Ghost Live

The culmination of my 8-month obsession with the Swedish pop-metal band, Ghost. 

I purchased tickets to this Chicago date months ago for myself and another friend who took the plunge into the band at the same time. We both entered this fascination with a certain awareness of how utterly ridiculous this band appears on the surface. With a frontman who dresses like a bizarro-world Pope and a line-up consisting of five "nameless ghouls" who wear generic Darth Vader costumes, it's clear from this visual eye candy that the band is attempting to initiate interest in the band before a note is even played.

Usually, such attempts are received by younger music fans quickly, which is why-as someone in their mid-40's and another man in their early 30's-may have approached Ghost as a guilty pleasure at first. We were keenly aware from the start that this was a band that probably wasn't designed for our age group. 

Yet my ticket purchase was immediate. The prospect of seeing Ghost in a theatre, bellowing their Satanic message on Easter eve became almost an impulse decision when tickets for the show were first announced. To be honest, I wasn't aware that the date coincided with the Holy weekend, but it later became a perfect alibi for me to excuse myself from any Easter family activities taking place at my in-laws when the date drew near.

Of course, the Easter date sounds more sinister than it actually was. As I've mentioned before, Ghost's image is intentionally provocative and their Satanic message is nothing more than a bunch of grown men cobbling together Anglican phrases that appear evil on the surface. A closer examination only reveals how English is the band's second language and how lifting bits of the Book of Common Prayer can provide a career full of source material and controversy, provided that there are still a few folks who manage to stroll in for Sunday service.

Is all of this lost on Ghost's fans? Hard to say, as the line to the sold-out show circled around the block of the Vic Theatre featured a wide array of audience members. There were the obvious heavy metal fans in jeans and black concert tees alongside Goths who lined up behind middle-aged men who seemed to be channeling bits of (I'm guessing) their previous devotion to KISS towards their new Swedish masters.

Besides, everyone knows that KISS stands for "Kings In Satan's Service" anyway.

We took up behind a couple at the end of the line who were quietly waiting for the doors to open. The man, a balding gentleman wearing a ratty trench coat and looking like Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. His companion sported long, green hair and leggings tucked into a pair of Doc Marten boots. She had taken the time to paint the logo and an image of the band's debut album on her footwear. He smoked cigarettes and didn't say a word to her the entire time we waited for the doors to open.

The line moved quickly as the doors opened and we made our way to the balconies as soon as we entered. One of the perks of being older is knowing that the general admission floor would quickly fill with younger folks who are capable of standing for extended periods of time and who don't mind jockeying for position the entire duration of the sets of both the opening band and headliners.

Speaking of, King Dude-a trio of Seattle folk-rock naysayers with similar religious criticisms-opened for Ghost, in an attempt for thematic consistency, but delivering nothing short of a complete train-wreck of styles. I looked over at my friend and noticed that he was in the middle of a short nap, which  is pretty close to my own opinion of King Dude's performance.

To pass the time during their set, we struck up a conversation with an attractive and inked woman who had noticed my friend's nap time and also felt it was amusingly appropriate. She was at the show with her partner, who happened to be one of the head honchos at Kuma's Corner-a Chicago eatery known for their upscale burgers named after heavy metal bands.

A few months ago, the restaurant introduced the "Ghost Burger" in honor of the band: a white cheddar cheeseburger with ghost pepper aioli, moistened with some red wine  reduction (the "blood" of Christ, if you're seeing where this is going) and topped with a communion wafer. I remember reading about this last fall and immediately thinking "That sounds remarkably tasty!" without even considering how others would react to having a stale, tasteless cracker sitting on top of this carnivorous gem.

But apparently, a lot of Catholics didn't appreciate having "the body of Christ"crown a patty of beef named after such a notorious band who regularly sings a song with a chorus that reads, "Hear our Satan prayer/The anti-Nicene Creed." Protests were swift and decisive, and after a week or so of trying to patch things up, Kuma's Corner pulled the burger from the menu and the matter was forgotten.

Our concert neighbors told us that the band had actually visited the location earlier that day, taking pictures with children and their parents who presumably know about the band's history, and that Ghost's frontman usually ditches his normal hat, robe and skull make-up when roaming around with the band off stage. For these moments, he dons what appears to be an old man mask, nicely touched up with make-up and wearing a tailored suit. He speaks with a phony baloney Italian accent, perhaps in an attempt to convey an aura of legitimacy to the role he is playing.

The band wasn't talking today, hitting a local record store for photo opportunities but no discussion. The restaurateurs told us that they brought back the "Ghost Burger" especially for the event, and that several fans-including a few families-dropped by on their way to the show. Sure enough, we noticed a few parents who had brought their kids to the show, a questionable decision if you asked me.

It's not necessarily the fact that Ghost are purported Satanists, it's more of an issue that the children I noticed were young enough to have no real understanding of the complex history of religion, let alone a discussion of the nuances of good and evil.

While most of us in attendance were in on the joke and aware of the humor that goes into building the characters that serve as the members of Ghost, there were a few who took this shit way too seriously, chief among them King Dude.

After his set, a few audience members blurted out a few "Hail Satan(s)!" or "Satan rules!" while the road crew dutifully put together the stage set. For the most part, our section was made up of a large portion of the older crowd and, as expected, the floor area was filled with the younger contingency, including one dedicated young lady who came dressed as a nun in white face.

There were the obligatory church windows in back of the stage, but other than this minimal religious imagery, the rest of the band's visual arsenal relied on smoke and lighting. There were no amplifiers present and stage risers held the keyboardists on stage right ("Nameless Ghoul"- Keyboards) and a very basic drum kit on stage left ("Nameless Ghoul" - drums) which featured on bass drum and floor toms only.

The load-in music consisted of various religious chanting, which may or may not have prompted those aforementioned outbursts. Prior to the dramatic shift in music, classic rock and metal favorites had been playing over the p.a., including a spin of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," which had a large portion of the crowd singing very un-ironically with it.

The lights went out and five nameless ghouls made their way on stage to the pre-recorded choir of the opening moments of their second album, Infestissumam.

There are moments of this record in which I adore, but there are many more that I'm still not fond of. Thankfully, a big chunk of Ghost's recent set list continues to pull from their debut, the far-superior Opus Eponymous as well as the title track of the band's last e.p. and an eerie cover of The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" which features a baby crying during the recorded introduction.

While there were many moments of taped portions (the acoustic ending of "Genesis" were lifted directly from the album version) it wasn't as intrusive as the fact that not being able to see the faces of the nameless ghouls seriously inhibits the ability to really get into the band's heavier moments. With no facial expressions, the guitar shredding becomes uneventful; the showmanship lost.

Which means it's up to Papa Emeritus (II) to carry the weight of the crowds attention. And that's easier said than done, particularly when your frontman is restricted by a Pope's hat and a religious robe. He would slowly pace the stage, using his hands to either dramatically gesture to the crowd or "conduct" the nameless ghost guitarists who were soloing.

The crowd would get quiet whenever Papa spoke in between songs, which was only a few times and nearly impossible to understand ("What'd he say?" was a common question from my friend next to me). During some of the musical interludes, Papa would exit the stage, leaving the rest of the band to execute a very precise and unwavering performance. The mix was balanced and the sound was surprisingly comfortable without hearing protection in the front of the Vic's balcony.

There is very little deviation between the set on one night verses another, suggesting that the show may be extremely choreographed and well paced. But the reality is that Ghost display a very minimal stag show at this point in their career-which may or may not be akin to the package that KISS used to roll into town with such proficiency early in their career, just before the floodgates open.

Whether or not such success is building behind Ghost is anyone's guess at this point, as the verdict is out on how successful an outfit with a Satanic pop metal band  from Sweden will be in puritanical America-particularly one with a surprisingly blues-free foundation. We tend to like our anti-religious venom to be housed in long hair aggression with ample amounts of testosterone and guitar mutilation.

There's none of that going on here-and to top it off, Papa Emeritus' voice (when he isn't talking in character) is filled with more fey notes than any real deep balls worship or tortured soul wailing. It's a pop construct at this point, where Ghost's most heaviest of moments have a very prevalent undercurrent of camp and twisted enjoyment of yanking on people's rosaries.

Leading all of this was Emeritus, who was either way too into his character to adequately deliver his lines or was genuinely flabbergasted at the devotion demonstrated by a bunch of very admiring fans who showered their affection whenever the band silenced in between songs.

Admittedly, he is quite a sight. You literally can't take your eyes off of him during the show-even if some of that reason is because the rest of the line up is purposely lacking any human acknowledgement. Regardless if Emeritus was doing very little in terms of adding to the material from its original performances or from a crowd interaction perspective, he was at least giving off the appearance of some kind of evil deity throughout the evening. Arms would extend up to the stage the moment he leaned forward, eyes would seek out his with intense admiration when he gazed into the people and gifts of roses were presented  to him at the end of the set when the air of finality began to creep into the set.

"Hail Satan! Welcome Year Zero!"

I suppose in a way, these were the ones who really needed presiding over-the disenfranchised who would knowingly take up with a clever pop metal band with dark overtones and an amplified image that's to die for. The pun in that statement is intended  for the rest of us-the ones who "get" the  fact that all of this is a carefully constructed agent provocateur. The audience members that didn't understand that were already in need of some spirituality to begin with, and given the alternate options of Satanic metal offerings, we should probably be thankful for the fact that they've aligned themselves with such philosophical lightweights like Ghost.

One thing the band does remarkably well is to translate this image into a marketing juggernaut. The merchandise table features a wide plethora of t-shirts (most of them working off of a movie poster, like Scarface or Jaws) and moving up to such high-end items like vibrators with Papa Emeritus' likeness on the end ($100). As awesome as the merchandise was, the novelty of them is probably best left to the younger bums as even my thirtysomething friend made the comment later on after purchasing  a t-shirt, "When am I ever going to be able to wear this?"

In this regard, Ghost are operating on the same level as any other religious institution: using the pulpit to motivate parishioners to pull out their wallets and feed the offering plate. The difference is that Ghost is a helluva more captivating than most religious services and I'd much rather be in the clergy of "Ghuleh/Zombie Queen" (the stunning first number of the encore) than the lame rendition of "My Redeemer Lives" that seems to find its way into contemporary Christian services across America.

And based on the articles I've read about the band's namesake hamburger, a lot more tasty than the communion wafer they service at my own church.

Setlist:

Infestissumam
Per Aspera ad Inferi
Ritual
Prime Mover
Jigolo Har Megiddo
Con Clavi Con Dio
Elizabeth
Body and Blood
Death Knell
Here Comes the Sun (Beatles cover)
Depth of Satan's Eyes
Stand by Him
Genesis
Year Zero
If You Have Ghosts (Roky Erickson cover)

Encore:

Ghuleh/Zombie Queen
Monstrance Clock

Scorpions Live In The Quad Cities

Scorpions

Live at the I-Wireless Center

Moline, IL August 20, 2010

You would surmise from my farewell to the Scorpions as they embarked on their Get Your Sting and Blackout tour, I’d be chomping at the bit to catch the band on one final ride.

Like everyone reading this, I too am constrained by outside influences when it comes to seeing a concert: wife, kids, budget, work schedule, etc. The child daycare secured through the wife who had no interest in seeing Germany’s greatest rock export (Her: “Are they going to play ‘Wind of Change’?” Me: “God I hope not!” Her: “I’ll stay home with the kids, then.”) and with the show scheduled for a Friday night, there was no conflict with work. The only real obstacle was self-imposed; having shot a major financial wad on Iron Maiden, did I really want to make another investment on Scorpions…particularly if the openers were Dokken?

I checked the tour schedule months ago and noticed that younger brother Michael Schenker was opening on one of the Scorpions’ dates in Chicago. That got me excited as the Quad Cities date was the day before. But Michael was only appearing at the Chicago show, and I was bummed about that, because Michael Schenker rhymes with “rockin’” ten times more than Dokken does. I put the Quad Cities date into a questionable status.

Occasionally, I kept tabs on the show leading up to the date and in the process began to notice how dismal the ticket sales were. I also began to figure out how ticket sales work. When the date was first announced, only tickets in the venue’s lower level balcony were available. By a week before, the seats had suddenly improved to ground level center seats. On the day before the show, that had improved to the 13th row center.

Still, I procrastinated.

Work trudged along until Friday came, a day that I thought I would be able to check out early since I had thrown down a bit of OT for the rest of the workweek. By Thursday afternoon, I learned that my presence was required for the rest of the day on Friday, and since I’m takin’ what they’re givin’ cuz I’m workin’ for a livin’, I spent Friday afternoon stuck at work instead of prepping for a Scorpions concert.

While at work, I tuned out the reality by listening to Animal Magnetism and some selections from Blackout. I should note that a few days before this I got the latest Scorpions album Sting In The Tail as well, to review and to get familiar with what appears to be the band’s final studio album. By the time I got home from work on Friday, my shitty week fueled an unstoppable desire to have a good time, in whatever manner that was available. And with the knowledge that there would be bad boys running wild about an hour-and-a-half away, I made the decision to go see the Scorpions.

A quick check of Ticketmaster proved to be fruitless, but since I knew the show wasn’t anywhere near a sell-out, I figured that I could still pick up a spare ticket at the box office window or from a needy scalper.

For reasons only explained by the items obtained in preparation for the show, I became convinced that the I-Wireless Center was located in Rock Island, Illinois. Rock Island is indeed one of the Quad Cities, but the I-Wireless Center is located in one of the other three communities in that region.

It took walking around idiotically for a half-hour in the Rock Island District during a light rain shower before I figured out the venue that the Scorpions were playing at was not there. My quiet stroll also put me even closer to the band’s starting time, and the fact that the Quad Cities seem to not be large enough to necessitate the need for high-speed mobile connections made the Google Maps search on my Blackberry a frustrating ordeal of “requesting information” bars and “timed out” errors.

I’d been at the I-Wireless Center before under different names and for different shows and I remembered even in my condition that it was next to the Mississippi River. With absolutely no technology helping, I used my manly powers of magnetic field direction and followed the river upstream until I was in the second of the Quad Cities: Moline, Illinois.

Thankfully, there were road markers indicating that I had navigated correctly. I quickly found a place a few blocks away from the venue (note to self: Pabst Blue Ribbon sign) and walked towards the show, confident that I had not only completely missed Dokken, but that my endless delays and bad luck had most assuredly made me miss the first two songs of the Scorpions’ set.

As long as I didn’t miss “The Zoo,” I would continue onward.

A middle-aged man stood across the street, yelling “Tickets!” in humid sprinkle of the Friday evening. “What have you got?” I asked.

“Row 12. Center section. Down in front.”

“How much?” I asked, knowing that at this late stage, he did not have much bargaining power.

“At this point, you’re my last option, I’ll let them go for face value.” I probably could get them for less if I bartered some more, but I knew from looking at the ticket and seeing the section and rows on it that the seat was indeed a good one.

What I didn’t know was how good. The stars aligned in such a way that after I paid the man for my ticket, I walked into the I-Wireless Center and was greeted by the sound of an intermission crowd buying beer, Scorpions t-shirts, and slowly making progress in the lines for the restroom.

I made it before show time.

An usher pointed me to my seat, and I did a double take to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. Row 12, section B placed me right in front of the stage catwalk, which meant that everything timed out perfectly to where I had gotten front-row seats to the Scorpions show.

I’m not sure how other stops on the tour are doing, but for this Quad City stop the venue was maybe half-full. They had even partitioned off the top level of the arena since no seats were sold for it and no band that’s touring for their 40th year of existence wants to visually see how strained their appeal has become.

There were very few in attendance under the age of 30 and I noticed that one parent had brought his 9-year-old girl to sing along with “Tease Me, Please Me.” There were also a lot of decent looking, middle-aged ladies who did their best at dolling up to make a good visual impression with their husbands, boyfriends, or to the members of the Scorpions’ video crew.

My neighbor was a forty-year old, well-dressed Mexican man who was sweating away the beers he consumed during Dokken and was manageably inebriated in preparation for the Scorpions set. “I was drunk and a little high last night and on the computer,” he offered, “and I just went to the website and bought a ticket. I had no idea that I got seats this close!”

I didn’t spoil his story by letting he know that I had literally just walked up to the arena and gotten my ticket for the same spot, but I shared with him that our seats were indeed “Awesome!” and that our seats would automatically make the show “Awesome!”

And with perfect timing, the lights darkened and the Scorpions took the stage with the title track of their latest album. Their set was fantastically appointed with two giant video screens that would often match the pixelated light sequence of an illuminated grid that covered the band’s gear. The drums were hoisted on a platform that immediately began to rise, causing my new friend to exclaim “Holy shit! That’s awesome!”

It was awesome, but not as great as when guitarist Rudolph Schenker came out on the catwalk, opened his mouth wide and began playing his custom-made flying V that had a Mercedes Benz logo on the headstock. There was another Mercedes logo on one of the “V’s” that went through the entire body of the guitar.

Throughout the night, he would offer up other Flying Vs: a Ferrari edition with the appropriate color schemes and a hollow cutaway for that brand’s logo, an infamous half black/half white model that’s been a mainstay of his collection, and a vintage blond model that’s seen plenty of action. I was so close that I could hear the sound of him strumming the strings before I heard the amplified results coming from the P.A.

Matthias Jabs also found his home on the catwalk. Jabs was wide-eyed and smiling with his mouth open during the entire set. He’d occasionally blow a kiss to a foxy MILF or scrunch up his face (still grinning) whenever he’d offer a bit of tasty fretwork. He played a variety of guitars too, but I was a bit shocked when he used a couple of Cort models, a low-priced Korean guitar maker who is more famously known for the atrocious working conditions of its guitar factory than with their guitar quality.

Drummer James Kottak fancies himself as a good enough musician to warrant a ten minute drum solo, which featured a video collage of him acting in short vignettes that identified some of the band’s most notable albums while managing to steer clear of their ’70s output, with the exception of their breakthrough U.S. album, Lovedrive. Most of the albums they featured would have included drummer Herman ‘Ze German’ Rarebell on them, but Kottak does a good job of acting the Wildman part.

At the end of his solo—drum riser about twenty feet in the air-he jumped on top of his kit, turned his back to the crowd to reveal his t-shirt to read “Rock & Roll Forever” on the back. He then took off his shirt to reveal that he had the exact same lettering tattooed across his back permanently.

“That guy’s fucking crazy, man!” declared my neighbor.

It turns out that the guy even has his own t-shirts for sale with “Kottak Attack” on the front and—you guessed it—”Rock & Roll Forever” on the back. A quick glance at the man’s website shows that, prior to his stint with the Scorpions for the past fifteen years, he was one of the members of Kingdom Come. And since Kingdom Come was pretty great in a Led Zeppelin clone kind of way, I have no issue with James Kottak franchising himself.

The only disadvantage to being that close to the stage is that you have a chance to see just how much your old school metal acts have aged. Matthias Jabs looks no worse for the wear, opting for a hat during the entire proceedings, presumably to hide his diminishing follicles.

At 61 years of age, Rudolph Schenker looks fabulously toned and carefully shone in his close-cropped platinum blond spike top. He is a master rhythm guitar player, cutting through the staccato introductions of “Blackout,” “The Zoo” (Neighbor: “Oh my God! I can’t believe they’re playing this!”), and “Big City Nights.” At the end of most songs, he’d strike an iconic hard rock pose, usually with pointing his Flying V up in the air, out towards the crowd, or out to the outstretched arms in phallic symbolism. There were moments where I felt giddy inside thinking, “Rudy Schenker is an arms-length away from me!”

But there was nothing compared to the moment when the lead singer of the Scorpions walked down the catwalk to similar proximity, prompting me to think, “Klaus Meine is an arms-length away from me…and he’s really old.” At sixty two years of age, Meine looks his age up close and that fully explains why the video screen projection of the based was either colorfully pixelated or with footage from the archives.

His voice has tapered somewhat and he was visibly winded by the last third of the set, but Klaus gets a pass because he continually worked the crowd treating the newer material with a bit more attention than was needed. After the power ballad “The Best Is Yet To Come” from the recent Sting In The Tail, Meine cajoled the crowd for over five minutes until they sung the refrain to his satisfaction.

Then he made us do it again.

He also took part in a bit of each song’s closing poses, which were accented with endless measures of last guitar notes and cymbal crashes. During one pose, he put one foot on Jabs’ thigh and the other on Schenker’s and then balanced himself up into some high-school cheerleader pose. The entire band made it to the end for a pair of acoustic songs, the power ballad “Send Me An Angel,” complete with an increasingly clichéd Dio tribute and Lovedrive‘s “Holiday.”

With every rehearsed pose, each prolonged final chord and every silly bit of stage banter (Klaus’ best bit: “Hello Quad City Moline United States! Are you ready to rock and roll toniiiigggghhhht?!”) there was something strangely enduring about their performance.

I hope shows like these aren’t a dying breed; they provide a necessary bit of tension release. One of the Scorpions’ most notable talents is their ability to shuck off every bit your dismal life with a message of “Our interpretation of the English language is questionable, but we play really good, enjoy having a good time and would like for you to loosen up for a couple of hours!” And after forty years of existence, they still possess that ability.

According to my neighbor, he had recently seen Aerosmith and reported that “the Scorpions are working the crowd up a lot more than those guys!” He also kept telling me how much he hoped they played “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” Having glanced at the setlist of this tour beforehand, I knew that they were saving this song for last, during the two-song encore.

After they came back out with “There’s No One Like You” (which prompted immediate vocalization from every woman in attendance), the band set out with the song that rocks so much that it creates nautical gale force winds. Right before they began playing it, I pulled my neighbor closer and told him, “They’re going to play your song now.”

On cue, the band started playing. The man returned with a legitimate surprise of “How did you know, man! This is awesome!” and became so worked up that he began pushing himself up the barrier to hoist himself to get Rudolph Schenker’s attention directly in front of him. Rudy opened his mouth in another one of his silent scream faces and security personnel came over to us to advise my neighbor to stand down.

Was the enjoyment gained from the Scorpions’ performance on Friday night due to the chemically altered waves of nostalgia and the fortunate acquisition of choice seats?

Absolutely.

But I’d like to also believe that the Scorpions’ history of endless tours and countless sets would make even the most cynical of music fan smile with some level of appreciation. Their adhesion to the familiar arena code now seems positively fresh in a world of autotune, lip-syncing, and indifference.

There’s a place for bands like Scorpions, a goal for other like-minded acts to attain and a model for anti-arena bands to avoid. In either case, those bands will have to put in some long hours to match the band’s work ethic and sheer ability.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Suzanne Vega Live In Iowa City

Suzanne Vega

Live At The Englert Theatre, Iowa City, Iowa

September 28, 2013

We were kidless.

And for those of you with children, you understand how precious those moments are.

It’s during these times when you sleep in until 10:00 am, which is like noon in twenty-something years.

It’s during these times you let the phone go to voice mail.

It’s during these times you go to restaurants you don’t go to as a family, because they don’t have kid’s menus or mechanical animals on a pretend stage.

It’s during these times you pretend Suzanne Vega concerts qualify as “a romantic night out.”

I’ll confess that when I purchased the tickets at the beginning of summer, it was an impulse purchase. I instinctively put a pair of tickets into the shopping cart about five minutes after learning of the show at Iowa City’s Englert Theatre, which has now become a haunt that I visit with the same frequency as I used to for Gabe’s Oasis a few decades ago.

It is not lost on me that this is clearly a sign of growing older, but then again, isn’t the entire notion of buying tickets to a Suzanne Vega concert?

As a matter of fact, when I shared that I had just purchased tickets to see Vega to others, most reactions were ones of limited familiarity or complete ambivalence. It was over a quarter-century ago when the singer/songwriter was saddled with the unfortunate title as the artist responsible for spearheading the female folk revival of the mid-80’s while Vega is now saddled with the prospect of having to explain what the female folk revival of the mid-80’s even was.

Briefly, the notion of an artist even picking up an acoustic instrument in a decade seemingly intent on making music sound as artificially enhanced as possible was a fairly novel one in that decade. So performers like Vega, Michelle Shocked, the Indigo Girls and others were somewhat unusual. That unique distinction made them successful, but now, a time when such respectful simplicity is a mainstream winner, acts like Vega are often forgotten.

"Here's one from Slayer..."

Not that I’m trying to elicit sympathy for Ms. Vega as she navigates the new music business model, because the last time I bothered checking her catalog, I noticed that a lot of her new material was simply new recordings of her old material. That usually spells a conflict with an old label that still retains the rights of an artist’s most popular recordings, or it spells an artist who doesn’t intend on pretending that new material is going to attract new listeners. While I don’t have a horse in that race, I can only tell you that those original issues already have a firm grip on my heart, so there’s no need to check out a different incarnation.

The firm grip that I speak of began one afternoon as I traveled from my hometown of Keokuk, Iowa for the weekend to visit some friends in Iowa City. I had decided to pursue my higher education at the community college level, forcing myself to take nothing but the required curriculum at the local level instead of risking the possibility that the unlimited freedom of a state university may be too much of a distraction for me.

Like Bob Dylan said, “You went to the finest schools, alright…but you only used to get juiced in it.” I was trying to avoid that. And by the second semester, I noticed a few new faces at the community college that were forced or pulled back home because they weren’t able to maintain a passing grade at the big university.

While I’d like to pretend that this decision was entirely responsible, I still managed to find ample time to visit friends in the bigger schools to get an idea of what exactly I was missing.

I have to admit, those were great times. Not only did I pass my first year in the community college (I got high enough of a grade point average to be accepted in all of the four universities’ I applied at), I was able to gauge my tolerance for the extra-curricular activities outside of the lecture halls.

Part of that tolerance included the world of hallucinogens, a world that I drove up to experience during a weekend with a friend who lived in an off-campus apartment.

They say that it’s best to properly prepare for such “trips” and, looking back, it seemed that we really took this advice to heart.

A mutual friend acquired some hallucinogenic mushrooms, a drug that we deemed to be morally acceptable because it was organically derived. For some reason, this was important back then.

We picked a weekend in which my friend’s roommate would be out of town, at least for the night in which we planned a dinner of spaghetti and marinara sauce laced with psilocybin mushrooms.

My friend’s roommate was a magician. More on that later.

On the way to his apartment, I tuned into the student run radio station that came into signal right around Riverside, Iowa. The small community is about 15 miles to the south of Iowa City, giving you an idea of the limitation of KRUI-FM’s transmitter strength.

As with most student-run radio stations, the playlist is filled with new music, eclectic offerings, most which are based on the disc jockey’s whim. It is at that moment when the disc jockey ended a music set with Suzanne Vega’s song, “Small Blue Thing,” a new acoustic song from her just released debut.

That afternoon, before the spaghetti dinner, my friend and I visited downtown Iowa City and hit the required retail outlets of the day, which included the college town’s record stores and lone head shop, The Third Coast. Don’t look for it anymore, it’s not there. Kids don’t do drugs anymore because they get them prescribed from their physician.

At one of those record stores, I purchased the debut album from Suzanne Vega.

By midnight, my mind was expanded, all right, but I will go on record to say that I am a better man for it.

I’m sure that during the time of hallucinating the scene was far from one that suggested that my friend and I were doing anything remotely productive or creative, but give us a break, we had never done this kind of thing before.

There is, somewhere still in my possession, a cassette recording of some of these events. On the sixty minutes of incriminating evidence, there is the sound of my friend taking out every pot and pan that he owned out of his kitchen cabinets, for what reason, I am not entirely sure.

At one point, he calls out for me in some manner of distress. It is obvious from the recording that I am in another room. And even though you cannot hear me at the moment my friend called out for me to return, I know exactly where I had made off too.

I had opened the door to his roommate’s bedroom and discovered a cage with a bunny in it. Like I mentioned before, he was a magician in his spare time, which meant that he would pull a rabbit out of his hat on occasion. Literally. I know then nuance of this trick because my friend and I made $50 once for helping him at one of his gigs. From the back of the stage, you could see the rabbit almost escape from the hat’s secret compartment before the big reveal. He recovered well.

Given my state, the rabbit was a remarkable find. My friend had advised me that his roommate’s room was off limits, but that rule was overlooked when he began examining all of his cookware.

Later on in the tape, the cd of Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced began to skip, causing me to immediately to become concerned.

Fuck the rabbit, the technical difficulties were twisting my melon.

The calming quality of “Small Blue Thing” was the first song that came to mind.

I fought with the packaging of the Suzanne Vega disc that I had just purchased and placed the fresh disc into the tray of the CD player.

I pushed play and everything was better.

I remained faithful to Suzanne Vega through 99.9° F, and then somehow are paths separated. But when I saw that she would be playing in Iowa City, the same town in which we first met in nearly three decades before, I felt that faith was involved.

Surprisingly, my wife remembered who she was, albeit it much more traditional fashion. As a kid, she liked Vega’s remixed version of “Tom’s Diner” with DNA, while being totally oblivious to the fact that the song was originally an a cappella track from Vega’s 1987 album, Solitude Standing. She claimed not to remember Vega’s only other hit, “Luka,” also from Solitude Standing, but seemed to recall it when I played it to her.

Since we were a couple for the weekend of the show, we did exactly what you’d expect a couple free of their children for the weekend would do: we napped. The show was early enough (8:00 pm) on a Saturday night, but our newfound opportunity to sleep put us in the precarious position of not being able to have enough time to enjoy a legitimate couple’s dinner at an appropriate restaurant.

I picked a Plan B option: an Irish pub down the street from the Englert that, I’m very happy to say, is exactly the same as it was when I used to visit it during those times from long ago. And since the entire evening was fueled by nostalgia anyway, Mickey’s seemed like the perfect place to pick up a quick sandwich before the show.

The continue to offer the same sandwich that I would have ordered back then and, in a true sign of progress, they now force any smoker’s to go outside to light up.

Another sign of progress: I was probably the oldest person in the bar, a fact that my wife-a dozen years my junior-seemed to get immense pleasure from.

Making our way from Mickey’s, past the homeless and the religious man who was called the read the Bible on the corner of downtown Iowa City on a Saturday night, we walked back to the Englert and took our seats, wonderfully located about four rows back from the stage.

Like I said, I ordered tickets the day they were available.

The show was part of the Iowa Women’s Music Festival and brought a bigger crowd than what my wife was anticipating. The audience contained a lot of couples like ourselves, with the primary difference being that it appeared that it the wives were the ones dragging their husband’s to the show, while for us, it was the other way around.

There seemed to be a higher percentage of lesbian couples in the audience, not that it mattered to us, but it was something we both quietly observed.

And a large contingency of Asian women, including one directly in front of us that nearly jumped out of her seat when Vega dusted off “The Queen And The Soldier” from her first album.

I always felt that tune was kind of corny, but since I’m all about Suzanne Vega, I didn’t complain much.

The set was filled with an ample overview of Vega’s work, a fact that the artist declared right out of the gate by saying, “I supposed we should probably start at the very beginning.” before beginning the show with “Marlene On The Wall.”

Cross one “I hope she sings…” off the list I had in my mind when I was driving down to the show.

Vega whipped out a top hat that I didn’t notice was sitting on a music stand next to her on stage. She placed it on her head in mock showmanship, eliciting a round of applause from the audience who seemed to anticipate the evening as much as I did.

On her left was another guitarist, a grey-haired man working an electric instrument that she identified as Gerry Leonard. “Gerry played on the new David Bowie record.” She advised later on, and sure as shit, his name is all over The Next Day’s performer credits, including a few songwriting credits with Bowie.

Leonard was awesome, a completely understated guitarist with a wide disposal of pedals at his feet which he puts to good use. The highlight came during an unexpected version of “Blood Makes Noise” in which he triggers a loop of a guitar phrase and begins to add some nifty, angular riffs on top of it.

Gerry often provided a nice atmospheric backdrop to Vega’s acoustic rhythms, although the pair would often interplay off each other in straightforward folk progressions. Leonard used an EBow-a device that uses an electromagnetic field to vibrate the strings into ambient drones similar to a bowed instrument-for a song, but more often than not, the active movement of his feet suggested a lot of his bags of tricks were right there on the floor in front of him.

Even my wife was impressed, and she likes Slipknot.

Aside from the duo, a sign language interpreter was off to stage left, having the difficult task of translating all of Vega’s wordy lyrics into visual meanings.

Vega’s set primarily focused on her most her older material, including one track that she paused at the beginning of the verse to recall the lyric, asked her soundman for help, but ended up using the help of an audience member to continue. “You’re right!” she admitted to the fan, taking the lapse of recall good-naturedly.

She brought out “Left Of Center” from the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, which prompted a few enthusiastic cheers from the audience, most of whom (like me) were teenagers when that John Hughes film was first released.

And true to my age, I had completely forgotten that “Left Of Center” was even on Pretty In Pink, but I do remember how the soundtrack featured a large portion of A&M Record roster artists, Vega being one of them. The track’s inclusion was a nice reminder of that coming of age flick, even though it also reminded me how Hughes was wrong to have Molly Ringwald’s character choose that rich prick Blane over Duckie. Fuck that guy.

Vega brought out some new material for an album she hoped to be released “in February” of next year. One of the tracks that may or may not be included on it was a wonderful piece that was featured in the Vaclav Havel memorial show, celebrating the Czech president/writer after he passed away in 2011. The song was evidently brought into the set after Vega travelled through my town of Cedar Rapids on route to the Englert and noticed our Czech/Slovak museum that recently re-opened after the 2008 floods here. It was nice that she pays attention to the places that she visits and the song’s inclusion was welcomed.

At the end of the set, Vega put her guitar down, grabbed her trusty top hat, and made her way to the front of the stage for a version of “Tom’s Diner,” a song she introduced as “a little slice of New York City.” Coffee cups featuring the song title were also available at the small merchandise table in the lobby of the theatre.

One of the women who dragged her husband along to the show got up, moved to the aisle and began dancing. Her husband watched her leave his side before deciding that he should not leave her alone to such spontaneity. He joined her as guitarist Leonard worked out a makeshift rhythm on his guitar, allowing for a growing number in the crowd to stand up and move before the show ended.

Vega stuck around afterwards, to sign copies of her book in the lobby, an offer that many fans took advantage of.

My wife and I didn’t, particularly since I’m much older now and it was past my bedtime.

Besides, I don’t know if Ms. Vega would have appreciated the full extent of our history together and it’s probably not a story that most artists would care about hearing about.

But trust me, lines like “I am scattering like light” (“Small Blue Thing”) served a very important purpose in my life, and Suzanne Vega seemed to be a pre-ordained title that reached my younger ears with specific intentions.

Years later, Vega’s voice continues to be in fine form and her talents undiminished. And while my mind has suffered little from the effects of those magic mushrooms and more from the aging process, I’m still able to remember how Suzanne Vega was a calming voice during a moment when my synapses were triggering misleading visuals and reeking havoc on my auditory senses.

The more things change, I suppose, but it’s nice to know that they can still stay the same even with a clean mind bearing witness.

It reminds me of a lyric of Vega that applies, even though the intent of them was admittedly much different: “I’ve come to set a twisted thing straight.” And for once, this straight mind was pleasantly reminded of a few days when things definitely got a little twisted.

Saxon Live In Waterloo

Saxon

Live At Spicoli's, Waterloo, Iowa

September 24, 2013

“Who’s up next?” I asked the twenty-something gentleman at the door of the Spicoli’s, a fairly innocuous club off of the main drag in Waterloo. My friend and I had rolled into town about quarter hour before, preparing for the show by hanging out in the parking lot of the venue. The crowd looked pretty good for a Tuesday night judging by the number of cars outside, but it also looked like people were leaving at a rapid rate, compared to the ones who were staying.

The line-up included a pair of local openers as well as Fozzy, a metal band fronted by WWE wrestler Chris Jericho. I’ve never heard the band before, but I had heard of them.

I just never felt the need to explore a band that was fronted by a WWE wrestler, aside from the Honky Tonk Man’s entrance theme from Piledriver: The Wrestling Album 2.

The news about Jericho was interesting to my son, who is currently grounded from watching WWE wrestling because he liked to emulate the wrestlers, trying out moves on his 6 year old sister.

At first, the boy pretended that he wasn’t all that interested in the fact that I would be checking out Jericho’s band, explaining that he wasn’t a fan of the wrestler. Evidently, Jericho is a heel in his latest WWE incarnation, and my son takes such matters seriously. He hasn’t yet developed an appreciation for wrestling heels and he follows pretty close to what the script writers have laid out for him. 

As a result, when I attempted to rub in the fact that I was seeing a show featuring Fozzy was met with his ambivalence. That is, until it was time for my friend and I to leave for the show, then he went upstairs to look for things that he could get me to have Jericho sign. He didn’t completely understand how things like this work, wrongly assuming that I’d be in a position to bring in a shitload of stuff into a rock club, corner the lead singer of the band that was performing at the club so that he could sign my son’s garbage.

He also wrongly assumed that I would even devote a modicum of time to do such bidding.

I was there in Waterloo on a Tuesday night to see Saxton, one of the bands of the original New Wave of British Heavy Metal that’s still going at it, albeit in a somewhat different line-up than the one responsible for their most notable records.

It wasn’t a situation where my friend and I were opposed to seeing Fozzy or any other of the opening acts. We just weren’t concerned with making sure we arrived in time to see them.

But I knew that others would be.

Spicoli’s website was a confusing riddle, suggesting that the doors for the show would open to all ages at 7:00pm with only 21-and-older being allowed in after 10:00pm. My theory was that there would be enough underage wrestling fans like my son willing to spend $20 to be in the same room with a WWE superstar while having no interest in staying late to see Saxon.

When we arrived in Waterloo, I thought that we allowed for enough time to see Fozzy, even though I nearly blew by the place because the venue doesn’t seem to believe in signage. I triggered the anti-lock brakes when my friend yelled “There it is!” as he spotted Spicoli’s in a non-descript location and quickly made the turn into the entrance. It was in a strip mall. At the other end was a rental place. On the side facing the street advertised “For Lease” instead of something that screamed “Metal. In Here”

It was clear that we were in between bands when we parked. The doors to Spicoli’s were open and you could hear the sound of the p.a. music as you walked up. I wanted to see if we made it in time to hear Fozzy, so I asked the young man who took my twenty dollar bill.

“Saxton.” he replied, not knowing-or possibly not caring-that the “t” was silent for the dedicated group of fifty patrons that remained inside.

I didn’t bother to correct him.

Spicoli’s is a nice joint. Good layout. Plenty of space for a rock club in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area, but it looked a bit small for someone of Saxon’s caliber, a band that still regularly performs in front of large crowds in Europe.

"We'd like to thank Fozzy Bear and Dr. Tongue for opening tonight..."

The small stage was literally covered in guitar cabinets while a tidy trap set with double kick drums was nestled in between the amplification. The heads of the bass drums featured the Saxon logo prominently in front with a smaller Fozzy logo directly underneath it. It seemed the drummers for both bands shared one kit, or at least with this date they did, an efficient decision given the small working space.

Our arrival was almost perfectly timed as a quick drink order and a jaunt around the club was all the time needed before Saxon arrived to the stage.

Only two original members remain: vocalist Biff Byford and guitarist Paul Quinn. Both men are in their early 60’s and both men continue to put in grueling schedules, the kind that includes a long list of one-nighters.

The kind that gets them into places like Waterloo, Iowa on a Tuesday night.

The other members of Saxon are by no means spring chickens, nor are they wet behind the ears. Drummer Nigel Glockler has been playing with Saxon off-and-on since the early 80’s.

Bassist Nibbs Carter has been with the band for the past 25 years and second guitarist Doug Scarratt has been on board since ’96. In other words, they may not be the original members of Saxon, but they’ve all certainly cut their teeth with the band for quite some time.

It didn’t take long before Byford acknowledged the close proximity. “Looks like we’re having an intimate gig tonight.” He observed. It was unclear if his words referenced the size of the club, or the size of the audience.

A crowd of 50 people on a Tuesday night would be a very honorable achievement for some bands, but it may have been a bit too small for Saxon’s liking. Byford again tried to play it off a bit by declaring “It doesn’t matter if we play to 100,000 people or 100…As long as we have an audience, we’ll keep playing.”

For my own selfish reasons, this was exactly the size of crowd that I was hoping for. “It’s like having Saxon play in your living room!” as my friend compared it to. Indeed, there is something appealing about having a line of Marshall amps in such a small area, but the real benefit is when the band in front of them is one of Saxon’s caliber.

It seemed that my own joy of the intimacy was shared equally by the other four dozen faithful that remained. I saw men of my age and older, including one gentlemen who obviously had issues in simply getting to the gig. His wife was there to help him to his seat, which he pulled as close to the stage as he could. Unfortunately for him, the small crowd stood directly in front of him, but by the end of the show, I noticed that he was on his feet, fist pumping in time with the rhythm while his wife helped steady him while he was upright.

There were others like him and the vast majority of them much more able-bodied and able to rock under their own power.

The only people I noticed under the age of 30 were staff, allowing those of us who were older to have the night completely to ourselves without worrying about how silly we all must have looked to the bar staff.

Whatever. It's not like they had anything of substance. I caught one bartender gleefully explaining to two patrons how his roommate likes to pee while standing down.

Back in front of the stage, a middle-aged man with long hair and glasses was a fist-pumping machine, requiring him at one point to grab hold of his glasses because he was rocking with a bit too much enthusiasm. He looked like a cross between Garth from Wayne’s World and metal filmmaker Sam Dunn and I can say without any hesitation or sarcasm that this man was my hero throughout the entire 90 minute set.

Another gentlemen in the middle of the crowd established enough space around him to air guitar for the duration. His grin was a mile wide at certain points, and his eyes were glued shut as he shredded on his make-believe Gibson. 

About a dozen or so members of the most faithful audience comprised the entire front row and sang along to every song. Not once did they leave their positions for the entire night, not even for a bathroom break for the new material.

Saxon did not disappoint. They hit every single classic song they were supposed to including the evening’s anthem “This Town Rocks” from 1983’s Power and the Glory and the title track to Denim & Leather was brought out early.

The band was chugging along by this point as the track was noticeably faster than the album version, which speaks nicely for a bunch of old farts.

By the time the band had tackled three or four songs from the setlist, Byford opened it up for requests and received an earful back. Midway through the set, Biff tore up the actual setlist from the floor, admitting “Well, looks like we won’t be needing this anymore.”

He then put the torn pieces into his mouth and pretended to eat them.

In fact, if we were to believe Byford, “This Town Rocks” hadn’t been played live in 4 years, but the band delivered the proto-thrash cliché with enough conviction to fool anybody.

The newer material sounds better live than the studio counterparts, even the songs that featured an inexplicable pre-recorded introduction. I’m sure that such decisions are pretty seamless in larger venues, but for a Tuesday night in Waterloo, Iowa, such pauses seemed silly, considering how the band had nowhere to go when the lights were cut for maximum effect.

At one point, guitarist Quinn mocked the canned introduction by acting as the crowd’s conductor during a recorded choir, pretending it was the audience singing the bit. The band would have been better served by truly leaving the script entirely and focusing on the way things were originally done back in ’76 when the band hit every small joint possible to get their name out, keeping each tune loud and uncluttered.

For the most part, that is exactly what they did.

Early in the set, Byford turned his back to the crowd and faced the drummer, shaking his now-silver mane while Doug Scarratt soloed. When the shredding was over, Biff quickly turned back to face the crowd and looked a bit startled when he faced Scarratt’s back side directly in front of him, evidently forgetting that the other musicians didn’t have far to go during their moments in the spotlight.

"We choo-choo choose you, Waterloo! Here's a song about a train!"

Bassist Carter remained a constant source of joy and enthusiasm throughout the entire performance. As the band’s youngest member at 46 years old, Nibbs wore a smile at every chance, looking like there was nowhere on Earth that he’d rather be than in Waterloo, Iowa playing with Saxon.

All band members seemed to genuinely appreciate the obvious dedication shown by the small crowd, performing a set that hinted at its spontaneity while still remaining tight and professional. What makes this point so impressive to me is, again, the fact that there’s barely an off day in their current tour schedule. They’re hitting nearly every venue that will host them regardless of size with the goal to make this jaunt as profitable as they can. And, let’s not mince words here, they’re old. I don’t think I could handle a schedule as grueling at my age, but here is a group of guys that have even a few decades on me and they’re still bashing out some pretty gnarly speed without a hint of pretention or self-pity.

They are a blue-collar band from England who understand that their line of work still requires a bit of heavy lifting, while still having enough pride to make every gig count. It was an example of self-preservation, but with a notion that they still have a few years left to correct their misguided attempts at a more commercial sound beginning with ‘85’s Innocence Is No Excuse.

From that moment on, Saxon witnessed their fan base diminish and they have been working hard ever since to regain some of those lost numbers by focusing on only the basic elements that brought them notoriety to begin with.

It must be clear to them that they’ve never reach the same levels of popularity like a few of their peers were able to achieve, but Saxon’s salt-of-the-Earth persona is a breath of fresh air in a club filled with cigarette smoke.

“There’s nowhere for us to go, so if you don’t mind, we’re just going to keep playing through.” Byford explained towards the end. “Besides, what are we supposed to do? Hide behind the amps for a few minutes and then come back on stage?”

It was a logical explanation, along the same lines as his earlier comment to everyone who kept screaming for “Princess Of The Night” to be patient. They had the song tucked in at the very end.

For those of you not familiar with the Saxon song, “Princess Of The Night,” it is not your typical heavy metal song. Its pace is quick and its riff is memorable, but what makes the song such required listening is its content.

“Princess Of The Night” is a song about a train.

Let me be blunt and say that while “Princess Of The Night” is sheer perfection in terms of heavy metal’s worth, Saxon was also capable of everything that is wrong about the genre. The band’s entire oeuvre is realistically hit or miss, but for a brief window of time, say 1980 to 1983, Saxon worked a lather-rinse-repeat formula of blue collar horsepower that endures to this day.

They spent an inordinate time gazing outside the van windows and writing about nearly every conceivable amount of transportation. So while every other metal band found solace in a lady’s bosom, bands like Saxon, Motorhead, and Maiden made records about other items of interest in a working man’s life.

For Saxon, that passion seems to lie in the manner in which we get from one place to another.

The next place for the band, by the way, was in Texas, so if anything the Waterloo date served as the gas money needed to get to Dallas with a stop at a Residence Inn along the way. They must have wanted to leave in a hurry, as the band quickly left via the “beer garden” leaving a pair of beefy bouncers to shoo away potential fans who wanted to get close to them.

Still, it was strange that the band didn’t hang for a while after the show, taking advantage of the dedicated crowd. They were loyal to the genre, sporting t-shirts for bands like Accept and Y&T-two outfits also still working the circuit-and they would have easily dug out the wallet for an autographed cd or poster. Why the band left the ‘Loo so quickly while leaving real money on the table is curious.

Again, this is hardly a complaint and I don’t feel guilty that probably the majority of patrons from that Tuesday night had come and gone before “Saxton” hit the stage. Their loss (maybe their age too, all things considered) turned out to make a more ideal setting for old farts at play. Saxon certainly deserved a larger crowd than what they received on a weeknight, but those that did make it will probably count it as a memorable encounter with a still potent old member of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

Black Sabbath - Live In Tinley Park Illinois

Black Sabbath

Live at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, IL

August 16, 2013

It’s fitting that the images chosen for Black Sabbath’s 2013 reunion tour are the same ones used for the band’s last studio album with Ozzy Osbourne as the iconic frontman. The album was the disastrous Never Say Die!, and the musical content of that mistake from ’78 is wisely absent from the set list the band is working from now. (edited to reflect that I just re-listened to Never Say Die! and....kind of like it :)

The cover art is from the minds at the legendary art design group, Hipgnosis, and the title, of course, continues to apply to these elderly Englishmen, one of whom is conspicuously absent from the proceedings.

More on that later, but if the core creative trio from this Birmingham quartet are in place, then you have a reunion tour that doesn’t necessarily need to have an asterisk by the logo, particularly when it already has a © by it already, thanks to Ozzy’s wife.

If Sharon Osbourne’s tactics at presenting drummer Bill Ward with an offer that the 65 year-old percussionist could not live with are an indication of her strong negotiating skills, then consider who she has given the illustrious opening slot for this potentially final tour of these metal titans:

Andrew WK.

He doesn’t perform. He plays metal songs. Presumably from a turntable and providing no real historical relevance to the event or any remixes for the audience that had gathered. He does not he display any actual talents as a DJ. He just stands there, plays a song, and says “Get ready for the greatest heavy metal band in history” when his set time has expired.

Then, they remove his dj pedestal and play music for another 15 minutes until Sabbath finally comes on stage.

What. Is. The. Point.

The point is, Sharon Osbourne doesn’t have the passion of music inside of her, so she cannot squeeze the pocketbook open a little bit more to allow Bill Ward a spot behind the drum throne or to splurge for a legitimate opening band, preferably one with obvious ties to Sabbath’s influence.

I happen to think Soundgarden would be ideal for this gig.

Instead, she taps Andrew WK to go out, play a few records-like we wouldn’t have been doing already in the parking lot, if it weren’t for First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre’s security staff, who spend every moment before showtime herding up the stragglers trying to cop a buzz before getting reamed for $12 beers inside the venue.

If you’re keeping track, that price is up $3 from last summer.

This isn’t all about revenue. This is the potential to deliver to the most loyal fans in music a show that would resonate for generations. Instead, we get a fellow fan-essentially a lucky bastard with a fleeting recording career-with the enviable gig of getting to on stage and play records before a Black Sabbath show. There is no interaction between Andrew WK and the crowd. There is only music leading up to more pre-recorded music and a huge taste of disappointment to anyone who understands how epic this show could have been.

Leave it to the three Black Sabbath members who were present  to try and valiantly destroy the earthen mound off of First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre’s facilities. Perhaps the band wanted to give the large crowd a chance to remember nothing more than the destructive sludge of Sabbath’s might, which would suggest that the evening’s proceedings may have been the last opportunity Chicago would have to see this closet-thing-to-the-original-line-up-as-you’re going to see.

Ozzy has hinted that he’d like to do it all over again, this time with Bill coming, but that silly Prince of Darkness should know better than to speak without Sharon’s approval.

“Hello?” asked a familiar voice from the behind speakers and black curtain, hinting that the show was about to start. Ozzy blurted out a few more “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” gags. Suddenly, red lights began flashing and air sirens announced the arrival of “War Pigs,” as massive as any anti-war song Bob Dylan penned, with half as many verses.

For the next two hours, Black Sabbath delivered a set that was as heavy as anything walking the planet at the moment, and as uplifting as any arena show should be. The band pulled three tracks from their latest 13, which is down from the 4 songs they began the tour with and still probably 1 song too many. If it were me, I would leave the opener “End Of The Beginning” on the merits of its title and subject matter, and “God Is Dead” since it seemed to keep the fan’s interest.

You always begin to consider what songs they would have left on the list if it wasn’t taken up by a new track, and I don’t quite understand why “Sweet Leaf” was excluded, particularly since the band included a “Sweet Leaf” t-shirt at the merch table ($45).

It’s obvious that Ozzy no longer has the ability to hit the notes necessary to make tracks like “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” a contender for consideration, but what they did include was an impressive mixture of deep album tracks for fans (“Into The Void,” “Under The Sun/Everything Comes And Goes,” “Behind The Wall Of Sleep”) and selections that confirm the band’s undeniable catalog of Metal 101 (“Black Sabbath,” “Iron Man,” “Fairies Wear Boots”).

It says, "Repeat chorus two times."

It’s also obvious that Ozzy has been reduced to a caricature of his former self, mindlessly yelling things like “Make some fucking noise, you fuckers!” and “I can’t fucking hear you!” over and over, at least with twice the frequency that he’s done in year’s past.

He also continues to do battle with his monitors, occasionally giving stern looks off stage when trouble arises while seeming to be oblivious to his own issues of being able to hit the correct notes during “Dirty Women.” Never mind the fact that he also requires the use of a teleprompter to recall the same lyrics he’s been singing for four decades now.

Touring drummer Tommy Clufetos is no Bill Ward, but then again, I’m confident that Ward could not match the power of Clufetos’ performance on Friday night. This isn’t to suggest that Clufetos is a better drummer than Ward (especially when Bill was in his prime), but he is definitely a drummer who recognizes that he only needs to give Iommi exclamation points and not layer his fills over an already perfect riff.

I did not see the band this man hit his kit with anything less than a shoulder-high down stroke for the entire set. With every crack of his drums he played like he was personally nailing shut Bill Ward’s doors and windows so he wouldn’t be able to come back to the band, even he wanted to. His solo stuck out like an obvious relief moment for the rest of the band, as they quickly exited the stage after a quick “Rat Salad” to freshen up, hydrate, and probably in the case of Osbourne, receive oxygen.

Raise your fist and yell!...Oops, wrong tour.

It was an impressive solo, if not about 8 minutes too long. The band may have needed that extra few minutes, but the drum solo rule of “No more than 10 minutes in length if you’re not named Neil Peart or performing for a drum clinic” needed to be followed, even if Clufetos performed at a level higher than most rock drummers could achieve.

Leave it to bassist Geezer Butler and the Grandfather of all metal riffs, Tony Iommi, to deliver enough girth to the proceedings to qualify the tour as a must-see event.  Iommi looks great, and more importantly, played with impeccable precision. Smiles came often from his side of the stage, and the band has clearly given him free reign to embellish on his solos, pushing the length of each song to an average of six or seven minutes in length. There are no complaints about this either as nearly everyone in attendance found themselves nodding their heads in unison with Iommi’s massive rhythms.

Smile! We've gone 36 months without suing each other!

Butler, the man responsible for much of the words scrolling across Osbourne’s monitors, also contributed to an endless array of finger-plucking that safely secured the band’s low end. Geezer has all but admitted that the real “geezer” is the fact that he may not be able to play like this for much longer, while his work on Friday evening suggests that he continues to deliver a relentless growl. He is an underappreciated bassist that only seems to be recognized as an other-worldly player because of his encroaching age. The reality is that Geezer has been a master for quite some time now, it’s just taken a few decades for that fact to sink in among the uninitiated.

With everything that could go with this tour and for as much unnecessary drama the backstory provides, Black Sabbath appears to be providing a legitimate glimpse into why this band is so vital to our musical landscape. Except for the temp-status skinsman Clufetos (kudos to him for attempting to channel the “caveman” era Bill Ward look), the median age for these veterans is sixty-five fucking years old. There is no way a band that old can still sound this heavy.

They were so good that Ozzy could have come out on stage and nodded off to a Xanax and Merlo-induced coma and this still would have been a wonder of awesomeness.

The fact that Ozzy delivered a show with merely a modicum of professionalism means that Black Sabbath’s performance at the F.D.I.C. insured venue on Friday night was a required rite-of-passage for anyone claiming loyalty to rock and roll music.

80/35 Festival: 2013 Recap

“That band from Cedar Falls is playing 80/35 this year.” Advised my father, a bastion of knowledge concerning Des Moines’ entertainment schedule.  His database is the entertainment section of the Des Moines Register and another local weekly that he keeps close at hand, usually underneath a decretive bowel that holds his remote controls.

The “that band” he was referring to is House of Large Sizes, a now defunct power trio that provided the Hawkeye state with some of the most intuitive and original blend of rock music during their initial run. Since going on hiatus over a decade ago, the band has re-formed sporadically for quick Iowa/Minnesota weekend reunions and for special occasions like headlining the Kum and Go free stage, one of three areas at the 80/35 festival with live music offerings.

The comment I made to my dad went something along the lines of “I don’t want to diminish the memories that I already have,” which is partially true as H.O.L.S. would qualify as a band that I’ve seen more than any other, beginning with their second gig ever over a quarter century ago. There is nothing like watching a band start from uneasy footing and progress into a remarkable one, and H.O.L.S. turned into exactly that.

With a year, House of Large Sizes became a very potent live band, and I can safely tell you that, while not every performance was transcendent, a large portion of them were and I can’t ever recall a moment where I wasn’t disappointed in attending.

Probably the only performance that came close to qualifying as a disappointment would have been one of those weekend reunions where many Iowa natives returned home to witness H.O.L.S. reunite. There was nothing to complain about from a music perspective, but from the audience it was quite unsettling watching your peers, visibly older, pretending to be in their 20’s and navigating the Mevlevi Order directly in front of the stage.

That’s a problem for me to address. Not the band. Not the 45 year-old fellow caught up in the time machine, screaming “I used to walk to school! I used to walk to school!” while H.O.L.S. tore through their first hint of awesomeness with their early standout track, “1½ On A Hill.”

The visuals obtained from these gigs were enough to have me keep my memories of this great band intact by abstaining from any further reunion shows or one-off engagements.

So when Dad dutifully mentioned “that band from Cedar Falls,” I confessed my predicament and admitted that there were really only two bands in 80/35’s schedule that I wanted to see this year-Wavves and Deerhunter-and out of those, only Deerhunter made me want to get my wallet out and purchase a ticket.

The two headliners this year were David Byrne/St. Vincent (Friday night) and Wu Tang Clang (Saturday night), both of which were not enough to save 80/35 from their lowest paid attendance since the festival’s first event, six years ago.

When I went to that inaugural show, I was a buzzkill. I was suffering from the belief that I had grown beyond the challenges that any festival event prevents (drunkenness, heat, lack of manners, etc.) and that somehow the festival needed to adapt to my expectations.

It’s a ridiculous complaint, and the only way around it is to simply make the choice not to attend, which I have done in the past. But each year the festival presents at least one or two acts that I would like to see, so I’m forced to make some form of compromise if I want to see them.

This year, that challenge came from the band Deerhunter, a band that I admire a great deal and one that has not touched Iowa soil since their inception.

I bitched and whined about my choices until the last day of the festival, where I finally headed over to Des Moines without a ticket, hoping to score “a miracle,” to use Grateful Dead parlance.

Leave it to my mother to save the day, handing me $50 bucks from her purse and telling me just to go and buy a ticket at the gate. I didn’t see the value in spending $45 for what would have been one band, two if I felt inclined enough to battle the heat and check out Wavves mid-afternoon.

But as temperatures hovered in the mid-90’s and my parent’s two new kittens falling asleep on my chest after a hard afternoon play, Wavves didn’t make the cut.

That left the agenda wide open, and only two bands remained in the running.

For everyone else, it was the Wu Tang Clan, who I enjoy to a certain degree haven’t paid attention to since O.D.B. died. This isn’t to suggest that his input isn’t as essential to the Wu as a creative unit, but you know, when does the point of a collective turn into the whims of a few select members? When does all of it turn into a money-grab after the solo efforts begin to not get the attention that they once did?

And when does it all turn into an ungrateful booking where the remaining members finally hit the stage 45 minutes after their scheduled start time?

I was long gone before this, so I don’t have a dog in this hunt. But I do get a bit defensive when an act comes in to my state without any evidence of respect towards the people who paid to see them. That includes festivals, county fairs, and any opening act that gets on stage and mocks patrons like those fucks in Los Lobos.

I’m glad Paul Simon ripped off your shit and you don’t make a dime off Graceland. You don’t deserve it, you smug fucks.

The sun had begun to set when Deerhunter-specifically frontman Bradford Cox-fought with some unruly guitar pedals and barked orders at the soundman before the set began. When the music did finally start-right around the scheduled time, so fuck you, Wu-the soundman had apparently done his magic, appeasing the crowd and Cox with some very luscious sonics.

Beginning with “Cover Me (Slowly)” > “Agoraphobia,” the set pulled heavily from Halcyon Digest, which is fine, because Halcyon Digest is most awesome. For some reason, I felt the need to tell anyone near me that I had driven from Cedar Rapids (2 hours) and paid full price ($45) just to see Deerhunter. “Really?” said one of my neighbors standing next to me, feigning interest. He moved before I had a chance to tell him that my mommy bought the ticket for me and pushed my curfew to Midnight.

Cox is looking older these days, and he was nowhere near as flamboyant as I would have liked him to be. He made the curious decision to wear a black Cramps t-shirt with dark green corduroy highwaters and sandals. It was the look of someone who merely woke up in Atlanta, GA, hopped on a plane to Iowa, played 60 minutes at a festival and then flew home.

This is exactly what happened, probably. But I’m sure the shocking blue Teisco Del-Rey he was manning came with him on the plane. Most awesome.

Bassist Josh Fauver is no longer in the band, apparently having grown tired of this type of thing (touring). This was a concern at first, since he had a hand in one of the most awesome Deerhunter songs of all time (“Nothing Ever Happened”) and it meant that it probably would not be a part of the set list that evening.

New bassist Josh McKay has a pretty nifty look about him, and as far as I could tell, filled Fauver’s shoes nicely in terms of the band’s increasing reliance on strong 4/4 rhythms

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All the girls love guitarist Lockett Pundt, who worked “Desire Lines” into the evening’s most memorable moment. Fans of his reverb-laden Jazzmaster are advised to check out his band Atlas Sound, although I’m sure I’m speaking to the converted if you’re a fan of Deerhunter already.

Don't you cry, Timmy. There's a heaven above you, baby.

They have an additional guitarist, Frankie Boyles, who is actually the drummer in Atlas Sound, so go figure.

Drummer Moses Archuleta is pretty solid player, and I was impressed with his consistency.  His timekeeping was critical in matching the band’s more extended pieces into credible forms of translation. When they were on, they were perfect. When they were off-which was rare-they were nowhere near the troublemaking persona that made this show such a must-see-with-your-mother’s-money event.

The most tomfoolery that took place was Bradford’s banter with the timid crowd; most of their fans stood towards the front while the sourpusses waiting for Wu Tang Clan sulked in the back, discounting the weird white boy singling out audience members for some gentle ribbing.

“What’s with Nic Cage?” he asked, noticing that a member of the audience had taken the time to attach a big picture of Nicolas Cage’s head to a broom handle and brought it to Deerhunter’s set.

“What happened to Nic Cage today?” he continued to ponder, looking for an explanation as to why someone would find the need to bring a big picture of the star’s head to a rock concert. “You guys in Iowa like irony and humor, don’t you?” finding out that the gag really served no purpose other than to confound.

He then noticed a young man wearing a Black Flag t-shirt, who he promptly named “Timmy,” and complimented him on his attire. “Timmy” then suffered regular dedications and even a few alterations to song lyrics (“Don’t Cry” from Halcyon Digest became “Don’t Cry, Timmy” for example) on his behalf. Then Bradford noticed another youngster in a Swans shirt, complimented him on his choice, and then dedicated the next song to him.

“You guys have cool music t-shirts here in Des Moines.” He noted.

You could probably tell that I didn’t hang around for the Wu set, although I could sense it was going to be a long night for those that promptly made their way to the front of the stage just as Deerhunter’s fans were moving away from it. It would be an even longer wait thanks to the Wu’s poor time management skills.

Courtesy of David Byrne's journal. 

As is the case with any 80/35 main stage act, Deerhunter’s set was restricted to the allotted 60 minutes and it was clear that there would be no encore when the stage crew began shutting of the amplifiers still omitting feedback and tearing down the microphones.

The night was still young and the early July evening was shaping up to be a very beautiful thing. I decided to take a look at some old friends at the Kum & Go stage, a poorly named convenience store here in the Midwest that even David Byrne noticed when he was in town the night before, performing and riding some of Iowa’s extensive bike trail systems.

House of Large Sizes had already begun when I made the three block trek to the stage. The street directly in front of the stage was packed. There was a higher proportion of older people at this show, but a pretty big crowd for an act that hasn’t been together for the past decade.

The band tore through a catalog now measured in decades, and it seemed like they were trying to cram everything into an abbreviated set (again, one hour). I remember a few early gigs when HOLS was gaining popularity in the region when I loudly lamented to their drummer at the time that the band was losing speed by the end of the set.

He didn’t appreciate that comment from me, and I probably had no right in saying it.

I can safely say that this is never a problem with drummer Brent Hanson, who keeps the proceedings fit ‘n active by propelling a bunch of these classic cuts into double-time territory. Seriously, it was like those stories about the Ramones and how they managed to trim the fat on every tour, to the point where they would keep tabs at how quickly they could pound through a set, often ending a tour a full quarter-hour faster than comparable sets towards the beginning of it.

Hanson spends his time these days laying the foundation for metal bands in the Twin Cities area (see the badassed Bastard Saint for more insight into his skin work) when he isn’t commuting down to Ioway for HOLS practice on one of their regular reunion shows.

Good thing too: Hanson exudes enthusiasm with nearly every beat, transforming HOLS into a clarion of ass-kicking rock that’s inspiring to the crowd under the age of 30 who hasn’t been swayed away with EDM soundtracks and safe surroundings. House proved to be incredibly dangerous during their set and just as powerful as any other gig they may have implanted into our collective memory.

Barb Schlif. Tuck-and-Roll.

Bassist Barb Schilf jumped and twirled her braided ponytails around like a woman possessed, and I caught at least a few moments where she turned to face her ginormous Kustom cab like she was challenging it, the speakers pushing the air with so much intensity that her eyes began to roll back. The music was literally transforming her into La Dame Blanche right before us in a transfixing display of performing from a completely different space and time. That moment alone made the brief walk to the Kum & Go stage completely worthwhile and it made me miss the fact that House was no longer around  full-time  to recreate this kind of supernatural magic on a regular basis.

I was reminded of when this band started. Barb was still learning the instrument, and many performances found her looking down at the frets, making sure her fingers were on the proper location of the neck. There is none of that anymore, as Schilf has the notes embedded inside of her, but it’s the joy of executing those rumbles that practically make her the focal point of House’s live show.

This fact takes nothing away from the band’s designated driver, Dave Deibler, who commandeered the proceedings like an old pro. He joked with the crowd concerning his age, fibbing that he recently celebrated his 40^th birthday recently. After receiving a few bits of audience approval, he then admitted that he subtracted 10 years from the figure, which only made the speed that HOLS was chugging along with that much more impressive.

What I feared would turn out to be just another nostalgic offering was instead an honest attempt at getting old-school natives like yours truly to miss the possibility of what this band could accomplish with just a few more years of navigating the circuit. Mission accomplished, but with Dave and Barb now committed to their family and their businesses, it would be hard to have them justify a return when they’re making a bigger impact with the gear tucked away.

Big as a house and twice as wide, indeed!

Not only was my opinion of House of Large Sizes changed, but so was my overall opinion of the 80/35 Festival. It is a small-scale festival that regularly brings healthy support from fans of music from across the state. And while that may not seem like much to any fan of music that has a major music festival within a short drive of their home, for us in the Hawkeye State our options are limited based on our population and perception.

The only way around this is through events like these, where financial supporters and the festival organizers put their money and time on the line and we come out and participate, even when we have multiple reasons not to.

Iowa is hot around the 4^th of July and it can stay brutal like that for weeks afterwards. But it can also be a place where we use excuses like that to stay at home, only to whine when the heat breaks that nobody ever comes here to play. Des Moines is changing that with some really active venues, and the organizers of 80/35 are a big part of putting our state on the radar.

My issues with the event are of my own prejudice-a natural part of the aging process that grows tired of large crowds and drunken shenanigans. But the moment you have confined yourself from opportunities simply because you're unable to control the actions of others is a sign that you’re moving away from the very appeal of music: the ability to enjoy the human experience through song.

Don’t get me wrong, if I’m in the middle of a heat wave, I’m going to find shade (and if there are no shades like there wasn’t during Fucked Up and Dinosaur Jr.’s 100+ degree performances during last year’s 80/35Festival, then I’ll lather on sunscreen and drink water like it’s going out of style). If there’s drunken revelers, then I’ll stand clear of the mouthbreathers and find a calmer area.

And if I can’t find a cheap ticket, I’ll ask my mom if she can grab her purse and help contribute to one our state’s best outlets for good music.