How the Psychedelic Amanita Muscaria Mushroom May Have Inspired the Santa Legend of Lapland – The Marginalian
— Read on www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/02/mushroom-santa/
How the Psychedelic Amanita Muscaria Mushroom May Have Inspired the Santa Legend of Lapland – The Marginalian
Posted: August 11, 2023 in Observations of Natureperhaps
Death Cab for Cutie Portland Maine
Posted: September 15, 2015 in Music ... reviews and ramblingsTags: Death Cab for Cutie
How do I describe the mixed emotions of waiting for a performance of a previously cancelled concert, especially when it’s by a band that I’ve never heard live? The “hope” that drives the process of delayed gratification is a dicier game when the gratification is an unknown. One not guaranteed by past performance. Anticipating a favorite chocolate, for example, is different than anticipating a “well-reviewed” chocolate. And therein lay the head game that wandered through the days leading to Death Cab for Cutie’s rescheduled Portland concert. Am I waiting to be disappointed? This reservation filtered my expectations, my shrugged “yeah, whatever” wait and see attitude as Luann, Cordana and I aimed the GPS to State Theater, Portland to see Death Cab for Cutie, time-shifted a couple months by illness and scheduling.
It is Dylanesque (and yet not) for a storyteller to slip the bonds of factual accuracy by introducing a story as a mere caper in the fields of “perhaps”, or “it is said” or “I have heard”. I felt I was under a good storyteller’s spell when Ben Gibbard kicked open the edges of the stage with an exasperated “I don’t know where to begin”, leading into No Room in Frame. Reality had already been served notice. A story was being told, the first lines a poured frustration. What followed?
An unanticipated blowout of a concert. To me, Gibbard’s aphoristic poetry enters an intensely personal, navel-gazingly interior, the voice of a quiet, shy man. The studio recordings tended to bear this out. The anger and frustration within lyric content smoothed by good production and tuneful editing. And the “mini-desk” concert on NPR was quietly acoustic, mellowing any severity into three instruments, bass, piano and voice. Even the “loud” songs had a musical beauty to them.
Imagine my glee…..Death Cab enters the stage fresh off a month-long hiatus….the rescheduled Portland concert now serving as the opener for a fall tour. Now it is more like Martin Luther at the gates, strident and angry. The stage seemed a cage to be kicked at, wandered through like a pacing lion. Gibbard went to the mic as necessary, but never became possessed by it. Instead, it was just one square yard of a much larger painting, and Gibbard was determined to use the whole canvas, move move move all the time. The first songs rolled out as one long song…. brilliantly blended, folding precisely into each other in such crisp specific form that one heard the discipline of the band. It couldn’t have been more accurately presented if they had used score sheets and music stands. Bang, splash, riff, chord change, drum fold and turn….new song… bang! Like Elvis Costello’s channeling of three minute 45’s from the 60’s into 80’s punk. A race…. how many songs can we play per minute? And, like Elvis Costello years ago at the State, the amps were cranked to 11. It was LOUD. They had figured how to respond to the State’s infamous echo problem. Push the sound out so hard that the echo never comes back….At times there were four guitars and a drum kit. Occasionally three guitars, a keyboard and drum kit…. LOUD…I finally got some sense of the physical shock that Dylan fans must have felt at Newport or the infamous British tour that followed. In this case, I was thrilled by the shift. No booing from this aisle seat at all.
The concert was billed as the Kintsugi tour, promoting the new album, and the set was heavy with Kintsugi works but also notably the critically successful earlier work, Plans. What struck me throughout the course of the concert was the breadth and tightness of Gibbard’s writing. His sense of the aphoristic phrase can atomize a paragraph into a couple carved lines and the whole meaning will remain. Telescoping the total collapse of a relationship with the simple phrase “no room in frame…for two” is just the easiest example. There are so many others. Also, I can’t say enough about the band. So tightly wound yet somehow loose and professional at the same time. There are only three musicians acknowledged as Death Cab for Cutie, Nick Harmer, Ben Gibbard, and Jason McGerr. However the group is touring with a couple guitar/keyboard aces, Zac Rae and Dave Depper, at this point still just hired hands. The band played as if they had known each other for years and seemed very comfortable and adept at the total catalog. Happily, in the course of the two-plus hours, Death Cab generously played plenty of the essential library covering decades of their work. They missed some songs I would have enjoyed live, “Summer Skin”, “Your Heart Is an Empty Room”, and disappointingly, nothing from Gibbard’s side projects such as Postal Service or the Kerouac Sessions. But they cheekily added a few songs, obscure, wonderful and difficult to find, from the depths of their back catalog, even Photo Booth from the EP Forbidden Love.
It should be noted that, like Jeff Tweedy at the same venue, acoustic works were a dicey call. Whenever Death Cab dropped into the quieter realm, the audience noise became very problematic. Certain songs were responded to reverently, “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark”….”What Sarah Said…” as best examples, sometimes but not always turning into evocative, touching sing-alongs with the audience. And others just became jumbled ambient noise. But on the whole, the audience was on good behavior, listening at least somewhat attentively, definitely MUCH better than the Tweedy concert.
Luann and I had excellent seats, balcony, fourth row, close to center. The view was unobstructed, the sound was powerful yet not overwhelming, a lot less echo and audience chatter than first floor. On the downside, there were way too many people “experiencing” the concert by recording it on whatever platform available….other than the DIY method of eye and ear. So, it was weird to watch the concert and then also see it on the recorder of the person one row closer, all jumpy, out of focus and invasive of the real. How does one not watch what is in front of them?
After following the group’s set lists since the fall tour started, I have noticed that the concerts begin and they end quite purposefully …..and, interestingly…..they end twice. The concerts always begin with the storyteller phrase “I don’t know where to begin”.and then winding through a tapestry of emotions, events, stories and adventures for the next two hours. In keeping with that Dylanesque slyness, the “official” pre-encore portion of the concert ends with Ben Gibbard trying to discover Kerouac’s spirit at Bixby Bridge and acknowledging
And then it started getting dark
I trudged back to where the car was parked
No closer to any kind of truth
As I must assume was the case with you
The concert then goes on with several songs shifting here and there, but always ending with “Transatlanticism”, a tale of people just slowly drifting apart, until Gibbard closes the concert, repeating the closing phrase….”I need you closer, closer….I need you closer”.
On the whole it was an excellent concert, especially if one assumes that they will not be following them on tour or likely ever see them again. It was a well arced concert that prismatically rainbowed much of what made Death Cab for Cutie a specific music that both held and shifted decades of my life.
Why was I surprised? After all, the name IS “Hollywood Slots”. Yet, somehow I was dismayed as I walked through the hallways of the Casinos and Suites at the Bangor facility. All my favorites of TCM, lining the walls and the halls. Stanwyck, with those killer legs from “Ball of Fire”, Rita Hayworth, tall in a black sequined gown, cigarette holder held just so, lips parted just right. Myrna Loy, looking right at me (and just me). What’s a sweetheart like you, doing in a dump like this? Okay, I’ll admit to some righteous judgment here. But really, I had hoped better of them. I didn’t want to see them warming the walls with a refracted life and energy, as bulbous blue-haired ladies waddled through the halls, Wal-Mart shoppers without their carts. Barrel-stomached cotton-haired gentlemen, polo-shirt, tee shirt, socks and sandals, trying to be on vacation with black buried ears.
It was but a low hum of dis-ease. Nothing more. I was on my way to see Bob Dylan in concert at the Bangor Waterfront and my evening digs were at the Slots. Just a place to lay my head. The concert was three hours from home. I had hitched a ride for the lower 2/3 of the trip with && and her son, %%%%. They were meeting Will’s girlfriend &&&& (%%%^^^^ other son)…and going to the concert as well. My nephew had sprung for the bed space, so really….it was all good. On the trip to the concert, )) and I and YYY listened to soundtrack work that he had been doing at Abbey Road Studios, discussing the hazards and joys of multiple takes, editing maintaining and publishing a music library for upwards of 80 musicians. Fun stuff like that (but it really DID sound like fun). And it was weird/cool to hear a soundtrack to a movie while everything was technically still “under construction”.
The amorphous group representing the BobKatz for this concert had an open ebb and flow with members connecting here and there, now and then, for this and that. Although I think I counted something like 10 or so souls whirling through this wee cosmos, the group never met with any kind of total convergence. We were all technically at the Seadog Brewery for the pre-concert meal, for example. Two groups of three joined for a moment, then unfolded, only to be linked by , as Group One told where Group Two could be found. That was the tonal phone-text mix of the evening and it worked well. The Seadog Brewery fare was fine as far as mass-produced restaurant food can be. The fish and chips were tasty, the cole slaw was dry as a green desert, the beers were refreshing, the shot of tequila warm and smooth. Concert ? What concert? Oh, right……march on!
And off we strode to Bangor Waterfront Stadium. We had planned for everything to be within walking (or at least a form of walking) distance. Compared to our efforts at, say, Dylan at the Avalon in 2004, we were VERY successful.
Lines had formed for the concert and so we duly took our spaces and played cattle for awhile. A slight hint of dis-ease rang again when I walked through the security area and looked at the signs, trying to find our seating area. “Inner Circle” said one, another scrawled “Outer Circle”. I turn to Tom….”are we inner circle or outer circle”. A uniform off to my right overhears and states dryly “you’re inner circle”. How did he know that and what did it mean that he did?
It became more evident as we shuffled through the crowd to our seats. When sitting in a public place one eventually has nothing better to do than people-watch. My eyes wander the crowd….lots of men with salty beards, women with etches of age where the smoothness of youth once dwelt. Oh…..the dread demographic of which I feel so decidedly dissonant!! It doesn’t help that some of these folks are dressed like insurance salesmen storming Desolation Row. I squint a little and the crowd flows, a cast of characters, of heroes and villains and malcontents and fatcats. There….over there a perfect image of a priest, to my right an etched, once tender woman, red cotton blouse and all….tucks her hands in her backpockets…smiles wonderfully and laughs a Bette Davis laugh…..middle-aged men already fitted with the heart-attack machine try to make their way through the crowd. The postcards of the hanging are now on sale as “Limited Edition Posters”….my ticket has been scanned. Everyone is making love or else expecting rain. “All the people that you mention, yes I know them, they’re quite lame.” I remember Groucho Marx….”I would never join a club that would have me as a member”….too late, my friend….
And what exactly do they mean by the term “Inner Circle”…inner circle of what?
A hint of the idea comes with the seating arrangements. The folding chairs are jammed together, metal to metal, no space between. This works if you have thousands of anorexics going to a Karen Carpenter concert. Line up a row of ice cream cones so the cones touch each other. Now pound two scoops of ice cream into each cone. Does the ice cream look comfortable? I didn’t think so.
A shake of the head and the visions stop. Soon the lights dim and the Godfather of ZZ Topp, walking cane in hand eases to the keyboard… silver-maned “Leonine” Russell, will do his voodoo for the night. I’ll not bother with a full review of Leon’s concert. It’s been quite adequately covered on Expecting Rain by others more attentive than I. But I have to observe that Leon Russell’s stage presence, which consisted exclusively of eye movements, was truly the most minimalist performance I’ve ever seen. And it still “worked”, in that the very lack of movement created an attentiveness from the audience. The backing band was tight and effective, reminding me very much of the catch as catch can feel of Delaney Bonnie and Friends, which fits the era that Leon Russell was most prolific. I was unsure at times whether there was much “behind” the workmanlike efficiency and skill. Like welders at a project. Are they working from a plan for an airplane wing and need to be precise? Or are they welding a creative structure, freewheeling it a little, inspiration allowed? The ringing best effort came from a solo of “Walking Blues” by guitarist Chris Simmons. His website lists Peter Green as one of his inspirations, but he doesn’t do a bad Robert Johnson by way of Clapton, either. Russell’s set went very well. Great hits were covered ably. The set was long enough to at least hint at the depth of his work, yet short enough to keep the crowd from stirring for Bob. We sit for break.
The road crew works briskly and the lights dim sooner than expected. Everyone in our group was looking forward to what seemed like a consistent “song number 2” in the Dylan setlists. It had been years since Dylan had sung “To Ramona” but it was appearing with frequency. In fact the last 5 nights saw it coming in right after “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat”. Well, we soon got the hint that things had changed. Dylan’s steps to the familiar spot at the organ and the first song came out as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”. Dylan’s in great voice and his humor and timing already on display as he twists the phrases into a camaraderie of victimization, with everyone harmonizing to the refrain….”everybody must get stoned”….. Hmmmmm…..is this an “uh-oh” to song number two? Yup.
Dylan, loose in Captain Kangaroo striped pants, a tan hat UFO –hovered on his head, like Devo gone MORE alien, stays at his post. Charlie Sexton and crew begin the plinkety plunk opening to “Don’t Think Twice It’s Allright”…. A tender song that fits nicely where the hoped-for Ramona ….. did not show.
The third song and “Things Have Changed”….although that really should be typed “THINGS HAVE CHANGED”. Dylan oddly steps back from the organ and makes his way to a microphone placed at stage-front/center and begins to Tell The Tale of “Things Have Changed”…..complete with broad gestures and opened facial expressions that affirmed lyrics…..this is now a Story rather than rote-rhyme recitation mumbled from the rear of a cheesy organ wheeze. Suddenly I’m back in Augusta and it’s 1975. Dylan in white-face gesticulating with tight fists and open hands, twisting his face around the words, vivid and biting. He sweeps his hand back to the band in accentuation and mutters “I used to care but things have changed” and I’m back in Bangor, 2011. A funneling point and I’m in a time where there is no time. The Moment we so desperately try to capture on film and video and “certified sound recording” has become some pointillist series of dreams. Dylan continues the exploration of Moment and Memory, of Time as a force to be reckoned with, regaling the audience with “Tangled Up In Blue”, two lives together that sure were gonna be rough…..Dylan begins the excursion into harmonica solos that makes the night a remarkable display of his many talents. The Ginsberg reference to Dylan as “column of air” comes to mind for the first time of many this evening when Bob crunches his body up and down in a shamanist harp solo. Is he playing the harmonica or transmitting a message? A woman in front of us starts to wave her hand back and forth as if in evangelical rapture. The night becomes “something different” After the theatre of “Tangled…”, Dylan turns back to his post and into one of his best love songs, leaning into “Beyond Here Lies Nothing”, describing the love that lives where it lives and has no need of an Elsewhere, in fact resents the incursion of everything Outside.
“Mississippi” flows next and it’s wide and wonderful, but Dylan can’t help but refer to Time yet again….’he stayed in Mississippi a day too long…..Over the first few songs, the audience created its own interplay, demographics rubbing against each other. As the Waterfront Stadium is nothing much beyond a field, there’s no rise to the “floor”. A viewer in Row 28 has 27 viewers in the same line of sight. The great thing about old people, even old people who used to be rebels, is that they obey orders and are on the whole well-mannered. So when people in the back started yelling “down in front”, we actually SAT DOWN! Unlike, for example, my youthful actions when in the front row to see the Doobie Brothers, years ago. A flask of tequila under each arm, standing on my chair, waving. Calls of “SIT DOWN!” met by “NOOOO….you STAND UP!” Ah, impetuous youth. A phase some of us don’t exactly live, as much as survive. But I geezerly digress.
At first I had REAL problems with Dylan’s next song, “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”. Presented in a clockwork beat by the band, Dylan “at his post” at the organ, cold in highly-mannered clipped speech elipsed of emotion. Dry…..dry as a Police Report. It is as if Hattie Carroll is in some macabre wind-up music box ballet, her life swept by matters not of her control. Maddeningly rigid in tone and delivery, Dylan then follows this with a Brechtian take on “Ballad of Hollis Brown”. Back at the microphone, he delivers an operatic Life of a Farmer Down on His Luck. An I-Witness instead of a storyteller, Bob theatrically splays his arms to your poor little children “a-tugging at your sleeve”, turning to “the rats have got your flour, bad blood it got your mare”. When he tells you of the “cold coyote calls”, his voice barks and you can feel them in the night, just out of sight of the cabin, waiting.
The two works were tied somehow, bound by something common and not just because they’re from the same album. The characters live forever and their plight never changes. Relevant now as they were when written over 40 years ago. Lives locked into Cartesian time, a ‘clockwork” of modern Man, the circumstances of their situation constantly undermine their existential humanity. We are Captains of Our Destiny? What a joke, Dylan says. The only control left to Hollis Brown was his decision to end it. And the only time Dylan turned from the audience was when he refrained “somewhere in the distance there are seven new people born”. It never stops. Things DON’T Change.
Except in Matters of Love and by a “Simple Twist of Fate”…..which is Dylan’s next pick, a tale of a man obsessed by wanting the woman he once knew for a time. That which brings you together can also tear you apart. It happens. Get over it. But he never does. He waits at the dock, hoping that lightning strikes twice. Gambling clubs build casinos on this premise.
“Highway 61” follows and Dylan is time-juggling with String Theory phrasing and timing, releasing the band to wanton rambles of guitar, reeling them back in with extended bellows of “out on Highway Sixteeeeee…..ONE!…..the delivery turns staccato, punchy like a fighter hitting an opponent in one spot over and again. I never know what to make of this but it’s happened several times in his live sets.
Dylan weaves into story-teller again, warming to the microphone to tell us all of Blind Willie McTell. Clear phrasing from Bob, along with extended harp solos and the gracious guitar of Sexton and resonant Garnier bass-lines mark this as a stellar version.
“Thunder On The Mountain” has become a staple of the sets and deserves it. Good song, lively, gets the audience ready for the idea of an end to all this joy and hoopla. Dylan strikes with one more jewel of theatric delivery at the microphone, an impish yet biting “Ballad of a Thin Man”. He’s having a lot of fun and ….. is he making fun of us? Do any of us know what is happening here? Then off…..to await the encore….
The concert starts to wrap up with “Like a Rolling Stone” , again such a staple of the sets that you have to play it and everyone wants it so here it is….do you know what any of this is worth? Yes….Dylan then ends the concert with “All Along the Watchtower”…..although he hauls out the standard version…..and leaves the audience and the night with a growling “and the wind begins to howl”……..
The loose affiliations continue into the post-concert. Tom and Airen have returned to the Suites to slow down for the evening. ******’s daughter and her husband repair to their motel space after meeting a few of us briefly outside the gates. &&&&&&&&&&& and myself return to a crowded pub at the Fireside Inn and proceed to de-construct the concert. Setlists match precisely so we quickly move to observations, personal favorites, and I scrawl while I still recall, wandering through a final Chardonnay.
The next morning a series of buffet breakfasts for myself as the Katz seem to rise at odd hours. A breakfast with Tom and Airen, another breakfast with**************. A threat of a third breakfast with)))))))))))….although I graciously demur (okay, a bite of Patty Cake, but that’s IT!). I’m wondering if it’s too late for me to learn the principles of “binge and purge”, but it just seems so Roman. The Katz meander to cars and work and moments of thought here and there. We motor back to Farmington in a car that refuses to play Dylan. “you can’t repeat the past”
scrawls upon a wandering notepad……..
When Dylan starts playing All Along the Watchtower, bringing in the Joker and the Thief, my thoughts turn to Lewis Hyde’s exploration of the Trickster Myth in various cultures. A shaman, or perhaps a gifted animal, maybe a demi-god who lives on the border of opposites (at least initially, the boundary between the Gods and Man, or Heaven and Earth, although the concept extends and expands over Time)…. Part thief, part joker, standing in the doorway that hinges the two worlds, “responsible” in a very chaotic way for bleeding elements of the opposites into each other. By trickery or direct stealth, he moves powers and gifts back and forth, keeping the worlds from polarizing to the point where they have no borders. If the two worlds split and no longer border each other, what comes in between them to fill the chaotic gap now created? Finding out seems to be not only dangerous but world-ending. The wind begins to howl…..
The time-funneled Moments of the concert, the ruminations of Memory and Time that many songs explored were juxtaposed throughout the concert with the actions of Security. Dylan can seem inordinately concerned with photos and videos and bootleg recordings. Some of that most likely is copyright obsession and such. Is there more? In my recent reading of works by writers such as Hyde, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, or in those conflated memories like the Dylan concert(s), when Time seems ridiculously fluid, Dali’s Persistence of Memory keeps suggesting itself. Perhaps Memory is a creative act as much as anything, as valid as “factual records” What we remember and why. How we color it, what we use it for. Recent inventions solidify events, concretize them into chunks we can bring up whole, like, well, the metaphor is Biblical. Do we create memories just to regurgitate Time or are they “good for something” , a tool of our spirit, a creativity that moves us forward? Do we isolate them like unconnected little blocks or do we smoosh them like multi-colored paint?
In my favorite movie, Wings of Desire, the purposefully-fallen angel Damiel walks in his new humanity, repeating the word “Now” and “Now” and “Now”. Gloriously realizing the concept of Time and Moment and the repetitive joy of each second of experience. Why repeat? Why am I writing of an experience instead of having a NEW one?
A friend of mine who has spoken with me of these things advises that one cannot stand in the doorway forever, experiencing the rush of bordered worlds. Every once in awhile, one must sit. Can all experiences be brought to a sensible, relational order in the mind? Probably not. But experience without contemplation is nothing more than a lab mouse strapped to an electric wire. Sensation # 1 and Sensation # 88 have no relationship to each other…..unless the mouse discovers that Sensation # 1 is the further left key on the piano and Sensation # 88 is the key way to the right. That’s when the mouse discovers that he really never liked piano music.
Okay….I’m extending the metaphors a little too much….end of riff!
Richard Thompson Live at Westbrook Performing Arts Center August 31, 2011
Posted: September 3, 2011 in Music ... reviews and ramblingsReview
Richard Thompson
Robin Lane
Westbrook Performing Arts Center
8/31/11
Since moving to Rangeley and working in Farmington every day, I’ve come to appreciate mid-week concerts. As most concerts are in the metro areas of Bangor, Portland, Waterville and such I’m usually “almost half-way there” when I leave work in Farmington. Were I in Rangeley, with an hour to drive just to get to Farmington, convincing myself to drive a couple hours more to get to the concert becomes difficult. But when my nephew Tom called to let me know that Richard Thompson was playing in Westbrook on a Wednesday night, it was pretty much a no-brainer. Pop out of work early, head to nephew’s in Saco for a meal, drive to the concert and then crash in Saco for the overnight.
Tom and I had discussed the particulars the night before the concert, and I happened to ask whether there was an opening act, since the concert was set to begin at 7. Tom checked the ticket details and replied that “someone named Robin Lane” was scheduled to open. Could it be THE Robin Lane of “Robin Lane and the Chartbusters”? A Boston-based band from the late 70’s- early 80’s, the group was defined by Robin’s strutting blues voice and legendary live shows. Robin hailed from the Topanga Canyon days of Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young and others, in fact had sung back-up on a couple of Neil’s early LP’s, as well as living with him for awhile in a cabin up in the Topanga woods. Robin later moved east and created The Chartbusters from parts of the busted-up Modern Lovers, the band behind Jonathan Richman and a few strays from other Boston bands….. Hmmmmm…… in preparation for the idea that it just might be, I went to my LP collection and pulled out the EP “5 Live -Robin Lane and the Chartbusters”…..and just for the fun of it, I pulled out an old Richard Thompson LP, “Hand of Kindness”. Ya never know.
Hit Tom’s a little after 4:30, had a bracing “comfort food” meal of mashed potatoes, salad and barbecue pork…yum yum…. Then, LP’s tucked under my arm, we were off to the newly-constructed WPAC. This is a spanking new venue tucked into the Westbrook Middle School campus. Think Room C-131 of the UMF campus. Not a whole lot of seats (maybe 1,000- 2,000?) . Now think of C-131 as an actual concert venue (nice seats and sound system, carpeted floors, acoustically resonant walls) and not a lab/lecture hall…..good sightlines throughout, and built for the function of live performance, this venue could become a unique addition to music performance in Maine.
When we drove into the Middle School parking lot, we realized we weren’t the only people who knew this was a GA concert. The first section was already filled, and actually that turned out as a plus. We were within the first two rows of the second section, allowing us to have a sightline above the shoulders and heads of the folks in the first section. The only better spots would have been in the first half-dozen rows of Section 1. Maybe next time…..
It was minutes before the concert was scheduled to begin and I had to observe…. “where IS everybody”. I had remarked to Tom earlier that I had been intrigued by the LACK of promotion about the concert. I don’t recall seeing any public notice of it in any form, anywhere. Tom had caught notice of it by going to the Yarmouth Clam Festival and noticing a paper poster stapled to a telephone pole. For whatever reason, this meant that the concert hall was “maybe 2/3” sold, although I would say closer to “1/2” . Very Strange Indeed.
A tad after 7 and Robin Lane comes out for her brief opening set. In earlier remarks by the Heptunes promoter, it is noted that this is the only concert of Richard Thompson’s tour in which an opening act is included. And yes, it IS Robin Lane of Chartbuster’s fame, singer on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Round and Round and other Neil songs, “present at the creation of The Police” and other notable moments in musical history (or whatever)…she seats herself at the lone seat, faces the lone mic, and guitar in hand…presents. No longer the singer in a blues/rock bar band, Robin still has a strong voice with full range and tone. I have to figure that, being a Topanga Canyon habitue’ back in “the day”, her self-confessional lyrics of her new works are not that far from what was happening back then. Introspection was THE DEAL, “emo” before it became a term. In any case, she’s still writes in that “open-diary” mode, about relationships and feelings, weaknesses and personal dilemma. Her demeanor at the chair indicates that she may prefer more intimate settings than a concert hall…. her songs reflect a pretty raw emotional core…in any case, her set consists of seven songs
You’re Not My Kind
Long Dark Tunnel (people get ready)
Over You
When Things Go Wrong
Flying On Broken Wings
Troubled Man
Longest Night
The highlights are (for me)
“When Things Go Wrong”…which I have as a raucous bar song on the Live EP but here is delivered solo in a much more evocative tone. A woman frustrated by the fact that it appears to her that she loves her man better than he loves himself. It’s a great song in either format but as a solo, the love within the frustration seems to be underlined with a clarity missing in the band version (which just seems angry about it). Talking with Robin later, she expressed how hard it was for her to transfer it from that rock-hard anger to something sadder.
“Flying On Broken Wings”….the imagery and language can seem a bit strained at times…but as Robin explained, the lyrics were drawn from workshops she does with women prisoners, helping them respond to the issues in their lives through writing and poetry. Between her website (which Tom forwarded to me) and her presentation at the concert, one discovers that she is spending much of her energy on a non-profit she has set up to help people with PTSD and other issues. So she conducts writing and recording workshops with youth and inmates and other marginal populations. She obviously has deep emotions about this and, as with any deeply felt drive, sometimes it can feel a bit strong/preachy to the listener who may not “get it” as far as what she’s talking about. But I know her population well and to me, as juvenile and inarticulate as it may sometimes sound, the words ring true to where the heart is.
Other songs like “Long Dark Tunnel/People Get Ready” and “Longest Night” were very well done and delivered in such a clear, strong voice that one wonders how it was maintained all these years. She’s still “got it”. And she’s still got a few issues regarding relationships…..many songs were a tad bitter, shall we say (“Over You”, and “Troubled Man”, specifically)…. But in that regard she was a perfect bookend to Richard Thompson. Between the two, I don’t believe there were three songs about functional relationships the whole night. Not a happy time for people who think LOVE is the answer to everything.
Robin’s set was brief but powerful and then on to break. During the break I went to the lobby with my EP and (yes!) caught Robin as she came out to sign CD’s. We briefly talked about her charity work, she signed the EP (“My God, I’m so happy you came!”) and then off to wait for Richard….
An observational aside…yes we are here mixed with the weird demographic dissonance I experienced at the Dylan concert. Who ARE these people and why are they here? They’re so freakin’ OLD!!!!!!!
Ahem…….Promptly at 8 (I mean PROMPTLY)…and Richard enters the auditorium. At center stage is one stool, one microphone, and one guitar. This is the tone for the rest of the evening. The stool is not for Richard, it is for a glass of water (?) and a sheaf of papers that is the setlist for the evening.
She Twists The Knife Again
The Ghost of You Walks
Turning Of The Tide
Northern Girls
When Good Things Happen to Bad People
Johnny Far Away
Working for the Pharoah
52 Black Vincent
Who Knows Where The Time Goes
Bright Lights
Bees Wing
Crawl Back Under My Stone
Wall of Death
Stumble On
I Misunderstood
Down Where the Drunkards Roam
Enc:
I Feel So Good
You and I
2nd Enc
Bathsheba
Two Left Feet
Final Enc
Dimming of the Day
To eager applause, Thompson steps to the mic and starts the concert off with a striking “She Twists The Knife Again”…..this happens to be the song that Tom frequently quotes as one of his favorites and there it is, up front and out there as number one….bang….one check on the “perfect setlist”.
This bodes well for the evening.
And really, it is followed through by the rest of the 90 + minute unbroken set. The next three songs continue the wronged and haunted lover theme, Ghost of You Walks, Turning of the Tide (and the bitterness therein)…and the brutal “Northern Girls” with the returning phrase “northern winds will cut you/ northern girls will gut you/ like a fish upon the slab”….ouch!
I’ll not do a song-by-song analysis for no other reason than that in many ways it comes to the “you had to be there” moment. Some things go beyond my capacity to express. Even trying to write about “the high points” leads me to want to write at length about each song. I shall not. So…..the stunners…..
It was great to hear “We’re All Working for the Pharoah”, a song Richard had written about the international monetary system, long long long before the banking crisis. We’re all working on “fixed incomes”
Early in the concert, Thompson refers to his youthful times with the Fairport Convention and to his “amazement” the group is recognized by the audience. He then states that we can buy the “complete 19 cd collection for, like 2,000 dollars or something”…then, in a brief, touching memory, speaks of Nick Drake and how after years of anonymity he has gotten his due as a songwriter…”from a bunch of VW ads”…..”eventually the cream does rise to the top”…..Richard then introduces the next song….”I cannot sing this song as well as Sandy, but if I sing this well enough to get you to listen to her, then I’ve done the job”… turns then into Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” and it’s great….a famous song done with a different turn, not with the tentative voice of Sandy or of Judy Collins, but the longing voice of Richard Thompson.
Later he gets to my favorite song “Bees Wing”….is there such a thing as a female version of a roue’ ? A raconteur? I don’t know if there’s a dictionary term, but she does exist. Bees Wing describes her. A woman as “into the moment” as any directionless male. Unwilling to commit beyond the Now, no promises of anything but the Moment we are in. Richard, as the raconteur who wants to get “serious”, aced by the woman who played him at his own “let’s just live for today” game. He paints a ragged end for her…a woman who troughed her life into the ditch because “of the chains that she refused”…..but as she constantly reminded him “you would not want me any other way”….if she had accepted the chains, he would have walked away…..a no win situation. Really great song, not often played but when it happens, it’s like Dylan’s Fourth Time Around…. Just Like a Woman….Tangled Up In Blue….One Of Us Must Know…..
And we keep going into incredibly well-performed versions of exceptional songs….the sing-along of “Crawl Back”, the celebratory defiance of “Wall of Death”…the almost Country and Western lyricism of “I Misunderstood”, another sing along of “Down Where the Drunkards Roam”…..off the stage and the lights dim…Thompson returns for an encore with an ecstatic “I Feel So Good”, descending it into “You and I”, another dip into the melancholy of love. The second encore driven by a cheeky/hilarious “Two Left Feet”, complete with contemporary lyrics such as “Rupert Murdoch was indiscreet/ hacked the phones with two left feet”
Richard Thompson leaves the stage again….called back for a final song, what better than “The Dimming of the Day”….crystallizing life into what really matters as the days become more essential. A gracious bow and away….
I had been clued ahead of time by an audience member that the soundman at the helm of the mixing board was also Thompson’s manager….”if you want that LP signed, run it by him and you’ll have no problem…Richard can sometimes be aloof”….as I left the concert, there was Simon at the board. “Simon, will Richard sign…..”
“He’ll be at the CD table in a few minutes, he’ll be MORE than happy to sign that!” (after all, it was “Hand of Kindness”….which contained the original “Two Left Feet”)
and Richard Thompson most graciously signed the LP.
The Other Review
A Richard Thompson concert can be a difficult review. His technical expertise at the fretboard of the guitar is stunning to the point where words become useless. Metaphors melt, aphorisms atrophy, pictures are required to minimize the thousands of words. The concert in Westbrook was by definition an “acoustic” concert. Richard Thompson used one guitar, the same guitar, all night. He dusted it once with what appeared to be talcum powder. When performing, he frequently played both the rhythm and lead structures of a song, simultaneously. Historically, other acoustic guitarists that can pull this off would be John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, Lenny Breau, and a handful of others. You may note that most of these guitarists are not really great lyricists (possible exception, Leo Kottke, although lyrical content is pretty minimal)….and none of them are vocalists in the traditional sense. Richard Thompson writes lyrics with content, delivers them with solid vocals inflected with real emotion, and under all that is a line of ecstatic guitar play. Tom noted that Richard was always adjusting the tuning of his guitar (even mid-play) and Tom was pretty sure that most of the tunings were not “standard tuning”….I noted that Richard Thompson was greatly influenced by his Sufi faith in the 70’s and frequently adjusted his guitar tunings to middle-eastern instruments (like the Oud and the Lyre) and atypical song structures….even the inner flow of the song may not follow the typical “pop song” formula of lyric/refrain/chorus etc…. add to that his deep interest in Celtic and early English musicianship and well…..Richard is his own territory.
This resulted in an “acoustic” set that never really sounded that way. Thompson’s ease and familiarity with this one guitar allowed him to create a sonic fullness with nothing but the basic six strings, holding harmonics and sustain on the instrument without knobs or wah wah pedals. Just knowledge and control. I look back at the Jeff Tweedy concert and no bad words about Jeff….but he was surrounded by about six or eight guitars. I think he used two. I guess they were individually tuned or otherwise special. Thompson needed one.
When I first saw Richard Thompson in concert it was at the Maine Festival, maybe 86, 87… at that time held at Bowdoin College. I had sat (excruciated and tortured….a redundant but effective phrase) through a set by Manhattan Transfer, had been thoroughly entertained by the verbal/musical antics of Jonathan Richman. He and his Modern Lovers had split (remember way back at the beginning of this…and Robin Lane?) ….there was a delay between artists and then Richard Thompson eventually emerges….explaining that he was sorry for the delay. His guitar didn’t make the flight and so he would be borrowing the guitar of Jonathan Richman for the evening….which he proceeded to bend into every shape imaginable to create that Richard Thompson “band in a box” … guitar as accordion. I wonder if Jonathan ever played that guitar again…..
Decemberists
This is the story of the road that goes to my house
And what ghosts there do remain
…….July! July!…Decemberists
Grimy/Gray fogshot of a stage…..Springsteen’s “Seeger Sessions” blends into Levon Helm “Rumble at the Ryman”….if this music indicates the night….yum….early fans keen to their favorite spots, kestrels of sound, on the wires and waiting….lights fall and a wash of sound, a noised flow as Sara Watkins, of Nickel Creek, and her brother Sean draw themselves to stage center and begin the night with rambling fiddle and guitar duets…. A passioned talent for bluegrass and folk, Sara had been asked by Meloy to do double duty. Not only a vital member of the re-adjusted Decemberists, she was tasked/”honored by” doing an opening set of fiddle/guitar duets. Much of the work was from her self-titled solo LP, with a few nods to the historical bluegrass works, remembered from her childhood in San Diego, as well as a few nods to Nickel Creek. She was clearly “happy to be here” and although a noticeable novice at being the lead person/sparkplug of a set, she still managed to win the audience over, entertaining them with energetic, enthusiastic fiddle play (how can you be a fiddle player and not be enthusiastic and energetic?) Fearing a possible “Howdy Moon Moment”, I still chose to go to her stand in the back of the space to get a CD. Not only was she there to sign stuff, but she also had the work on VINYL! DEAL!
Good songs:
Long Hot Summer Days
Same Mistakes
Jefferson (great acoustic piece)
Freiderick (another acoustic)
All This Time
Etc etc
Sara especially impressed me. A solid, speedy first set that pops out at about 45 minutes. Pretty straightforward fiddle/guitar runs, mostly high-energy with some relaxed balladry here and there. A break and then into a 90 minute train with the Decemberists. Here she tackles piano, solo vocal and harmony, percussion, the expected violin/fiddle…. Geesh!
Then a blurbreak between sets and to Meloy and Co…….the songs kick in with July!July!. An homage to Jenny Conlee and her anticipated return end of June? Who knows, but it opens every concert, followed, surprisingly, by one of the more popular songs of their current release. I had expected to hear Down By the Water as, say, an encore or at best a closer. But no, Colin’s channeling of river songs and full moon romance out and gone. Hmmmm……then a slam-bang series of vocals from Meloy. Calamity Song/Rise To Me (one of my clear favorites), We Both Go Down/Don’t Carry It All/Rox in the Box….these aren’t necessarily in sequence, there were others between some of these, but the sense to my ears was this rush of hurled voice and torn poetry. Colin Meloy’s essential talents, brilliant and to the fore—wild vocal abandon and ecstatic writing—as wild as Dylan Thomas reciting lines of poetry. And the poetry of Meloy, his writing, is from that eternal wash of coast and ocean, where tragedy, if not current in your situation, lies just off shore. The Portland he wrote from and the Portland he sang to share tide and time with each other, dark mysterious and unswayed by Man. Whether his delivery is an affectation like Bob Dylan’s early Guthrie or whether it is his “true” voice (from a new found land) the result is Whitmanesque yawp….raggedly clear, brogued, roared against a battered coastline, a Marsden Hartley painting sprawled by voice. For Colin to still exhibit this energy 10 plus years into the game is substantial.
The concert continues and Meloy brings out a few pearls of the past, O Valencia!, Perfect Crime (which I think may have been the first Decemberist song I ever heard…like the Pet Shop Boys meet Robyn Hitchcock…..weird lyrics to catchy hooks and that SoHo sound)….Logan will be relieved that the jerk behind him so many years ago, yelling for “CHIMBLEY SWEEP!!!!!” finally was rewarded….. Colin and crew serenading that very song as the final piece of the night….I hope the idiot was there……over the course of 90 minutes, maybe 18 songs…..most of them pretty straightforward….live and somewhat open-armed, yes,……yet structured to be played over the course of MANY evenings for three months. Unlike Phish, I did not get the impression that Colin Meloy was into “improv” much. It didn’t make the concert any less enjoyable, but it did affirm that there would be no need to see the tour more than once.
Later we all repaired to be dismantled by pitchers of Margaritas and “really deep thoughts” (what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?-Tori Amos)
So the most critical question at the table seemed to be whether Colin Meloy was engaged with the audience or not. I admit to being struck at first by the impression of an “all-business” attitude presented during the introductions to the first few songs. Perfunctory one-liners like “ This is a song about joint suicide” then, bang, into the song.
Is this just his normal way? Or is he getting burned out by the demands of the road, or is he pre-occupied with concerns about Jenny Conlee’s diagnosed breast cancer (she’s off the road, getting treatment)….not for me to say….and does it matter? To use Dylan’s example, people allow him the arrogance of non-engagement with the audience because, as one critic put it, “Dylan’s talking to the audience in every song, why does he need to speak further?”
So if we move away from that point of interest, what remains? In my opinion, we are left with a satisfying concert, professionally played, crisp. Not particularly exploratory for the musicians but that’s not surprising. Most concerts in most genres are not notable for challenging music, either for audience or musician. The piece of work being played is already composed and so the concert is, within limits of live performance, not supposed to be much beyond a variant to the original text. A few musicians allow themselves the luxury of challenging the work, of pushing themselves, the audience and the work being presented into unexplored territory. But those are exceptions to the rule.
A proving example would be the second song into the set “down by the water”. It was presented cleanly, professionally, a near-templated re-pressing of the original CD version. Anything wrong with that? Not for me,…it was still live, it had the energy of a live performance. Their capacity to hit the notes familiar to the audience is obviously pleasing and not unexpected. It was a great performance of a great song, regardless of the lack of surprise or exploration. A good song done well is not to be dismissed lightly. Live performance does not possess the quality of perfection attainable in a studio full of moderating gadgets or the suspension of time afforded by the process of editing.
Live is live. That’s why we go to it. Not to see a musical car accident. But to “participate” to be a part of the moment of the event. Glenn Gould, later in his career, dismissed live-performance altogether. A brilliant perfectionist and obsessive control freak, he had found his Nirvana in the studio. There he could edit, insert, clip, re-do, until the work was exactly as he wanted it preserved. No errors, no minor gaps between notes, no piano key dulled by an ill-placed fingering. Crisp precise, perfect. Concerts were TOO participatory. He didn’t even want to hear applause after a piece. And he couldn’t countenance any sound during the playing. So, a cough, a rustle of paper, any distraction was just disgusting! Move that expectation to a live concert and the dissonance is impossible to accommodate.
So live concerts are participatory events. The audience wants to be a part of the moment. By way of contrast, there is no way, short of drugs, NOT to be a separated entity when listening to a recorded performance. No matter how wonderful the speaker system or the quality of the headphones, the music is stuck in time, already dead. It will only change if it develops a skip or warp or some other defect. Live music, on the other hand, has open moments, waiting.
But how participatory do we get to be? Audiences are, after all, the fourth wall of the “play” being presented of a particular evening. Audience participation is a fluid thing, more of a moveable bar on a scale/graph than a finite pre-scripted aspect of the play. It is the one part of the night that is most open to impulsive, creative innovative interplay between audience and actors. As such it can come laden with expectation—and I think this explains some of the discussion at the table. Was Meloy engaging the fourth wall? Did he care? What did he see as the purpose of the audience? Shut up and listen? No, I didn’t sense that. But it did seem as a half-engagement. I would put it to fatigue, pre-occupation. The concert was not sold out. The group was a day or less out of a daunting Bonnaroo marathon, and if rumors are correct, there were band concerns and accommodations to be made. Bringing Sara Watkins into a larger role, patching holes left in the tapestry with the departure of accordionist Jenny Conlee,…..trying to maintain a momentum to the tour may have colored the concert as much as any other element of the night.
When you look at the tour schedule for this summer, one wonders about the capacity to maintain such a pace and NOT have a walk-through night…a somnambulatory set now and then. After all, a look at the setlists reveal an almost concrete show… VERY little, if any changes, almost indetectable variation..this has to lend itself to a repetitive, mind-numbing redundancy, erasing all distinction for time and place…. How can anybody do the same thing night after night without a yawn or two?
I still got the feeling that he wanted the audience around, he wanted the fourth wall. I just think he didn’t really know what to do with it. If engagement becomes a blur, then where’s the reward? If you don’t know/are unsure of the role of self and audience at the clear, shimmered surface of the fourth wall, where do you place your hand? Do you want to feel the presence of the other hand, pressing toward you from the audience? Do you want to feel the heat, and if so, why? If not, why not?
Oddly by the end of the concert, after numerous encores, the audience had won Meloy over. Now, of course, we expect it to be the other way ‘round. The artist’ task is to present work to the audience, to break through the wall by dint of talent, effort and engagement with the audience
For me, The Decemberists had done that right from the first song. I didn’t care if he bantered with us, or yelled “Hello Portland!”….big deal. Stand and Deliver, Decemberists!
And they did…..
1962
Farm boy, digging a long line of peas….weeding, ever weeding. Small hands digging into dirt and turning, pulling a weed and packing, pull and pack. In his hand he rubs a stone but not a stone. He pulls and turns. It is flat. A coin. Thumbs wear at the dirt and reveal “1861”. The frame of a woman’s face. A half-penny of Nova Scotia…..in a West Paris farm field….he runs to the farmhouse, wondering …..
2011
Blue light…. and a singer walks into it…..hands-clapping……the boy lifted from the man…..phrase over phrase, a catechism…..”a boy with a coin he found in the weeds”…. “God left the ground to circle the world”…..”a girl with a bird she found in the snow and threw off her gown and that’s how she knows”…..“a boy with a coin/he crammed in his jeans/and making a wish/he tossed in the sea/he brought to a town where all of us burned/when god left the ground and circled the earth”……
Iron and Wine at the State Theater in Portland, Sam Beam at the center of the stage, cadence/singing “Boy With A Coin” and hurtling me through decades. Orson Welles as a slim man, young and bearded this time, …young and at his creative peak….turning to the mic as if it was Halloween, 1939…aided by hand-picked players….. around him, talented and ready ….“I hope you don’t mind if we f*ck with the music”….Puck is on the stage and Shakespeare, he’s in the alley.
Almost half the songs played are completely unknown by me….some from an LP called “Our Eternal Numbered Days” (yes… on order) as well as what seems to be a bootleg obscurity from 2005….still, I’m forward in my seat, watching the magic of a loose band drawn tight. A horn section? At an acoustic concert? Yup. Again, as in The Low Anthem, the small stones of a song built upon. Not unlike what Dylan did with the Budokan concerts. But frankly with arrangements that didn’t reek of Vegas. There has been discussion of this in critical circles, but for me on this night, it all works. Maybe it’s because I’m already in strange territory, what with so many songs unfamiliar. Sam can do what he wants, he’s got a free hand and he’s using it. I don’t know what to expect in this song or that. As Mello so ably texts during the concert, homage and reflection on influences flow from guitar to drums, organ and horns. The band is so happy to be here, and Sam Beam steers them gently, like Welles must have done with the Mercury Players. “Do your best to serve the text”. The arrangement is that there is no arrangement. It’s a fluid interplay, with space given and time allowed. Not unlike jazz, “you get the next four bars, go for it”. There are some parts that are “punched in”…..bookmarks that tell the musicians where they are, but generally there’s a free feel to the space, extends into the audience. We are part of the story of the night. Not mere recipients of “entertainment”. Beyond audience.
Obviously, as memory serves us well, the songs that affected me most were the familiar. “Song of the Shepherd Dog”, “House By the Sea”, “Tree By the River”. But also the never-to-be-radio-broadcast “Monkeys Uptown”, which is one of the best songs from the latest CD, but has unfortunately appropriate language issues. “Tree By the River” was the tune I waited for. It’s goofy and fun and sad at the same time…..perfect. Reminded me of Douglas Coupland’s minimalist novel “Life After God”
Two songs floored me. One was “Walking Far From Home”….which opens the latest CD…..a sort of Lord Randall/Hard Rain…..except in this case there is no refrain, no touchstone chorus that will circle the visions and bring them to sense. It is just one disassociated blast of insight/vision after another. None with any connective tissue between them. Like PTSD and other random access onslaughts, the brain tries to make sense out of the senseless….. and is rendered impotent, a mere receptor of random horror. Like watching TV news with someone else controlling the channels. Does anyone remember Clockwork Orange?
The second intensity was “Free Until They Cut Me Down”, Sam’s pliant, plaintive “take me home” as whispered by a deadly lover. You can hear the rope, coiling. This version honestly better than the original. Yes…. I want the bootleg….
“Need to Hear Agains”…..”Love and Some Verses”, “Sunset Soon Forgotten”, “Fever Dream”, “Summers in Savannah”, “Big Burned Hand”…..
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