Words and Guitar, Vol. 3.5

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists somewhere in Western Mass, June 2009

An unofficial entry in a weekly column that’s usually by Terence Cawley (but not this week). 

Terence is on vacation this week, but seeing as I don’t go anywhere anymore, I’m briefly hijacking his column for my own followup to last week’s entry on teenage concertgoing memories. Thusly, I present:

Ben’s Top 5 Pre-Photography Concerts

I’ve been shooting concerts for almost a decade, and pride myself on having a photographic record for most every one of my live music experiences, so naturally it burns me to have a small chunk of shows between high school and my freshman year of college which only exist in terrible iPhone photos and my “”memories.”” But some of them were very formative! These are, chronologically, the ones that seemed like the most fun to write about.

1. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists / Titus Andronicus at a high school in Western Massachusetts – 6/18/2009

Ok yes, technically I have a real photo for this one. I had a point-and-shoot and I can assure you this is the only legible photo it took that night.

Ted Leo was my dude in high school. As I recall, this was the first (semi) local Pharmacists show of my fandom that I could actually get into as an under-18 fan, and I absolutely convinced my mom to drive me and a friend across the whole state to go. The show as originally supposed to happen at the Flywheel, a DIY arts space in Easthampton, but had to be relocated to a high school gym at the last minute for reasons I definitely don’t recall. Ultimately, an even better setting for one’s first-ever Indie Rock experience.

A band with a leprechaun-related name that I also don’t recall opened the evening to little fanfare, but a pre-Monitor Titus Andronicus brought the heat in the direct support slot. I stood off to the side and stowed my precious TL/RX shirt and 7″ in the bleachers, fearing a mosh pit would rob me of my wellbeing and earthly possessions.

My main memory of Ted and the boys’ set is the encore airing of “Timorous Me” – still probably my favorite Leo song – but Setlist.fm reports a strong showing front-to-back as the band previewed nearly half of 2010’s The Brutalist Bricks, busted out “The Sword in the Stone” and covered both Nick Lowe and The Saints. Holds up as a pretty great first gig, and I’m categorizing it as such because seeing the Backstreet Boys as a 7-year-old and the Mike Love Beach Boys at the Cape Cod Melody Tent a few years later…register differently.

2. Dirty Projectors at Cape Cinema – 4/10/2010

The Cape Cinema of Dennis, MA, has a brief-but-storied history as a venue. Shows are few and far between, but their gets are gets. Bon Iver and St. Vincent played here before their careers skyrocketed toward massive festival stages, and the likes of The Antlers and Japanese Breakfast have headlined since. Also on their shortlist, in 2010, were Brooklynite art-rockers Dirty Projectors at their post-Bitte Orca peak.

This show was kind-of-but-not-really a date, so my recollection of the actual set is partly obscured by a decade-old anxiety fog. This Projectors lineup was on fire every other time I saw them though, and I recall this night being no different. Moreover, the Cape Cinema’s vintage vibe and mural’d ceilings – like Brookline’s Coolidge – made it a great, unconventional space to wonder if your not-date thought this band was too weird.

3. The Dismemberment Plan at Paradise Rock Club – 1/28/2011

This show took place one day before my 19th birthday, and I have the commemorative t-shirt to prove it. In a perfect storm of circumstances, I had recently become obsessed with D-Plan, and they had recently gotten back together to celebrate a long-awaited vinyl pressing of their masterpiece Emergency & I. It was the ideal reunion show, before the thought of new material has even entered the minds of the reuniters, at the peak of their desire to share the old jams with an audience who’s rabid to hear them.

I have a distinct memory of the first notes of “Face of the Earth” ringing out and thinking, “this’ll be special.” Sure enough, it was; perfect setlist, airtight playing, “Ice of Boston” stage-invasion – all the things I loved about this band present and accounted for, and one of my earliest affirmations of the mind-altering power of big loud live rock music in a sold-out club. I saw Travis Morrison and co. headline the Paradise again three years later, promoting their so-so comeback record Uncanney Valley, and while photographing that gig was meaningful in its own way, it couldn’t hold a candle to that first time.

Noise Floor Photography: 2013/11/02 - The Dismemberment Plan &emdash;
A different D-Plan stage invasion, November 2013

4. LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden – 4/2/2011

Shouts out to my dad for this one. Obtaining tickets for LCD’s MSG funeral was a notorious debacle that necessitated (or activated, if you wanna take the cynical route) four additional shows at Terminal 5, and my efforts to snag tickets during a study hall my senior year of high school were foiled by a librarian scolding me for not doing “”academic”” work in her domain. Frank, however, was miraculously able to pull a pair of pretty decent seats for me and a friend – thereby granting me the eternal license to the James-Murphy-voice phrasing of “I was there” (which I swear I never actually say).

The show itself – a nearly-four-hour blowout of special guests, deep cuts and bangers meant to mark the then-permanent end of the band – is well-documented in both live album and documentary film form, so there’s not much I find necessary to add there. My standout memory of the night was the emotional heft of obvious encore-closer “New York I Love You,” followed by the eerie quiet befalling fans walking out of the building. The atmosphere was so genuinely funereal, and my connection with the band at the time such that I truly did mourn their passing, that I felt betrayed when Murphy went the reunion route just five years later. I came around eventually, but I have spitefully worn my “LCD Soundsystem Last Show Ever” shirt every time I’ve seen them since.

5. Wu-Tang Clan at the Wilbur Theater – 12/28/2011

If this roundup thus far hasn’t given it away, I’m game to admit that my teenage listening rotation was not the most diverse. Hip-hop was not a huge part of my vocabulary, but as for many a suburban teen, the idiosyncrasies of the Wu-Tang Clan were a gateway; that they were also my first rap show feels appropriate.

You learn some stuff at your first Wu-Tang show, including the fact that there are way more dudes in and associated with the Wu-Tang Clan than you remembered, and that not all of the living founding members are contractually obligated to show up. From midway through the crowd, and with everybody on stage rapping everybody else’s verses, it was legitimately kinda hard to tell who did at first. The string of unannounced openers and shattering-glass effect punctuating every song – most of them around the midway-2/3s point – were also perplexing revelations. In the end though, none of that mattered once one embraced that the mindset was more house party than traditional concert. Method Man crowd-surfed, a guy spilled a whole draft beer into my back pocket and the myth of the concert contact high – for once – proved real. Ruckus indeed.

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In Terence tradition, here’s a quick playlist; stay tuned for the return of the column proper next week!