Last night we got to see a unique and beautiful show. I’m not going to say the whole thing was spectacular, but it was a very vibrant night of musical drama. There were highs and lows and REVELATIONS, shocks and horror – and greatness.
Kristen and I went down to the Wharf in Washington DC to see Coheed and Cambria and Primus – not necessarily (and definitely not LITERALLY) in that order. We’d bought the tickets MONTHS ago. I don’t remember if I bought them as an early (purchase) late (temporally) birthday present for Kristen – or – since really these are MY favourite bands, perhaps I bought the tickets for myself. Such vagaries are lost in the mists of time and memory, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
On the one hand it was a bigger-than-I-generally-enjoy venue in a city I despise navigating. Tickets were about seventy bucks each STANDING all night, and parking would probably be another $40 or so, plus dinner…
On the other hand: Coheed and Cambria AND Primus? I couldn’t resist that. I’ve seen Primus a number of times (this would be my fifth, perhaps?) and Les Claypool’s playing is absolutely influential to my own, and Coheed and Cabria’s sci-fi infused, big guitar, sweepingly epic melodic metal is something I fell in Love with INSTANTLY about 15 years ago through the trailer of the sadly-forgotten animated movie 9*.
And THEN they added Fishbone!!
I’m not at ALL a ska fan, but they’re broader than that and a JOY. I’ve seen them once before and though I imagine they probably don’t throw their instruments around as much anymore, from what I’ve seen, they still throw their music down with ferocity.
And so it was with no small chagrin that a couple of days before the show we saw that Fishbone had been swapped for Puddles Pity Party, a band that I’m familiar with through the Wonders of YouTube, but absolutely NOT in Love with. A cover band that mashes up songs (so you’ve got a sad version of Crazy Train or Gilligan’s Island sung to the music of Stairway to Heaven) fronted by a tall man with an admittedly amazing voice, dressed as a clown.
Yeah. Cute for one song online but the idea of sitting… or in this case STANDING… through a whole set of schtick sounded kind of awful.
The morning of the show, deciding on the logistics of driving and parking and eating and standing in line, I hate just how unenthusiastic I was about actually GOING. It sounded like a LOT of work. Add in the clown band and I was actually beginning to dread it. THIS is what getting old feels like. Enthusiasm for things you Love, except it’s all too much EFFORT.
I got into my head about it. Is this why it’s so hard to get people out to OUR shows? No – we play places with parking, that aren’t absurd to get to, that don’t require you to stand all night.
No – that’s just a whole other issue.
I spent too much time picking out a t-shirt, debating, pulling out band shirts, putting them back. I used to have a Primus shirt but it has literally disintegrated over the years. Alice in Chains? Tatters. Something else prideful and 90s? I should wear a local act but I just got tired of LOOKING and went with a standard rob uniform of black on black.
It’s just less EFFORT.
And so with WEIGHT in my mind and trepidation about the drive, we headed off to Washington DC.
We battled traffic and used an app to know which parking garage had spaces. We burrowed the car beneath the ground into a dank, moist parking garage and wedged it into a little corner spot. We climbed a flight of stairs and pushed our way out through a side door that wasn’t ENTIRELY marked as if we weren’t supposed to push out through it and emerged, blinking, into the bright early evening sunlight of the Wharf.
We walked down to Anthem on one side, admiring the restaurants and the boats and the diamond sparkle of sun on water. We walked back the other way admiring the dogs and the oh god is that the line already forming for the venue? And we admired all the Primus shirts and all the Coheed shirts and I regretted some of my decisions.
We headed up to a hip taco bar called bartaco and had overpriced (but, to be fair, delicious) tacos and moderately priced (and also delicious) margaritas, dining in an uncomfortable zone betwixt contactless ordering and human interaction in an in-between space betwixt indoor and outdoor. A QR code for all your menu needs but a person who comes and discusses your tacos with you. Air conditioning from one side, hot summer winds from the other.
Fed and mildly buzzed it was time to stand in line.
We listened to the conversations around us, marveling at the broad range of those lined up for the show. Metalheads and stoners and people half my age talking about their real estate game.
Finally getting into the venue and eyeballing it all, it does seem like a lot of modern music venues have the same design. We took the metal and concrete stairs to a metal and concrete balcony and set up camp overlooking the metal and concrete stage and I thought to myself about how much I missed the spring-loaded wooden dance floor of the Vault back in Baltimore.
The Anthem is certainly bigger than any venue I’ve ever played, though with a capacity half of the largest crowd I’ve ever played to. 6000 people on a sold-out night, it reminds me of a classed-up 9:30 Club or a blowed up Fillmore. Out of curiosity I look these things up to see that it’s 5 times the capacity of the former, 6 times the latter. More than 30 times the capacity of the places we’re generally playing.
And people keep flooding in.
The line for merch is huge. The general admission floor in front of the stage is packed. The lines at the bars and concessions to get beer and “Wharffles” seem endless and Kristen and I just claim our little corner and tune into Rowan and Brooke as they take Live from the Lair till the stage shows signs of Life.
The lights come down. The lights come up.
We are in the presence of Puddles Pity Party, and Puddles the Clown proceeds to belt out… well… exactly what I expected. A sad version of Crazy Train and Stairway to Heaven but with the lyrics of Gilligan’s Island.
Except… he’s not even joined by a band. It’s pre-recorded. I’m fucking watching clown karaoke and the loss of Fishbone seems like insult AND injury and time seems to sloooooowwwwwwwwww…
He has an amazing voice. It’s true. He’s VERY tall. But … I didn’t come to see this. And the crowd goes wild. And truly, I don’t get it.
Puddles finally sets down the mic. He stows the plastic bags he juggled and he puts away his inflatable multi-necked guitar. (adding necks to his inflatable guitar over the course of the set WAS actually pretty funny) and the lights come up. We’re joined by a couple of friends who spot us in the crowd – Gary King, a local show producer and Maddie from Wicked Sycamore join us in our little carved out haven and we chat dazedly in the aftermath of what we hath witnessed.
The lights go down. The lights come up. Finally! The REAL show is about to begin!!!
Three members of Coheed come out and they ask for the lights to be brought up further and they say “this is one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do, but Claudio is sick and has lost his voice….” They proceed to lay it out: he can’t even talk. A doctor’s proscribed him from speaking, prescribed silence but… if it’s okay with us, and if it’s okay with Claudio… can we play the songs and YOU guys sing your hearts out and …
Gary and Kristen and Maddie and I look at one another. Holy crap. The audience SCREAMS cause of COURSE we can do that and you can see the band reel from the Love that’s pouring out and … and I’m worried that there’s no way this can work and yet it’s the ballsiest thing they could possibly have done.
I’m disappointed as Hell not to hear this man’s voice Live. He’s one of the most spectacular metal vocalists out there and this must be terrifying and mortifying and … and… and the audience knows the words and it’s immense and it all washes through the entire venue and it’s honestly beautiful.
I can’t imagine coming out and delivering that message to one of our audiences. I can’t imagine being in that situation. I can’t imagine the feeling of hearing that 6000 capacity room yelling the words to you and it filling the space and honestly… it WORKING.
And it worked.
I was so sad not to see a “real” show, but this was a real EXPERIENCE that was immense and wonderful and painful and frightening and … and it’s working. They play their entire set and the audience doesn’t let them down for an instant. The music is amazing and I … I of course know NO lyrics but you can’t help but be moved by the thunder of the drums and the scream of the guitars and the audience all around us knows every word…
Claudio’s wife came out and sang a couple of tunes. I have thoughts.
And finally, in a rending wall of feedback and barrage of strobes it’s over and if it wasn’t for the presence of people I don’t know I could’ve been moved to tears.
The lights on the stage go down, the lights come up. The stage is torn down and built back up again, Larry LaLonde’s immense pedal boards are laid out precisely, Claypool’s bass rig is in place, the drums are ready. The lights go down and stay down and for the majority of the rest of the night, the show is illuminated by swirling colour and video spectacle with Primus lurking and strutting and prowling in the shadows. Not as obscured as they were the last time we saw them, but sans the actinic spotlight glare that outlined Coheed.
Yeah. Like SHE said. Heh. Similar points about Live performance, how important the audience is, the stress of touring. The little old Black ladies below us in the seats that made me happy. The broad range of people that this all speaks to.
Primus is primal. Bestial. Monstrous. Growling and tense and then fluid and jammy. I get how it crosses over the with the Deadheads and the Phish kids, but this is so much more emotive and dark and dangerous than the stoner jam genre. Opening with American Life felt like a brutal statement on performing in the nation’s capital. My Name is Mud, Follow the Fool, even Southbound Pachyderm (an old favourite), they’re funny songs and they’re absurdist but Primus has a dark, brooding underbelly that threatens violence sometimes, a heaviness that you sometimes don’t grasp from just listening to the recordings.
I remember seeing the mosh pit at Lollapalooza and wondering if it’d still coalesce with Primus on the stage, and then Jerry Was A Race Car hit that brutal “GO!” slamming into breakdown and the pit raged.
Tonight the pit swirls and dances and seems friendlier. I’m not going to go join it but there IS a guy dressed as a banana. Les says “Hey, where’s that banana? Bring me the banana! What the fuck’s wrong with the REST of you?!”. The banana gets crowd-surfed to the front.
No, I’m small and I’d break. And “GO!” slams in and you can see it all pick up and it all gets a little more… pointed. The banana is consumed.
It’s my favourite Primus performance ever. Not distracted by an odd retelling of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, not curtailed by being part of a festival, not merely an opening act for U2, but with the complete freedom to do what they please. They never got to playing Les’ NS bass, which implied to me that they either jammed too long and ran out of time, or simply had some looseness to their setlist and wanted to have all their options available….
After a not-quite encore but not-quite break, the show sort of winds down sans obvious climax, but you can tell the crowd’s ready to wrap. We make our way out another side exit that’s not CLEARLY listed as an exit, navigate our way back to bowels of the earth to find the car, encountering a couple of my open mic regulars on the way. We marvel at the traffic snarls and the level of human direction required to get us back out of the Wharfling environs and debate the pros and cons of having such a large music venue in such an urban corner…
By the end of the night, I’m grateful that I’m not as dubious about ever doing another “big” show again. Even if the CONCERT was a bit hit or miss, the EXPERIENCE was incredible.
Still. Gotta see one of those Coheed and Cambria shows where THEY sing.
*yeah, if you want your movie to vanish, release a movie with just a number as the title the same year as another movie comes out with the same name but spelled out – the sci-fi “9” and the Daniel Day-Lewis drama “Nine” coming out on top of one another are further obfuscated by LAST year’s “Nine” in which “a grieving homicide detective, and an elite, all-female assassin group must track down the killer in a series of witchcraft-related murders in Ghana”** – but I digress.
**Huh, that actually sounds kinda cool.