Words and Guitar, Vol. 3: Gig Life
The third entry in a weekly column by Terence Cawley.
I miss concerts. This hardly makes me unique among music fans, but now that I don’t have any shows to look forward to in the immediate future, I’ve been spending more time thinking back fondly on the concerts I’ve attended in the past. It seems like a lot of us have been basking in nostalgia, musical or otherwise, more than usual during quarantine, and while I’m always wary of wallowing in these feelings too much, there’s nothing wrong with the occasional trip down memory lane.
As a patron of many album-anniversary tours, and as a reader of many a music blog’s album-anniversary pieces, I have been conditioned to see music history as a series of discrete 10-year chunks. This apparently even applies to my own personal history with music, as I have become irrationally sentimental at the recent realization that the 10-year anniversary of my first concert will be this August. Which leads us to this week’s list:
Top 5 First 5 Concerts
Ideally, I would have waited until the actual anniversary in question to write this list, but I couldn’t think of any other ideas this week, so here we are. Personally, I love hearing other people’s first-concert stories; beyond giving you a sense of what first got someone into music, it allows you to re-access the feelings of excitement and anticipation that concert-going can inspire.
As you’ll see by how far apart some of the dates on this list are, I didn’t attend that many concerts in high school, so each one felt like a capital-E Event. I would obsessively listen to and read about the band in the weeks leading up to the show, diving down Wikipedia (and, sometimes, Weezerpedia) rabbit holes and checking the setlists they had been playing on tour to make sure I would know every song they played. When I moved to Boston for college, the floodgates opened up; not only did I now live in a city where almost every touring act stopped, I could also regularly see indie bands at free on-campus shows. Having regular access to live music improved my life immeasurably, but in a way it also spoiled me, and all too often I took the miracle of live music for granted. Yet whenever live music returns, I imagine many of us will feel as excited, if not more so, than we did at that first gig all those years ago.
Onto the list! I’ve ranked these in chronological order, rather than by quality or any other metric, though just by happenstance the show at the number-one spot does happen to be my favorite out of this bunch.
- Styx/Blue Öyster Cult @ Musikfest, Bethlehem, PA, 8/12/2010
Musikfest is a 10-day music festival Bethlehem hosts every summer. While the main festival is free, every night is capped with a paid headline concert. In my memory, the free portion of the festival was populated entirely by cover bands and this guy, while the headliners were usually B-tier classic rock bands with only a handful of original members, B-tier country singers, butt-rock bands, or rising pop stars who had yet to fire their first managers. For example, here are some of the other Musikfest 2010 headliners: Martina McBride, Lynyrd Skynyrd, a pre-Queen Adam Lambert, and Sublime with Rome (who I would catch when they headlined Musikfest again two years later- don’t judge, they were fun). Given how close the suburb where I grew up is to Bethlehem, Musikfest was probably always going to be where I saw my first concert. Why I waited until I was 16 to finally get off my butt and go to one is beyond me (I could’ve seen Al Green and B.B. King in 2007!!!), but I’m pretty happy with the one I chose.
Even as a clueless suburban teen who learned about music from the radio, my parents’ CD and cassette collections, Guitar Player magazine, the forums on Ultimate-Guitar.com and, uh, Amazon, I knew that Blue Öyster Cult, with their proto-metal heaviness and semi-ironic obsession with the occult, were the cooler of the two bands on this bill. They opened with “The Red and the Black,” divebombing from a thunderous, introductory fanfare into that awesome speed-boogie main riff. I still remember vividly the awe those first few notes inspired, and the rest of the set, from classic-rock staples “Godzilla” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” to Buck Dharma’s guitar solo on a 10-minute “Then Came the Last Days of May,” was every bit as thrilling. But I would be lying if I didn’t say that the headliners also put on a great show.
For all their corporate-rock cheesiness, Styx had hits for days, and though original lead singer Dennis DeYoung had left the band a decade prior to my seeing them, this just meant that the setlist was geared more towards the hard rock favored by guitarists Tommy Shaw and J.Y. Young, rather than DeYoung’s gloopy ballads or Spinal Tap-level attempts at rock theater (just watch their episode of Behind the Music from about 15:45 on if you think I’m overselling the unintentional comedy of Kilroy Was Here). Not everyone was pleased by this; on our way out, my friend and I ran into our high school track coach, who expressed her displeasure that they hadn’t played “Mr. Roboto.” That was fine with me, however, as the mournful melodrama of “Crystal Ball” and the swaggering encore “Renegade” were more to my taste. My friends and I all lost our minds for “Come Sail Away” too, as we had been obsessed with that song for reasons I can no longer remember- maybe we had just started watching Freaks and Geeks?
My other main memory from this show is that it started raining at some point during Styx’s set, and the Dennis DeYoung replacement guy gave a speech about how the shows where it rains are the ones you remember most fondly because “you had to earn them” or something. This struck me as lame, but in retrospect I guess it’s kind of sweet. It certainly wasn’t as lame as Shaw’s endless unaccompanied guitar solo: my first encounter with that most tedious of arena-rock tropes, but sadly not the last.
- Weezer/Panic! At the Disco/Fun./Foxy Shazam @ Radio 104.5 Birthday Show, Philadelphia, PA, 5/20/2011
104.5 was the local alternative rock station, and in the brief period after I learned to drive but before I discovered college radio, it was my station of choice. So when I heard that they were hosting an outdoor birthday show at the Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing, and that Weezer, one of my favorite bands, would be headlining, I knew I had to be there. To my dad’s eternal credit, he not only agreed to go with me, but to take two of my friends as well.
First up was Foxy Shazam, a bombastic glam-pop group who seemed on their way to bigger things before they screwed it all up by being racist. So it is with profoundly mixed feelings that I confess to finding the pre-scandal Foxy Shazam a very entertaining live act. Having up to that point only seen aged ‘70s rockers stand still while playing their instruments, the sight of tight-panted young men wailing, high-kicking, and throwing their instruments in the air absolutely blew my mind. I was also fascinated by the singer’s rambling between-song monologues, like the one where he claimed to have blown a multi-million dollar major label advance on fireworks. Had I seen them just a few years later, I probably would have rolled my eyes at their try-hard shtick.
Not recognizing Fun. as the future stars they were, my friends and I just made the same joke about their name a million times (“oh, they’re just a fun little band!”). Had we been a little more open-minded, we could have bragged about getting into them “before they were cool.” Not that Fun. were ever exactly cool; though I remember the album they were touring behind, Aim and Ignite, gaining a sizeable following among indie-pop fans in the coming years, the singles from Some Nights were played so thoroughly into the ground that I’m going to need at least another decade before I can revisit that album with fresh ears. Apparently, they played an early version of “We Are Young” at this show, though I have no memory of this.
My dad got trapped by the front of the stage for Panic! at the Disco, and between the screaming teenage fans and the band’s campy mall-emo, I think this was a very chaotic, confusing experience for him. We caught Panic! at an interesting point in their career; after abruptly pivoting to ‘60s psych-pop on the 2008 cult favorite Pretty. Odd., the two members most responsible for that shift left to form retro-rock band The Young Veins, freeing Brendon Urie to return what was now basically his solo project to hit-chasing pop on Vices & Virtues. We all know where that path led, but the gleaming hooks of Vices & Virtues have held up way better than I would have guessed, and the massive choruses of “The Ballad of Mona Lisa” and “Ready to Go (Get Me Out of My Mind)” absolutely killed live. They also played a minute-long screamo song as a joke, which was weird but also kind of impressive. Turns out Brendon Urie has a pretty decent scream!
Having already figured out that their then-new album Hurley was a dud, Weezer opened with the single, “Memories,” and then proceeded to just play the greatest-hits set they knew everyone wanted. As the most cliched version of a miserable 16-year-old straight white boy possible, I was disappointed not to hear a single Pinkerton cut, but we did get a whopping seven Blue Album songs, including a version of “Only In Dreams” which shook me to my emo core. Besides, I was never a first-two-albums-only purist with my Weezer fandom, so I was still pretty amped to pogo along to the power-pop gold of “Troublemaker,” “Keep Fishin’,” and “Photograph.” Even my dad had a good time!
- Everclear @ Musikfest Café, Bethlehem, PA, 1/14/2012
Technically, this was the first concert I ever reviewed, as I wrote it up for my high school newspaper (though not knowing how music journalism worked, I still paid for my ticket like a damn fool). I cannot find this review anywhere, which is probably for the best. This was also the first show I ever saw at a rock club, though given how shiny and new it was, calling it a “rock club” is probably pushing it. The Musikfest Café had just opened the year prior, a second-story venue in a larger arts complex where the windows behind the stage offered a stunning view of the giant, rusted-out Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces.
I went with a friend from the paper who shared my anachronistic fondness for ‘90s alt-rock. The opener was an anonymous band fronted by a dude in a tight shirt who made very earnest, straining faces while he sang. When my friend read the review, she thought I was too mean to them, and while I’m currently listening to them for the first time in eight years and can confirm they were not very good, she was probably right.
Everclear got good reviews at their commercial peak, and every once in a while you’ll hear their influence on modern bands like Joyce Manor and Best Coast, but for the most part they seem to have become a punchline. True, they brought it on themselves by becoming the face of pandering ‘90s nostalgia with the Summerland tour, and also by releasing garbage like (oof) “Volvo Driving Soccer Mom” and (urgh) “Jesus Was a Democrat” (also I just stumbled onto this and I can’t stop laughing). But it’s still a shame, as I’ll maintain that Sparkle and Fade and So Much for the Afterglow are diamonds in the rough: tuneful yet surprisingly fierce bubble-grunge that documents the hardships Art Alexakis witnessed in others and experienced himself with an honesty and compassion more common now than it was then. If Third Eye Blind get to be cool again, I don’t see why Everclear can’t.
From what I can remember, the show was good but nothing incredible; Alexakis was the only original member left, at least one of the hits was played in a drab, slowed-down arrangement that suggested a Dylan-esque boredom with the source material, and the setlist was padded out with classic rock covers. At least one of those, The Rolling Stones’ “Far Away Eyes,” prompted an amusing story: apparently when Everclear opened for the Stones, someone in the Stones’ camp told them not to cover any Stones songs during their set…so they went ahead and did just that. Alexakis told the story with a sort of cringey self-satisfaction (I recall him literally saying, “You know, we just LOOOVE doing what authority figures tell us to do,”), but I still found it cool enough to share with my uncle when he took me to see the Stones the next year. There was no opener for that show.
- Nowadays Festival (featuring Strand of Oaks, Bleeding Rainbow, We Are Scientists, and more) @ Musikfest Café, Bethlehem, PA, 3/31/2012
This was a two-day indie music festival that was supposed to become an annual thing but which I’m pretty sure only happened this once due to low ticket sales. My friend and I only went because my dad got free tickets from work; I didn’t know any of the artists beforehand. Had we gone for the first day, we could have seen Jukebox the Ghost and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Hey, remember Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.? Did you know they’ve since rebranded as JR JR? I honestly can’t decide which name is worse.
The festival had two stages: the main stage was the same one where I saw Everclear, while the second stage was the movie theater downstairs; the bands just set up in front of the screen. Nothing extravagant, but as my first festival experience, I still found it unspeakably thrilling to be presented with so much live music at once. I could leave one band’s set halfway through to catch the second half of another band’s set! And I did! There was also a small record fair in the lobby, where I bought Sea Change, For Your Own Special Sweetheart, and Songs From an American Movie Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile. That last one’s an Everclear album. Have I mentioned that I was an Everclear fan in high school?
Anyway, I remember seeing a total of six bands that night. The first was Strand of Oaks, in his Pope Killdragon dark-folkie era. “Daniel’s Blues” knocked the wind out of me, and I’ve been a fan of his ever since. Now that I think about it, he was the first artist whose career I got to follow, if not from the start, then close to it. When I saw him again five years later, he was headlining a medium-sized venue in Philadelphia with a proper rock band, and I couldn’t stop thinking how much we had both changed.
Psych-garage band Night Beats followed, and while I probably would have appreciated their set more after I had my Black Lips phase in college, I did get to watch a pretty rowdy two-person mosh pit, which is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. There was a Philly roots-rock band called Toy Soldiers who dedicated a song to Joni Mitchell, thus giving me an excuse to go up to them later and unsuccessfully try and start a conversation about Joni Mitchell. I had never been to a show where band members just hung out in the crowd to watch the other bands, and my friend and I were relentless punishers the entire night. The worst was Maps & Atlases; I’m pretty sure I’d never even heard the term “math-rock,” so Dave Davison’s intricate guitar playing floored us so thoroughly that we just had to shake his hand. After he walked away, my friend turned to me and said, “My hand was still wet from the bathroom.”
The night’s headliner was RJD2, but he was going on late (11 pm! Way too late for a 17-year-old!), so our parents picked us up before his set. As cool of an introduction to the world of live electronic music as that would have been, for our purposes, the headliner was We Are Scientists. After catching a few minutes of fuzz-rockers Bleeding Rainbow, we went to fight the glowstick-clad ravers killing time until RJD2 for a good spot at the front of the stage. We Are Scientists haven’t really stood the test of time, but their good-humored take on 2000s radio-rock made for a satisfying end to the evening, and “After Hours” is so catchy my friend and I were singing along by the last chorus even though I think we might have both been hearing it for the first time. We even got the bassist’s autograph afterward; I remember him making a self-deprecating quip when I referred to him as a “rock star.”
- The Shins/Real Estate @ Tower Theatre, Upper Darby, PA, 5/3/2012
Almost everyone who knows me knows that The Shins are my favorite band. They were the first group to ignite my love of music, and even if I don’t listen to them as much these days as I used to, they still hold a very special place in my heart. I got into them in 2007, right after they released their third album (and my favorite album, by them or anyone), Wincing the Night Away. It would be five years until they released the follow-up, Port of Morrow, and I doubt I’ll ever anticipate an album again as eagerly as I anticipated that one. Almost as exciting as new Shins music was the prospect of a Shins tour. Finally, I would get to see my heroes in the flesh.
Again, my dad did me a solid and took me to the show. Real Estate opened, and though I liked the songs I don’t remember them being terribly engaging live. Knowing now about the awfulness of Real Estate’s former guitarist Matt Mondanile (cw: sexual/emotional abuse on that link), I can’t say I feel much desire to revisit those old albums, even if their melancholy suburban reveries struck a chord with me at the time.
My favorite Shins song is “Caring Is Creepy,” and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the one they opened with. So from minute one, I was all but jumping out of my skin with glee. The only problem? My dad and I had seats in the theater balcony, and since everyone around us had decided to remain seated, concert etiquette demanded that we do the same. This makes a certain sense, as The Shins don’t exactly make music for dancing or headbanging. Quite the opposite, in fact: a decade into their career, they seemed to epitomize indie rock in its tamest, most aging-hipster-friendly form. It’s a characterization I personally find reductive, but it’s the one that stuck.
This infuriated teenage Terence to no end. Remaining seated for the whole set took considerable discipline; I recall gripping my knees as my body literally shook from the effort. I definitely still sang along to every word, while trying to shout only the most important ones. I must have made the people around me very uncomfortable, or else I held it together better than I recall. Either way, The Shins sounded great, playing a good mix of songs from all their albums and even breaking out the delightfully creepy B-side “Sphagnum Esplanade.” James Mercer’s voice rang through the theater strong and clear, and the new band he had assembled for the tour, which included the late, great Richard Swift on keyboards, put to rest any doubts I might have had after Mercer more or less fired all his original bandmates.
The encore ended with an extended rock version of Oh, Inverted World highlight “One by One All Day,” and I left the theater happy as could be. It’s probably not the best concert I’ve ever seen – it might not even be the best Shins show. But it’s certainly up there.
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Well, after all that, I doubt anyone will be too upset to hear that I’m taking the next week off. Enjoy the Spotify playlist, let me know if you have any good first-concert stories, and I’ll see you here next time!