Back To "Normal"

I didn't immediately blog about the end of the Fest because I was kind of exhausted, and had to get up very early the next morning to drive to Tampa, and also because for me (and I think for a lot of people), the Fest kind of petered out on the last day rather than wrapping up with a resounding bang.

It seemed as though there weren't nearly as many as shows on Sunday, and that those that were happening tended to conflict with each other or be on opposite sides of town, forcing people to make difficult and sometimes dispiriting choices. Also, a cold (at least by Florida standards) wind blew in along with some rain, and most of us weren't really dressed for it, and on top of that, people were pretty worn out from tramping all over town and (not in my case personally, but for many others) staying up all night drinking and/or trying to sleep on bathroom floors in hotel rooms with one bed and 17 occupants (the room, not the bed, that is, though I can't vouch for every situation).

Pretty much every representative of the PPMB and New York pop punk crew was on hand for the double-barreled finale of Short Attention and the Ergs. Non-PPMB Festgoers may not have known exactly what to make of Short Attention (though they seemed to like them), but went completely insane for the Ergs. My misguided masochism led me to stand right up front for them (perhaps it was some mad macho posturing attempt to prove that a 60 year old can still handle himself in the pit), and it proved to be a bit more challenging than the Avail pit, though the stage divers and crowd surfers tended to be a bit less beefy. I still took a moderate kick to the side of the head from one doofus, but also played a crucial role in sending several others crashing to the floor.

By the time the Ergs finished - around 8:30 pm - there wasn't much else going on in the other venues. There was a Small Brown Bike reunion, but I'd never got into them the first time around, and some band called Seaweed, whom I remembered as being vaguely big sometime back in the 80s or early 90s. I think they had long hair and were kind of in that Nirvana vein, but whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me, so I stood around with the rest of the Ergs crowd outside Common Grounds, renewing old acquaintances, making new ones, and trying to stay warm. Eventually I ended up in one of those 17-person hotel rooms for what was supposedly a "party," but looked more like a bunch of guys and on or two girls lounging around drinking beer while the last World Series game played silently on the TV.

It was still technically my birthday, remember, so I left on my own and got some Krispy Kreme donuts in lieu of a birthday cake (I seemed to have become immune to the smell, which was a bit worrying), and headed back to my hotel to sleep. In the morning I made it to Tampa in record time, caught a plane to Washington, and despite my aching feet, did some sightseeing, taking in the White House, the National Mall, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. I'd seen the first three previously, albeit briefly, but this was the first time I'd ever got a good look at the Capitol. Pretty snazzy, I must say, though I'll have to go back another time to take the tour and see the inside.

In prior visits to Washington, I'd been mainly occupied in protesting (1967) or seeing an Avail show (1994 or 95), and hadn't really had more than a cursory look at anything. I did walk past the White House in 1967 - this was back when you could still get a lot closer than you can now - and imagined I saw President Johnson looking out an upstairs window with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was later that same night when I met two teenyboppers from Baltimore down near the Jefferson Memorial, where we in turn were picked up and given a place to stay by a young man who worked for Senator Fulbright and had a picture of himself as a teenager shaking hands with John F. Kennedy. I may never be able to prove it with any certitude (unless I meet him again and ask him), but I'm about 99% certain that our host that night was a 21 year old Bill Clinton.

My sightseeing this time was cut short by my sore feet and temperatures that were way too chilly for the wardrobe I'd packed with Florida in mind. I ended up staying indoors after dark instead of investigating Washington's night life, assuming it has any (it certainly didn't in the neighborhood where I was staying, where everything, even the Subway and the Starbucks, seemed to close up by 7 pm). The following morning I caught the train back to New York and arrived just in time for the long-awaited Weakerthans show.

My friend and hero John K. Samson had grown a beard for the occasion, prompting me to ask him if he was honoring the spirit of Gainesville, though his beard would have been far too neat and kempt (I know that's not a word, but it should be) for the Fest crowd. Perhaps they in especially high spirits because of having the next day off, but for whatever reason, the Weakerthans played a full hour and forty-five minutes, something that would be unforgivable in most bands, but in this case was still barely enough. They did two encores which together added up to almost a show in themselves, and ran through nearly half of the songs from their new album, of which "Sun In An Empty Room" hit me with the most impact, especially followed as it was by "Left And Leaving."

As I explained to John afterward, the last three and a half years for me have been all about empty rooms and leaving places behind; first Spy Rock, then London, and finally Berkeley. I especially remembered the look of the Spy Rock house as I said my last goodbyes to it, with the sun spilling though the windows and splashing off the wood, looking so rich and warm and inviting and at the same time so desolate and forlorn.

And I guess I feel a bit desolate and forlorn myself at times, cut adrift from so much of what was familiar and waiting for my new life to take form. Part of my problem in the past was that while I was always ready to try new adventures in new places, I could never quite bring myself to let go of the old ones, so I'd find myself in the uncomfortable and untenable position of trying to live several places at once.

Now there's just one place, here in Brooklyn, and while my present living circumstances are not completely ideal, I can't think of anywhere else I want to be. It's still not quite home, but more and more it's beginning to feel that way. Tearing across Manhattan today on a series of errands, arguing with an intractable bank clerk who didn't want to let me open an account there because "you don't live or work in the neighborhood," zipping up my fleece and shivering slightly as another foretaste of winter blew in off the Hudson, I thought, yes, this is my life now, and you know, it's a pretty good one.

(Almost) Missed The Boat

No, this is not about the Steinways; it's about what almost happened to me on Friday night when I unwisely relied upon New York City's public transportation network to get me to the Weakerthans boat cruise/gig on time.

Not that I had a lot of alternatives: driving/cabbing it would probably have taken twice as long, being that it was the height of rush hour, and apart from persuading a helicopter to pick me up at my house, walking was about the only other choice.

So I trustingly showed up at my local station, allowing 45 minutes to make a trip that might amount to three miles or so. At that hour of the day, trains usually come every 2-4 minutes, so I wasn't anticipating any difficulty until I noticed that the entire platform was clogged with people, many of whom looked as though they'd been standing there for a very long time. The overhead indicator said the next train wouldn't be for another 14 minutes, by which time I figured members of the crowd would be getting shoved onto the tracks by new arrivals trying to force their way onto the platform. Which of course would only delay things further as the train would have to wait while they scraped up the bodies.

On top of that, I reckoned, if every station along the line had a similar number of people waiting to board, the train would be so full by the time it got to us that nobody would be able to get on anyway (this happens quite often during the morning commute, which, thankfully, I don't participate in). But, lo and behold, the train showed up a mere 12 minutes later, rather than 14, and even more wondrously, was only about half full. In fact there were even a few seats available.

Not that they'd do us (or the cause of getting to the Weakerthans show before the ship sailed) any good: the train just ROLLED ON THROUGH THE STATION WITHOUT STOPPING. I suppose the reasoning (assuming any was involved) was that they needed to get trains to Manhattan as quickly as possible so evening commuters could get home. Fine for them, but now there was serious doubt about whether I was going to see the Weakerthans. A few hours earlier, disconsolate because I hadn't been able to find anyone to go with me, I'd been grousing that I might not bother going myself, but suddenly I was filled with rage and regret at the image of the boat fully of happy revelers sailing away while I stood on the dock with my mouth hanging open at the injustice of it all.

When a train finally did show up that also deigned to stop for us, it was completely packed, but I forced my way on board nonetheless. But then it proceeded to crawl into Manhattan, and because there were so many people entering and exiting, each station stop took a small lifetime. I reckoned that at this rate the only way I'd have even a remote chance of making it on time was if the uptown A train arrived almost in the same instant that my train arrived at 8th Avenue, and even then, I'd have somewhere between five and seven minutes to make it from the Port Authority at 8th and 42nd down to the river. Possibly doable if I ran all the way.

Amazingly enough, the A did show up just as I hit the platform, and got me to the Port Authority with a couple extra minutes to spare. But I'd overestimated my running skills, with respect to both endurance and to what amounted to broken field running through rush hour pedestrian and vehicular traffic. By the time I'd got to 10th Avenue I had come close to knocking two people over and being knocked over myself by a speeding cab, and was panting with exhaustion. I got out my phone and tried to dial while running, thinking if I could reach Frank Unlovable, who was waiting in line, that perhaps I could get him to beg the ship's captain to hold back the sailing time for a few more minutes.

But for the longest time nothing came through on my phone except static, and when Frank finally did answer, I was in sight of my destination. A few stragglers were still boarding, and after all my panic and frustration, the boat didn't end up leaving till something like a quarter to seven anyway.

I had been looking forward to watching the skylines of New York and New Jersey (all right, I'm taking some poetic license in the latter case) glide by as I enjoyed the music of the Weakerthans, but the way things were set up, you pretty much had to be confined to a cramped indoor space if you wanted a good look at the band. Oh well, I said to Frank, if it was just a boat ride I was after, there was always the Staten Island Ferry.

The Weakerthans were as sensational as ever, not perhaps in quite the same lean and hungry way they were when I first chanced upon them (actually I was dragged to see them by Grant Lawrence) some nine years ago this month, but what they may have lost in youthful spontaneity was more than made up for by supremely self-assured musicianship and John Samson's inimitable way of combining passion, grace and profundity with his down home/aw shucks manner.

I'd never seen John enjoying himself so much on stage before, and he seemed equally relaxed when he stopped by for a chat afterwards, despite having to field requests for autographs or photos on an average of every 15 seconds. This feeding frenzy of fandom only intensified a few minutes later when Blake Schwarzenbach joined the party. Because of the East Bay/Gilman Street connection, people always assume I know Blake, but in actuality I've only met him twice previous to this, and only briefly at that. So it was a real treat getting a chance to talk with him in a little greater depth, and to discover our mutual love for the Weakerthans.

The one thing about the show that struck a slightly discordant note (literally) was the way the fans tended to drown out the band on some of the quieter songs. I've often remarked at how I've never seen another band where the fans not only know the lyrics so thoroughly (and in the case of the Weakerthans, there are rather a lot of lyrics to know), but also sing them so loudly that at times John could go out for a beer and many people wouldn't even notice. In the past I've found this quite charming, but this time the fans, at least where I stood, resembled a pack of drunken frat boys baying somewhat tunelessly at the moon, which tended to clash with the delicate imagery and melody of songs like "My Favorite Chords" or "Left And Leaving."

Oh well, no live show is ever perfect, and if I want flawless harmonies, I'll just put the records on at home and sing along by myself. No doubt those beer-sozzled vocalists surrounding me at the show felt similarly about their own efforts.

Anyway, that's the Weakerthans, and that was my Friday night. Too bad it took me until late Tuesday to write about it. They're back in New York this autumn, with a brand new record to follow shortly.