|
|
|
17 September 08: Philly Skyline Time Warp: two weeks ago, or,
Put away the old September blues
WARNING: THIS IS A HIPPIE DIPPIE POST. If you are offended by things like curse words and recreational drugs, best to just skip it.
* * *
On Saturday morning, the sixth of September, I woke up with a colossal rock & roll hangover. The previous night at high tide on the Delaware River, my mind was
officially blown.
My first concert was in November 1992, when my mom allowed her 16 year old son to go to a co-headlining show at Penn State's Rec Hall with Public
Enemy and Ice-T. House of Pain opened. (This was after she didn't allow me to go to a Red Hot Chili Peppers show the year before with Smashing
Pumpkins and Pearl Jam opening. I played Sonic the Hedgehog with Gish blasting in protest.)
In the sixteen years and second half of my life since, I've been to a million shows -- Radiohead in NYC just before 9/11, Roger Waters in Toronto, Phish at an air
force base in Maine and an indian reservation in Florida, Pulp in a forest in England, a reggae festival at Red Rocks in Colorado. In the past eight years, the
quarter of my life spent in Philadelphia, I've been to at least 68 concerts whose ticket stubs I've kept, and at least that many where there were no tickets,
just covers at the door. The Roots on the night I moved here, Wilco at the Tower, Dylan and Willie at Campbell's Field, Phish at the Spectrum, an old school
hip-hop night with Rakim, EPMD, Biz Markie, Run DMC,
Big Daddy Kane, Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick at the Electric Factory the weekend of the 2002 NBA All Star Game. Hall & Oates at the Mann, Ween at Penn's Landing, G
Love at the TLA, The Capitol Years, Mazarin, The A-Sides, Dr Dog, The War on Drugs, Spank Rock, at the Khyber, North Star, Troc, the Church, Mill Creek, Johnny
Brenda's. Philly has more great live music than anyone could fully see.
But none of it was on the level of the My Morning Jacket show, a show I walked to from my house the evening of September 5th at Festival Pier. (I had edited my
photos from it and was writing a review of it when my Technology Timeout set in.)
In my concert going days, there has never been a more complete show. MMJ knew exactly what they were doing. There was no opener -- the night was theirs. It was
hot and humid -- the show was on the River, with a steady River breeze. They were touring Evil Urges, their incredible new album -- it was more incredible
live.
It began with that familiar buildup before the band walks onstage, but this anxious buildup was colored with a killer sunset behind the stage, beyond 95, beyond
the skyline. At its peak pink, MMJ walks out and lashes right into Anytime. It's on now, no turning back. Aluminum Park, Off the Record, Evil Urges. Everyone in
the place -- including the Flyers' Jeff Carter, Riley Cote and Scottie Upshall (check The 700 Level for that story) -- is in tune. Everyone, it seems, except for the people who are talking. Talking talking talking. Dude you
spent 40 bucks on this show too, why are you going to talk over it? And when the band plays louder, you talk louder. Why are you doing this? (If you've managed to
obtain an audio copy of the concert, listen to din of the people talking at the beginning of Dondante, for example.)
After catching a buzz and catching a Golden groove, I had to move away from this insanity, this talking during a concert, and get into my own Thing. I wanted to
be amazed by I'm Amazed. I figured that since I was on the Delaware River, I'd go to the River and find my Thing there. Only at Festival Pier, you cannot
get to the River. Liability, schmiability. There is a chain link fence and, how emblematic, a guardrail along the outer edges of the pier. But you can't
even get to them -- the vendors are set up such that you can't go to the river's edge, and where there are gaps between the cheesesteak and ice cream vendors,
there are bike rack barriers Independence National Historical Park would be proud of. The river, and big boats, and the Ben Franklin Bridge, they're all out
there, on the other side of all this crap and people in yellow shirts making sure your crazy ass doesn't want to get a closer look at them.
But never mind all that. My Morning Jacket was not about to go down with my gripey ship, my landlocked ship; they were going to pull me up out of it. Did they
ever. Where the song War Begun is more pretty than loud, it got pretty loud pretty quickly, and the pretty stage lights got pretty powerful, and that took it into
the next level. Only there were no levels. Every single song, spanning their extensive catalog, just kept rising above the last song. Dondante, Gideon, Lay Low,
Mahgeetah, BREAK. Where the band gets a pee break, the fans get a break to soak in what has just happened, what's just exploded in front of their face. And then
comes the encore . . .
I finally found my Thing, at the wordless chorus of Wordless Chorus. I saw a dad dancing with his two children, a little boy and little girl not more than 7
or 8, raising their arms and singing "ahhhhhhhhhh, ahhhh ahhhhhhhhhh." I don't have kids, but this moved me. And then I lost track of this American beautifulness
with the goofiness of Highly Suspicious. I don't understand why so many people dislike this song; it's as though a band's songs can't be actual fun, that the fun
must be implied, interpreted, or derived from them. Can't take a song with the line "peanut butter pudding surprise" seriously, now can we? I think it's
why so many people hate Ween. Clearly I disagree. I think Highly Suspicious maybe is a sort of in-joke, and if you get it, it's great. "I'm hiiiiiiiiigh .
. ." (catch that?) "hiiighly suspicious of you." And like everything else they've played, it's even better live. Then the epic Cobra, from the Chocolate and
Ice EP.
Then it got even better.
If Evil Urges is a 55 minute, 39 second symphony, its crescendo is no more brilliant than its last two songs, Smokin' From Shootin' and Touch Me I'm Going
to Scream Pt 2, each one its own mini-symphony with its own crescendo, the classic quiet-to-loud rock & roll buildup that's been done since before Stairway to
Heaven, before A Day in the Life. And again: they're better live. Only here, with these two songs, MMJ took assists from outside forces to blow the whole thing
open, to make a mockery of "reality" at Delaware & Spring Garden.
As the "diii-stance" bridge of Smokin' From Shootin' was taking off, the Camden Riversharks got in on the act, setting off a fireworks display that could not have
possibly been choreographed. Could it? As if the pyrotechnics over the Ben Franklin Bridge were not enough, the transition into Touch Me 2 brought the hot,
tiring, overstimulated crowd a cool, refreshing, welcome rain. The band's light guy pointed the stage lights up into the rain, highlighting this shower of
madness.
And then Run Thru, the signature, the anthem. And finally, the exclamation point, the dénouement, the noontime nugget, One Big
Holiday.
At this point, I didn't know what to say. Wading through the empty plastic Miller Lite bottles that I sure hope Penn's Landing Corp or Live Nation or whoever will
be recycling, I ran into Jake and Sarah, and I didn't know what to say. Walking with Steve and Afee, and Scott and Allie to the Druid's Keep for a post-show
cooldown, I didn't know what to say. I think I probably mustered a "holy shit." And to my man Buzz and his wife, and of course to Dan in Chestnut Hill -- I still
don't know what to say.
At a lot of recent concerts, I've felt too old for the large crowds, too old to be inhaling clouds of second hand cigarette smoke. At 32, maybe I am too
adult to gush about live music, too responsible to smoke a joint in public, too old to leave anywhere with my ears ringing. Yo man. FUNK DAT.
This night with the band from Louisville, Kentucky on the Delaware River, in the last days of the Summer of the Delaware River, was one for the ages. Such a
night. Sweet confusion under the moonlight. It was what it was, and what it was was phenomenal. The best concert ever seen in Philadelphia.
Coming back out for the encore, singer Jim James said to the Phila-del-PHI-a crowd, broadcast on live radio on XPN (yet sadly not archived there -- I'd
wager a guess that if you google "mmj festival pier" you'll come across a bootleg of it), "thank you so much, you guys know how to show us an old fashioned good
time. We appreciate it, we really do. It means a lot, we love coming back here every fucking time. You know how to bring the fun here, you know how to have a good
fucking time . . . and that's what we're here for, right?"
Thank You Too!
* * *
I took a handful of photos at the show, too. I was shooting in ISO 1600 (it was nighttime and Live Nation isn't about to let anyone bring in a tripod), so they're
a little noisy, but I'm mostly happy with how they look. They're also wallpaper sized, so if you'd like some Philly Skyline MMJ Skylines, please click the photo
below.
–B Love
|
SUMMER OF THE DELAWARE ARCHIVES:
|
|
