constant narrator

Sunday at ACL Fest: I bussed down alone to see the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. Happily it was in the pavilion, the only stage with shade, which was becoming critical: it was about 100 degrees at 4pm. They started and were OK. They had a tight horn section and a decent groove but each song was a 20 minute jam without enough variation to get me hyped about it. 15 minutes into song three I decided to eject from the pavilion in seach of Elvis Costello, who had just started playing on the other side of the park.

I didn’t even get close. Too hot, too many people - hey, I don’t even like Elvis Costello that much anyway. I turned around and headed to this little stage where I had heard something kind of yummy on my way to Elvis.

Oh my friends, how can I explain the joyous wonder that is Bobby Bare Jr. live? I am a convert. When he talked he shreiked. He was in a full black suit and tie and screamed: “Do you like my jacket? I melt in it for you!” The songs oscillated between psychelic sound walls with screams and sparse chords as backdrop to precious singing. “Do you like the rock and roll? DO YOU LIKE THE ROCK AND ROLL?” he screamed.

Yes. Yes I do like the rock and roll.

They closed with a schizophrenic version of Quiet Riot’s ‘Come on Feel the Noise’, where Bobby sweetly, softly sang the verses and then they rawked out for five minutes, then he reverted to folk-boy again. Good god, this man can come to dinner. And his drummer too.

http://www.bobbybarejr.com/

I talked bug into riding the bus down to the festival even though he didn’t have a day pass and it was sold out. There were a lot of people; Barton Springs Road was closed off and the street was filled with people walking and on bikes. We saw no scalpers. Telling the universe we needed a ticket for bug to see the Pixies and we needed in the next five minutes, we walked through the crowd with the universal sign of ‘please give me a ticket!’: the lone finger in the air. I haven’t done that since the Dead were touring with Jerry. 30 seconds later a hurried transaction took place and bug had a three-day pass wristband on. We were in!

We found Samantha very quickly through the miracle of cell phones and headed toward the main stage. It was already very crowded. We got as far as the sound booth and were stuck*. The band came on very near their scheduled 8:45 time. The first few songs were plagued with sound troubles. We were just far enough back for it to be not quite loud enough. Bug reported the sound board guy was working hard to try to equalize everything. Eventually it seemed to settle down, I managed to weasel up a few more feet and get away from the evil talking group and could hear and see better.

Aaahhh, yes, there, the Pixies! Yum. The crowd was in love with Kim Deal. Everytime she sang alone or the super-screen featured a camera shot of her, the crowd roared. It seems the group high-school crush on Kim Deal still held some heat. Frank Black was in good form, his voice sounded great and he had energy and hollered appropriately. They played most of what you would expect them to play, ‘Wave of Mutilation’, ‘Monkey Gone to Heaven’, ‘Gigantic’ (especially good live), and ‘Here Comes Your Man’ along with some songs I recognized but couldn’t name and only a couple I didn’t remember at all. Granted I wasn’t the world’s biggest Pixies fan, but I think it would be hard coming of age listening to that genre without knowing most of the songs. It brought back some strange Iowa-River memories I didn’t know I had tucked away.

The group I had weaseled into were Fans and knew the words and were dancing, which is my favorite type of concert knot to be in, so I had a great time bouncing up and down and grinning at the folks around me. It was a good show. They finished and I felt very satiated.

When it was over we walked for what seemed like five hours to Samantha’s car in downtown Austin.

And now a diatribe about folding lawn chairs
Throughout the day folks had been camped out in the netherlands of the main stage in chairs and on blankets, far from the afternoon crowds who came to see the less-famous bands. Now, as the hungry 30-something horde moved in to get their chance to have Frank Black and Kim Deal sweat on them, these people were remaining in their chairs, giving everyone dirty looks as if the 40,000 people had come expressly to spoil their picnic. This is not the case. The 40,000 people actually came to see a band. A band that was 100-200 yards further away from them than need be because the folks with folding chairs refused to fold them up and stand. There were huge swaths of space completely taken by folding camp chairs. The chair people hated the newcomers and the Pixies fans hated the chair people. Had the chair people seemed to be die-hard Pixies fans who had camped out all day in order to be closer, it would have taken much of the pain away. But no: these were the people who talked through the entire set. Thus, they are evil.

I’m not really an instant messaging person, but I just got out of a chat with my old co-worker from Sri Lanka who is now in Damascus, Syria. Damascus. We were talking just like she was in the cube with me. Now, I was hyped for the ‘mind boggling global potential of the internet’ in 1992 (at ~3am on a late night in March) but sometimes it just hits me afresh what a beautiful thing such said global communication is. How cool is it that I can talk with this woman who, a few years ago, I would have lost track of as she made her way across the world to learn Arabic and finally back to Sri Lanka? Instead she’s online telling me she’s going to stay for a year and I would love Damascus and how I should come visit her. I love you internet!

I am a hopeless geek.

Iowa is gorgeous in July and August. When I’m there in the summer I tend to forget how horrible it can be in February. Everything is lush and soft. I can walk barefoot everywhere and few things try to bite me. It makes me want to stay and moisturize my brain with the sight of all the growing things.

I rented a car to go see my grandfather and had the familiar experience of driving north through some of the most fertile land in the world and listening to RAWK music on the radio. Corn fields and RAWK. They go together like Hawkeye vodka and strawberry Kool-aid. The fields are awesome; the rain has been good (where there haven’t been tornados), and the corn is very tall with mature golden tassels. The hills roll in that part of the state and the cliched patchwork-quilt effect is evident as I crest every hill. It’s breathtaking to top a hill and see five miles out over a river valley with the fields rolling along; beans, then corn, then hay, then a pasture with black cows. The farm houses are all white, usually with black shutters. The barns are red. The lawns and ditches are mowed. The rows of corn march perfectly where they were planted. It’s all incredibly tidy.

This is why there is RAWK. Everything is so excessively tidy. Growing up in Iowa, a kid is expected to be tidy, responsible, hard-working and somewhat (though not enough to be uppity) ambitious. While not cruel, Iowans don’t really know what to do with someone who veers of the path. Kids are not ‘tidy’, their feelings are not ‘tidy’ and their hormones are certainly not ‘tidy’. Therefore, there is RAWK. There is angst, there are tantrums, there are late-night drives through cornfields to see what patterns you can make with the broken stalks. RAWK scratches some awful unnamed bite on the ass.

Whenever I am home and driving around, I feel phantom angst. It’s not mine anymore, but it returns in the form of ‘Will I have to come back and be stuck here forever?’ At that point I turn on the radio, to the same station I listened to RAWK on when I was 14. They are playing bands I’ve never heard of, as well as Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Rage Against the Machine and the obligatory “Mandatory Metallica” (playing at the Hilton Colliseum this week!). The lyrics are the same as always: no one understands me; I gave her my heart and she peed on it; my parents are evil and now I’m telling them. It’s weirdly comforting to drive through the fields and hear it.

I turn it up loud, and drive the speed limit.