The second set: Now I know this is a real rock'n'roll gig, because it's at this point that the cops walk in.
Not to answer a noise complaint, mind you, but simply for a cup of joe. After the close of the first set, the lovely child and her parents left, taking the good vibes with them—and now the funk of bacon. Cops at a corner table, sipping Americanos and talking into their radios, doesn't do much for the mood, I'll tell you; it's tough to rock out when The Man is all up in your grille. Sucked the air right outta the room.
So it was downhill from there. That said, it felt good to sing "Behind Blue Eyes" again. I'm not usually one to carp about crappy cover versions, but I saw the video for Limp Bizkit's version of this, and was just appalled; der Durst and Co. have omitted the bridge section, a.k.a. "the prayer"—that is, the emotional core of the song—and have added an impossibly self-pitying new verse in its place. I mean, really—why sing us a song about wearing a mask if you're not going to give us a glimpse behind it, and tell us why it's so important t in the first place? So there was a little extra venom in my voice when I started singing When my fist clenches, crack it open...
"Every Little Kiss" into "Earn Enough": same concept as the Billie Holiday / U2 segue in the first set, but didn't come off quite as well—I think because I started "Kiss" too fast. It's a gorgeous chord progression, but a dense one, so it needs a little room to breathe. I may slow the groove down radically next time. And there will be a next time: the results were promising enough to warrant that. "Earn Enough" was great fun, as always. They're the same song, essentially, just written from different angles, one by a band with massive street cred and one by a band with none. That's instructive, I think.
Funnily enough, I found myself running short of material in this set—mostly because I'd dispensed with between-songs patter entirely, and was just banging through the songs bam-bam-bam, too fast, too nervous. To fill time, I did both "Let It Out" and "Tangled Up," as well as two instrumentals: Scott Skinner's pibroch tune "Dargai" (which I learned from the playing of Richard Thompson), and a fingerstyle piece that Dan and I cobbled together that I call "The Nunnery Rag."
Add to that "Purple Jesus" and "After the Axe" and it's the most of my own songs I've ever played in a single night. "Purple Jesus" has been a barn-burner lately, and did not disappoint on Saturday. "Axe" is much more somber, but I had reason to be pleased, as this was the first time I'd played it live, and, even with its complex arrangement (it was conceived as a band song, with multiple guitar parts), it hung together nicely.
A note on "John Barleycorn." Most people are familiar with Traffic's version, which Chris Wood learned from the singing of the Watersons (by way of Ralph Vaughan-Williams); but, this being a true folk song, it's a polymorphous beast. Researcher Peter Kennedy recorded dozens of variants—even Robert Burns turned his hand to the theme, and the story remains a source of inspiration. My version is a composite, stitched together from bits of many versions. It's the same basic tune as the familiar Traffic version, but with a bluesy, bottleneck guitar accompaniment; the idea is to bridge the gap between Blind Willie Johnson-style gospel and English folksong, but listening to myself playing it the other night, it just sounded drony and dull. And slightly forced. And, at six verses, too goddamned long. It sounded like a surefire room-clearer, to be honest.
I've got more to say about the song and my take on it in a future post, but for now, suffice to say that its inclusion in the set requires a rethink, at the least.
Finally: There are times, playing Aimee Mann's astonishing pop-rock nugget "Maybe Monday" (drop D) when the progression just sweeps me away and I feel myself leaving my body, levitating, speaking in tongues. This wasn't one of those nights, but dammit, the song is just that good.
What I Learned
Sometimes, like it or not, you're going to be wallpaper.
You can fight that, or you can learn to embrace it.
Elvis has left the building.
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