
> Now, mechanically, I am a wreck. You carry enough seventy pound
> bundles of shingles up enough ladders, move sufficient sawlogs to the
> mill using only a pulp hook and a pickup truck, rearrange the rocks and
> boulders of a forty acre glacial farm, and the cartilage in your back
> gets pounded into ragged wafers of abused gristle that serve only as a
> grinding bed where nerves that dare exit the spinal column en route to
> some necessary purpose of communication or directive impulse may be
> torqued and chafed like the tortured drawstring in a fat man's
> sweatpants. So I crumble, but I do not clog.
>
>
>
>
> And I have not accumulated wealth, so the abuse continues. I may
> outlive my neighbors whose calories have not been restricted nor their
> daily lot stretched over the decades like so many repetitions of a
> dig-the-tundra-eat-the-rat day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch, but it
> will hurt to do so.
>
>
>
>
> I met my friend Myles Jordan at the post office last week. Myles may be
> the world's finest cellist. At least until Yo Yo Ma rolls up at the P.O.
> and hauls his ax out of the boot to prove otherwise right there in the
> fresh, free air of some clean, green State-o-Maine day, I am privileged
> to think so. I gave him a copy of some Warren Zevon songs interpreted by
> a nameless amateur string quartet which he may find amusing or even
> laughable (I think "Werewolves Of London" and "Excitable Boy" survive
> the transition from counterculture to high culture well enough). Myles
> said the young people don't appreciate classical music today. I said,
> Hell, boy, they don't even appreciate Hank Williams!
>
>
>
>
> Which reminded me it had been some months since I'd heard any live
> music, although last year did allow me Springsteen (twice), John Prine
> and Neil Young, and I anticipate John Hiatt next month. Still, urgent
> desires should be satisfied lest their denial stress one's endocrine
> system. I found Slaid Cleaves at a little storefront gallery in Portland
> Sunday night, and I called up my semi-estranged wife and invited her to
> stay up past her bedtime on a work night and recapture some of the life
> force that ebbs too easily as we all slog through our similar
> repetitions of life and life only.
>
>
>
>
> Slaid is a Maine boy. He was a regular performer in the Portland bars
> and nightclubs a decade ago, before he moved to Austin Texas to immerse
> himself in a more intense music environment than Maine could offer. His
> parents live in Round Pond. We saw him two years ago when he opened for
> The Flatlanders in Rockport, in a plush venue built with corporate
> money; I needed a closer, grubbier (if harder on the audience's asses)
> experience in a small venue where beer could be bought.
>
>
>
>
> We stopped at Bullmoose Music to buy our tickets. Ten dollars.
> Bullmoose adds a reasonable and deserved one dollar service fee,
> unlike the fourteen dollars or more combined service fee, venue
> charge, processing allowance, printing charge, corporate gouge and
> pound of flesh entitlement exacted by the hated Ticketmaster most
> bigger bands ally with. The young man who sold me the tickets asked if
> I'd heard Slade's new album, Wishbones; I said I had, and I rated it a
> "Must Have". He said, "I'm so proud of him. He's from Maine, and he's so
> good, and he's worked hard. It's great to see him getting recognition."
> Myles and I stand corrected. Some of the kids are all right, it appears.
> Ignore the body hardware and pink hair-most of these young Clerks at
> Bullmoose are paying attention to something besides Rap and Heavy Metal.
>
>
>
>
> The venue was suitably murky. It was sold out, holding maybe a hundred
> and twenty persons. We arrived early and had our pick of seats. Mrs.
> Cooper objected to my choice, but I pointed out that the back row was a
> scant twelve feet from the front, and little decibel reduction could be
> expected by obstructing one's vision behind some guy with a hat or big
> ears. And Bob Dylan said, "You've got to get up near the teacher if you
> can, if you want to learn anything."
>
>
>
>
> For our double sawbuck we got two opening acts. The first was a five
> piece band of twenty-somethings called An Evening With. They sounded
> good, but the earnest lyrics were lost in a murky melange which is all
> too often characteristic of live music, even when you pay a lot more.
> Experience may sharpen his songwriting and some technical advice might
> make the message more intelligible. Mostly, these seemed like five
> decent kids whose families should be proud of them. They were followed
> by a member of another local outfit, The Coming Grass, whose delivery
> and stage presence were more polished, but who was still fighting to be
> understood over only his own guitar-poor mixing can undo the best
> effort.
>
>
>
>
> Finally, Slaid Cleaves, with a band he put together in Austin: a
> drummer, a guitarist, and a bass player who alternated between
> electric and upright bass. Now, my wife became visibly excited when she
> saw that battered wooden instrument. Turning to the couple sitting
> beside us she said, "Watch that bass player-he climbs on the thing and
> plays it." Usually I am the family member most likely to disturb or
> offend decent citizens, and it was a delight to see Mrs. Cooper ranting
> and foaming in exuberant excess to the discomfiture of strangers.
>
>
>
>
> The electric guitar player looked like my plumbing and heating man,
> Jimmy Peacock. I don't mean to suggest he's likely to deliver himself of
> the sort of raucous, avian cackle and outlandish opinions that emanate
> from Mr. Peacock, but he did look remarkably like him. The drummer
> looked a cross between a younger version of my friend, our long-time
> road commissioner, and all-around local hero Austin Trask, and Van
> Morrison. Again, I'm sure he had a more pleasant demeanor than either of
> those gentlemen.
>
>
>
>
> The show was everything you might hope for. I put my feet up on the
> speakers at stage front, and felt every note of the, at last, impeccably
> mixed sound that let the very finely crafted lyrics rise above the
> solid, clean sound of the band. We got most of the new album, parts of
> the last one. We heard a lyric from the Woody Guthrie archives that
> Slaid turned into a fully realized song. He sang about old friends and
> dead friends, and told us how Texas legend Ray Wylie Hubbard helped him
> craft his title song from parts of three failed previous songs. We
> learned about the Lincoln County refrigeration man, Willy, whose
> colorful opinions form the meat of "Horses And Divorces."
>
>
>
>
> As anticipated, as feverishly desired by my bride, Ivan the bassman did
> hop atop his instrument and bow the bugger with abandon and, as far as I
> could tell, no reduction in quality of sound, to delighted applause from
> the audience. Myles, take note. You can sit on the stage and deliver the
> finest, crystalline, perfect frequencies, or you can shake off your
> constricting footwear, and ride that ship of sitka spruce and stretched
> strings into a glorious, wild future. And serve more beer at your gigs.
>
>
>
>
> So Texas doesn't generate only spoiled, smug rich kids who ruin
> baseball franchises, banks, oil companies and countries. Well, maybe
> Houston does. But Slaid Cleaves brought a grand band of Austin buddies
> back to Maine in his '86 Dodge van the other night, and if I had been
> any closer to the performance, they'd have had to give me an instrument
> to play. After the show, I bought my usual tour t-shirt, and gave Mr.
> Cleaves a few lines of local color to add to his notebook; we've got
> guys in Alna at least as quote worthy as his friend Willy.
>
>
>
>
> Eat sparingly, work more with a shovel than a computer. Stay out of the
> stock market, away from houses of worship and political parties. When
> you have accumulated a hundred dollars, treat the old lady to dinner and
> drinks, and stay up late where the band knows how to rock, the
> songwriter is keeping Woody alive, and the man running the board knows
> how to set the voices above the storm. You, too, might be like me.
> Remember, Dr. Atkins denied himself the bread, and he's dead. Don't
> count carbs; count your blessings when you find your bony backside
> aching against a cheap plastic seat in a small venue late on Easter
> Sunday night. From such experience we make our personal resurrection.
>
>
>
>
>
Chris Cooper
ckc2@prexar.com
| |
