If You See Me Crying At A Punk Show, Please, Leave Me Be

     A strange thing happened when I went to see Sparta recently.  The band was on tour playing their album Wiretap Scars all the way through for the record's twentieth anniversary.  Geoff Rickly, from Thursday, was one of the openers and it was great to see him play songs from that band completely stripped down with only his guitar.

     I was running around getting pictures of Sparta's set and suddenly my vision started to blur.  It took me a second to figure out that I had started crying for some reason.  I was able to get what I hoped was enough pictures to at least make something out of nothing while editing.  I ended up hiding in the corner on stage right next to Jim Ward's amp and spent the rest of their set trying to keep my shit together.

     I couldn't figure out what brought the flood of emotion on.  No knock against the band because I am a massive fan but Sparta does play a rather innocuous brand of rock music so I wanted to dig in farther to see why my brain did what it did.  I had seen Sparta three other times in the past year and had nowhere near the reaction that was brought out of me this time around.  It felt like Geoff Rickly was the primer and then Sparta was somehow able to break the dam to start up the waterworks.

     My first thought was the obvious.  After spending the past four years standing next to Jeff Submachine's amp and feeling his tone cut through me, I wasn't ready yet for a similar experience standing so close to Jim Ward's.  I thought that was it but the current load of grief from Jeff's passing was only part of it.

     After I dwelled on it for a few days, things started making sense a bit.  I had a very Vonnegut moment of my brain becoming unstuck in time.  This is starting to happen to me more frequently these days because all of the other grief, trauma and damage of living a life is starting to pile up around me and this is making me a sentimental old fool as the years go by.

     By the end of “Cut Your Ribbon” I was sent back to 2002 during my first live-in relationship situation. We were planning on making the trip to the ballroom at the Agora Theater to see Thursday and Sparta.  I don't know if what had happened that morning could be considered an argument but some weirdness occurred and set the tone of dead silence on the trip to and from Cleveland.

     This was back when I was young and stupid and was living like I was told and expected to my whole life.  We were clearly incompatible people and should not have been dating let alone living together.  I have since become a few decades older and slightly less stupid and have figured out that societal expectations are a heaping pile of bullshit.

     During this time, I worked downtown and would use Pittsburgh's sorry excuse for a subway system to commute back and forth.  Outside of the subway station there was always a street vendor on the sidewalk selling flowers.  Periodically, I would pick up a dozen roses before catching the train and take them home on a Friday.

     It was a few months after this ill-fated trip to Cleveland that I had bought the dozen roses and arrived home to find that all of her stuff was gone.  There was no warning or “Hey, I'm moving out.”  It was like a fucked up David Copperfield illusion.  >POOF< her and her shit had vanished.

     Since I no longer had someone to split the rent with, I ended up having to move back home for a while.  Which was not the greatest place to hang my hat with the large amount of awfulness that I was feeling at the time.  Two of the records that I was constantly mainlining on repeat to help me get through this were Full Collapse by Thursday and Wiretap Scars by Sparta.  Mystery of the crying old man solved.

     Given the amount of years and other life events between then and now, I had not thought about that period of my life for a very long time.  And now here they were, those memories were now showing up in vivid clarity like they happened yesterday.

     As someone that medicates with music, I tie way too much weight to the records that I listen to.  Time, place and personal history have always figured into my listening habits.  There are entire sections of my record collection that I can't touch anymore because of what I've attached to them.  As more time goes by, the stacks of untouchable records are growing and my nonsense is now spreading into live music for the first time.

     Music is something that I need in order to live so going without it is something that is just not going to happen.  So I guess crying at punk shows is a thing that's going to happen to me now and I'm just going to have get used to it.  Great.

Sparta At Thunderbird Music Hall On August 7, 2023

     Here are pictures that I took at Thunderbird Music Hall on August 7, 2023.  The lineup was Sparta, Geoff Rickly and Zeta.

Sparta:

Geoff Rickly:

Zeta:

That Time I Went To See Dinosaur Jr. But Shouldn't've

     Dinosaur Jr. played at Stage AE on Saturday, July 22.  I was not planning on going to the show when it was first announced because Clutch was headlining for some reason and tickets were $65.00 so going to see Dinosaur Jr. and then splitting did not seem economically feasible.  There is no way that I'd pay $65 to see one band unless someone in that band is named Iggy Pop.

     But thanks to WYEP I did not have to miss Dinosaur Jr. for the first time in a very long time.  The station offered a few tickets to me when their attempt to come up with a photo pass for me fell short.

     I never had much interest in Clutch over the years and definitely lost all interest in the band the last time they came through Pittsburgh with Helmet and Quicksand.  If someone tells me that Helmet and Quicksand are coming to my town, I'm there without question.  I was planning on staying to see three or so songs from Clutch to see how they were live to see if maybe I was missing something that wasn't coming through on their records.

     Quicksand was done by 9:30 and change over was done by 9:45.  At 10:05 Clutch still hadn't hit stage and the crowd full of suburban stoner dads was getting drunker and drunker so I said, “Fuck it,” and left.

     After seeing Lou Barlow play a solo show in someone's backyard the week before, I decided that I did not want to skip Dinosaur Jr. because of a weird touring situation so I set out in an attempt to make a photo pass fall off a truck.  Unfortunately, Stage AE has become notoriously stingy when it comes to such things.  This can be added to the long list of reasons why I hate that place.  Every avenue that I tried to come up with a photo pass for the show fell through but at least WYEP got me in the door.

     The social anxiety was ratcheted up to eleven because, oddly enough, the last time I attended a show solely as a spectator was back on September 20, 2022 for the Clutch/Helmet/Quicksand show.  That was fifty-two shows ago (yes, I keep a spreadsheet to log all of the shows I attend, I am a nerd).  It had been so long since I didn't have to do something during a show that I forgot how to stand there and just watch the show.  Even during this show I was taking notes during parts of it.

     The weird demographic of Clutch fans was out in full force.  From the T*ump voting stoner suburbanite Joe R*gan listener to the run of the mill metal head.  They were all in attendance and made for a surreal few hours out in public.  The first place I tried standing had a decent sight line but someone who smelled of salami ended up standing next to me.  It might just be me but there is something rather unappealing about the smell of luncheon meats coming off of another human being on a hot summer day. It was time to find somewhere else to stand.

     After Red Fang turned in an adequate but uninspiring set, I moved closer to the exit.  Even though I was closer to escape I was in the thick of it with the extreme ends of the Clutch fanbase.

     To my right was a group of paunchy white guys with beards and patriotic t-shirts.  They were pounding $12.00 beers as if Stage AE was about to run out of booze (Stage AE will never run out of booze).  They were getting louder and dumber by the second.

     To my left were three metal heads who did not seem to need oxygen to survive.  For the entirety of Dinosaur Jr.'s set they alternated from smoking their own individual joints (not passing one back and forth) to smoking cigarettes to hitting their weird vape devices.  One after the other for about an hour.  I was mystified by such activity and couldn't figure out how they weren't in a pile on the ground.

     Normally when I'm at a show I can block out the behavioral problems of the crowd but this was damn near impossible because there was so much going on around me.  Dinosaur Jr. had the insurmountable task of getting over the crowd's indifference as an opening act.  It seemed like everyone but me and three other people were there to see Clutch and could give a fuck about the one good band that was playing that night. This was a much different environment than the previous weekend when Lou Barlow was accompanied only by the sound of rain drops and the occasional chirping bird.

     I kind of had a feeling that it would be a shit show because of the crowd which was why I was reluctant to leave the house.  But I was curious to see how Dinosaur Jr. would do outdoors with an opening/festival length set that wasn't in front of their crowd.

     It sure didn't help that the PA was being less than agreeable for most of their set.  I'm not sure what was going on but J's guitar volume kept cutting in and out.  There were points where I was wondering where he went and then it would suddenly come blaring in.

     It was weird witnessing one of my favorite bands having to fight an uphill battle on multiple fronts just to play some songs.  But it was worth it to watch J Mascis rip a guitar solo while playing bass during the song “Garden.”  He manhandled a Rickenbacker in such a manner that I never even saw Lemmy attempt.

     “Garden” is a song that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about recently.  It's one of Lou Barlow's songs off of Sweep It Into Space and his songs have been gut punches to my brain of late.  I keep going back to that hour and a half or so when it was only him and his guitar while I was sitting there trying not to cry with my head full of grief, loss and rejection.  It was like I was standing outside of my body and I was watching myself attempting to learn how to breathe again.  It's a thing that I keep harping on because, as someone who medicates with music, that evening was a very profound and healing experience as much as it was crushing on the psyche.  Unlike the evening at Stage AE where no one could give a fuck about art and only wanted to party.

     As soon as Dinosaur Jr. played their last note, I was heading for the exit.  I don't even think the band was off stage before I said, “Fuck it,” and left.  The entire night was quite the sociological experiment and I had had more than enough.

     After attending two Clutch shows I still have not seen them play a single song and after watching a video from the show that was posted online I don't think I'm missing anything.  I don't get that band and can't understand why they have such a large following.  I guess there's no accounting for taste and I'm kind of glad that that's a party I'm not invited to.

Miracle Blood At The Government Center On July 26, 2023

     Here are pictures that I took at The Government Center on July 26, 2023.  The lineup was Miracle Blood, Emptier and Flash Thunder.

Miracle Blood:

Emptier:

Flash Thunder: