Funny Ha Ha
Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from cryin’.
It’s not that anything’s terribly difficult right now, it’s that everything’s difficult right now: merging, moving, wedding planning, work, the documentary, rock ‘n roll. But that’s ok. It’s my life.
So we laugh to keep from crying. And in the last few days, I’ve had a few laughs. Here are two.
Being that Abbi and I are moving (tomorrow morning!) and I wanna’ lighten the load (and make a coupla’ bucks), I put a few items on eBay last week. Most of the stuff was rock ‘n roll related, stuff I no longer use: a distortion pedal, Marshall amplifier, acoustic guitar, keyboard, and speaker stands. Now, I’m not an eBay power user.
I think I’ve purchased one thing on the site in ten years (probably some rare REM ephemera). So I was just trying to make educated guesses on things like value, and shipping/handling costs. So get this.
I sold a pair of Ultimate Speaker Stands (hardly used, originally retailed for $79.99 per) for fifty bucks plus thirty shipping and handling.
I sold the keyboard (hardly used, originally retailed for $99.99) for fifty bucks plus twenty shipping and handling.
Yesterday morning, I took the items to Manhattan Mailroom. Packing and shipping the items cost $160. Ten bucks more than I’d earned.
Ha ha.
Then, at work, I received this email:
Hello, my name is Carly and I am a manager at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in Times Square where I believed you dined tonight. I am cracking up because the creepy note you left your server Tom has gotten you SO much exposure!
Tom showed me the note and I told him I wanted to listen to it in the office while I did the nightly paper work. So, it’s in the CD player right now and all the servers are checking out one at a time here in the very office your music is streaming. Every server that has came into the office has asked “who is this?” So, I’ve had to tell the creepy note story over and over and I also have your website up and have been reading your bio to all of them.
So Mr. Benjamin Wagner, your unconventional methods of marketing have worked! Just to let you know, we have around 160 servers staffed here at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company that are all like family and like to go out. Trust me, the word spreads fast! Thank you so much for giving me a giggle tonight and best of luck to you!
Come back any time!
Carly Shanklin
Manager
Bubba Gump Shrimp Company
Times Square, NYC
I responded:
Hmmm, hi Carly. With the exception of the creepy note — which I didn’t write, nor have I ever eaten in your establishment and hence couln’t have left one — I guess the fact that the staff is somehow listening to my music (and enjoying it) is a good thing. Question is, what’s up with the creepy note and who left it? Did they leave something with a CD? If so, I assume someone *found* one of my CDs (as I am moving and recently discarded a bunch of boxes) and left it with a note as some kind of joke. I don’t quite know. But I’d love to hear more. Can you tell me the backstory?
Best, Benjamin
I haven’t heard back from her, but I’m still laughing inside.
Kinda’.
Also, the Marsall amp is still up for auction. It’d be really cool if you’d bid ten bucks more than you might have been planning.
Promise (Live @ Rockwood Music Hall) – MP3
Ken, who owns and runs sound at Rockwood Music Hall, recorded our entire performance last night.
I was thinking about releasing it as an iTunes-only EP, but I’m kinda’ on the fence. The performances are pretty good, and the recording’s pretty good too. But somehow, neither seem good enough.
That said, drummer Ryan Vaughn, who was stuck in the Holland Tunnel for most of the show, made it just in time for “Promise.”
I wrote it for Abbi and was performing it for the first time with the band at a show I booked to celebrate our engagement (she introduced herself to me two years ago to the day at Rockwood).
I think you can hear all of that great kharma in the recording. And even if the lyrics aren’t 100% right, the energy is.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Wonderwall (Live @ Rockwood Music Hall) – MP3
I realize this is one of the most over-exposed pop songs in recent history, but I think there’s good reason for it.
It’s all about the letter “A.”
When Noel Gallagher rocks “Wonderwall,” the E in “maybe” is more of an A. All the better to rhyme with “save,” and — for that matter “me” (so long as you do the same with that E).
There’s something natural and pleasing about singing that long “A” sound.
Likewise, the rhythm of the song. The way Chris, Ryan and Tony play it, anyway, I could strum it forever.
Add in the fact that you’d be hard pressed to find an audience in the world who couldn’t sing along, and you’ve got a pretty decent cover tune on your hands.
Chris and I first performed “Wonderwall” with our ’90s cover band, Buckeye, last November. I think I’ve closed damned near every show since. This live version was recorded at Rockwood two years to the day from when Abbi picked me up there.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
At The End Of The Day
In nearly fifteen years of living in New York City, I’ve never seen anything like it.
I swiped my Metrocard, passed through the turnstile, waved off Robert (“We’ll do a creative in the morning,” he said in jest), and turned for the Broadway line. I wasn’t halfway down the stairs when the traffic jam started. And then I saw it: The subway platform was gridlocked with an actual sea of humanity. A few steps below me, people were packed twenty feet across, and as far as I could see into the station. I reached the base of the stairwell, turned on my heels, and headed out of the station.
42d Street too was teeming with pedestrians: slowpoke tourists, hyper-manic hucksters, and impatient locals. It was dusk. The sky was beautifully brushed with pinks and oranges. Still, something felt sinister.
Perhaps it was “Transformers.”
My boss popped had into my office around noon.
“Paramount’s screening a half-hour of footage tonight at six o’clock. Can you go?”
So there we were — Robert, Jonathan, Rachel and I — waiting a half an hour (some woman from the Today Show was running late) to watch an hour of footage.
Can you say, “Bombast?”
You know the premise, right? Warring alien factions use Earth as a battleground? Chaos (and some light, self-deprecating Shia Lebuff humor) ensues?
Liste, I’m down with bombast to some degree. And Michael Bay films aren’t exactly known for their subtlety. But Sweet Fancy Moses on a Triscuit, this shit was way over the top. We’re talking bone-rattling, skull-shaking, eye-popping action. Helicopters tossed like Tonka trucks. Pulse grenades that level entire tarmacs of airplanes. And explosions — People! Can I get an “Amen?” Can I get a “Hell in a hand basket?”
But here’s the thing. I’m down with Hollywood (I mean, kinda’). I get it: Blockbusters, popcorn, that whole thing. But there’s something about these giant, mechanized robots wrecking havoc on a desert military base (identified as “Qatar – Middle East,” as if we didn’t know where Qatar is) while an actual Rebel Alliance (“Star Wars” reference intended) wrecks havoc on entire Middle Eastern populations that just feels… wrong. There’s something about spending a few hundred million dollars on distraction like “Transformers” when, yunno, Iraq, Somalia, Zimbabwe, and Darfur’s goin’ on. It all feels oddly, well, alienating. We’re entertaining ourselves to death.
And so, when a dozen fire tricks noisily locked up Eighth Avenue, and when I realized I was surrounded by towering, smoked-glass high rises, and when I noticed that my fellow pedestrians with their iPods and BlueTooth headsets had themselves become robotic, well, I started to feel funny inside. All of the signage aroujd me — the faux-heroic posturing of “Spider-Man 3,” the “Fantastic Four” “Rise” campaign — felt shallow, threatening, and ominous. REM’s “Losing My Religion” on my iPod didn’t help much.
By the time I reached 57th & Eighth and found myself log jammed behind a small group of Dutch tourists staring up at the Hearst building — a steely, Erector set-like mass of geometry jutting skyward from its art deco base — I thought, “The future is now. America is ‘Blade Runner’ and ’1984′ and ‘Brazil.’ Dystopia doesn’t happen all at once, like some alien invasion from outer space. It creeps up on you.”
And then I thought about work. Where has all the audience gone? It’s a frequent conversation in Big media these days. In this age of time shifting, nich-ification, blurb-ification, Twitter, Blogger, and special interest, what constitutes a blockbuster? Moreover, where has all the community gone? If not the Superbowl, then what? With broader, narrower audiences, plus an expanding universe of options — Blackberries, cell phones, gaming consoles, cable, Tivo, DVR, etc etc etc — where do find consensus? What are our shared experiences? How do we rally around a cause without someone belittling it as “a focus group?” How do affect change? Where do we even begin to connect with one another?
There was a point in Sunday night’s Rockwood Music Hall performance that I really felt something, where I really began to know what it’s like to be a part of something. I was between songs, surveying the room, seeking some witty banter, when I just blurted out, “Yunno, I gotta’ say, you’re a pretty excellent cast of characters, and it means a whole lot to me that you’re all here.” Whether Leigh or Rachel or Bex or Michael or Chris or Megan or Sarah or whomever else was there for me, for Abbi, for the music, or just left standing after the previous band had exited stage left, I didn’t care. We were together. We were connected. We were sharing something. It made me feel… something.
I kept my sunglasses on well after the sun set tonight, until I passed the outsized and overwhelming Time-Warner Center. I took long strides in time with my music, bobbing and weaving through the crowds and ticking off the blocks without stopping (traffic be damned). I ran through my usual script of inner dialogue:
“Capitalism is killing me.”
“Hey, at least you have a job.”
“Yeah, but I can’t stay in the town forever. It’s soul crushing.”
“Ok, where else are you going to go?”
In the middle of it all, as Midtown’s skyscrapers gave way to Uptown’s brownstones, I settled a bit. And I thought back to the end of last night show.
“Exactly two years ago tonight beneath that light right there, a woman turned to me and said ‘Nice show’ and offered to buy me a beer,” I said. “Those are the two keys to this kingdom here,” I finished, pointing at my heart.
“Less than a month ago,” I continued, “Running through Central Park, I asked her to marry me. So and this place and this night and two years ago tonight are pretty cool. And Ken and Tommy and the gang have my life-long gratitude. So do you guys. Thanks for coming out on this special night.”
Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s all we get. Maybe that’s all we can do. Say hello to the guy at the deli. Thank the bus driver. And remember that being there for each other is all that counts. And saying so. In person. Before the sky falls down and its too late to say anything at all.
Rockwood Music Hall (New York, New York)
Harder To Believe
Maybe, Maggie
The Rest Of My Life
How To Fight Loneliness
Milk & Honey
Promise
California Stars/All I Want Is You
Wonderwall
Live Forever
With Chris Abad, Tony Maceli and Ryan Vaughn
Burning Photographs
I’m sitting on the kitchen floor, closets and cupboards thrown wide, sorting through old notebooks, folders, postcards, CDs, tapes, and photographs.
“Whatcha’ doin’?” Abbi calls and asks.
“Deleting ex girlfriends,” I reply (only half in jest).
I am thinning some two-thousand photos spanning the better part of a decade — My Twenties — down to a more manageable one-hundred or so. The catch phrase of this move has been “ruthless,” as in, Everything Must Go. And so, when I come across a batch from a 1994 trip to Mt. Rainier, I pause, grin, and toss all but one on the discard pile.
Which is fine with me. There’s a certain weight lifted shedding one’s possessions. There’s a certain freedom in starting fresh. And on this warm spring day, I am feeling both.
It’s remarkable just how many forms of recordable media I’ve accrued in the past ten years. There are LPs, CDs, ADATs, DATs, MiniDiscs, cassettes, Hi-8, Digi8, Mini-DV, and Beta SP tapes, Zip and floppy disks.
I find raw footage from the “Jackie Chan” music video, our bike ride across Iowa, and nearly every rock show I played between 1996 and 1999. (‘Too bad,’ I think to myself, ‘those were some pretty rough shows.’)
I find raw audio tape from the making of nearly every record I’ve released (and some that I haven’t) in the last ten years, plus MiniDisks of demos, songs I don’t even know I wrote — plus cassettes of radio shows and coffeehouse performances long since forgotten.
There are notebooks — dozens of them — full of journaling (“Here alone,” I wrote on March 24, 1997, “I realize how much I count on external stimulus”), and folders full of clippings (both by me and about me).
There was a time, once, when I thought someone, somewhere, someday (The Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame? MOMA? The Hard Rock Cafe?) might want the napkin on which I first scribbled the lyrics to “Out of Time” (from “Love & Other Indoor Games”), the the yellow legal pad on which I first sketched the cover art for “Out of Your Head,” the journal entry from the day I recorded “Seven Songs,” or the postcard from the “Crash Site” CD release.
There will be no museum, no monument, no anthology. Instead, my children will have unprecedented access to my youthful ramblings, sketches, hopes and dreams. Maybe they won’t really care. Maybe this era of blogging, vlogging, Twittering and YouTubing will render everyone’s personal mysteries moot.
In Margaret Atwood’s “Cat’s Eye,” the narrator describes remembering like looking for coins at the bottom of a well. Through the mirk and haze and darkeness and refraction, it’s difficult to be sure there are any there at all.
I’ve often wondered if memory is overrated, or if mine’s just worse than most. Sometimes I’m not sure something really happened at all, even if there’s evidence to confirm it. As a moment slips further and further into the past, it becomes more like a fuzzy, shapeless color. As hard as I try to grasp for it, I can never touch it again.
Maybe that’s why I save all of these these things. Maybe that’s why I make records, and hang photographs. Because I know that these moment will never come again, and each one, in it’s own small, significant way, means something great and special. Taken together, stepping back and squinting, each point forms a bigger picture.
Taken together, they make a life.
Wasting Away
Ed. note: I scribbled the following on Ritz Carlton stationary as Abbi and waited out our six hour delay in the Montego Bay airport. Somehow, when I was re-telling the tale of our engagement here in The Daily Journal, it didn’t seem to fit. So I share it with you here now.
If there’s a Tenth Circle of Hell, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaretville (“Where the fun never ends!” Or, apparently, starts.) in Montego Bay’s Sangster Airport has to be a contender.
The place sounds like a grammar school gymnasium or, worse, a hurricane evacuation center during a category six. The tile floors and curved ceiling are ideal for assuring that no racket goes unheard.
And so the blender, the tin-speaker reggae, the UNC Duke basketball game, the TNT movie, jet engines, and general banter — patois, German, English, and otherwise — create a maddening cacophony.
There’s not a shred of sunlight within eyeshot, despite the fact that Jamaica’s got plenty. Instead, there are green fluorescent lights, the kind they use in K-Mart. The walls are some sort of sponged turquoise. Coupled with the flicker of Jimmy Buffet performing silently on the big screen, it’s enough to drive a man to drink. Which bodes well, because I’m on my third Red Stripe and, really, just warming up.
Luckily, I’m with Abbigail, and I continue to dominate Crazy Eights, despite the fact that I’ve lost our Third Bi-Annual Caribbean Crazy Eights Tournament.
Sitting here in the wicker chairs (from which my ass is sure to be waffled well into Thursday), I can’t help but realize that I’ve become something of an elitist. In my jeans, suede Chucks, blue oxford and sport coat, I feel entitled to ridicule every NASCAR hat wearing, fraternity letter sporting, overweight golf shirt in the place. And believe me, there are plenty. Which says nothing of mullets.
My running commentary goes from imagining the actual lives of those around us (“His name is James ‘Squeaky’ McDonald. In South Boston, where he runs a super-local numbers racket, they call him ‘Jimmy The Squeak”) to straight up mockery (“Yunno what’s worse than a white, blonde, American woman in cornrows? A white, blonde, overweight American woman in cornrows”). I would probably feel more ashamed of myself if it weren’t all so entertaining, and we still have five hours of entertaining ourselves before our much-delayed flight departs.
And frankly, my fiance and I would have fun wasting away again in Margaretville watching Pat O’Brien host another “Exclusive!” installment of “The Insider.”
Which is fortunate, because that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Happily.
The Year Of Magical Thinking – MP3
Once again, the epiphany arrived at the intersection of 72d & Broadway.
The first few drops of the first spring rain were falling. The air was thick and warm. Rush hour traffic was slowing. A few blocks uptown, spotlights searched the sky above The Beacon. I was double-crossing Broadway and 73d concurrently when I thought, ‘Everything is good right now. Remember this. Don’t get hit.’
I’m a longtime fan of Douglas Coupland. He might be the only author (save maybe JD Salinger) about whom I can say that I’ve read everything he’s written. His books, from the seminal “Generation X” and “Microserfs,” to the lesser-known “Grilfriend In A Coma” and “Miss Wyoming” have never, ever failed to strike a chord in me.
Coupland has a new film premiering in a few weeks. “Everything’s Gone Green,” the Vancouver-based author’s first screenplay, tells the tale of a “twentysomething uberslacker who is nonetheless willing to fall into accidental success.”
The operative words in this blurb, of course, are “twentysomething” and “accidental,” both of which are characteristic of Coupland’s writting. These are the stock and trade of his novels. Wikipedia summarizes his work thusly:
Persistent themes include the conflict between secular and religious values, difficulty in aging and taking on adult roles, ironic attitudes as a response to intense media saturation, and an aesthetic fascination with pop culture and mass culture.
I never read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years Of Solitude,” but I learned the phrase “magical realism” from it. For me, a tale-end Gen Xer bombarded by Reaganism, commerialism, and lots of other isms, Coupland is my magical realist. His novels are about the Hipsters and Yuppies next door, but with a twist. In each of his novels, it seems, some freakish, random even befalls one or more of the characters. “Miss Wyoming,” for example, survives a plane crash. “Eleanor Rigby” protagonist Liz Dunnm finds a meteorite in her front yard. In Coupland’s book, small, inexplicable things happen to small, inexplicable lives… and change them forever.
And so, when I received an email inviting me to screen his new film in two weeks, I lept at the chance. And asked for an interview.
I would certainly hope for more time than the standard “junket.” Ideally (given that I don’t know to what degree he’s supporting the film, or to what lengths you’re interested in going for MTV), I’d buy him a cup of tea and chat in a unique setting (ex: Bethesda Fountain, or Top of the Rock — somewhere that riffs on the film’s themes). A bit more complicated to plan, but waaaay cooler. Otherwise (sigh), we can fall back on ye old phoner.
Mr. Coupland and I, it ends up, will share some Earl Gray (or something) in a few weeks. Meanwhile, between wedding planning, rehearsals, and (oh yeah) work, I’ve been sorting through Google to inform our conversation. Which is where I found this little quote:
For about four months back in the 90s I kept what was once called a diary, and I enjoyed doing it but what happened was — and I think this is a very common response — is when you start living your life inside your diary you become quite mercenary, and it’s all about ‘will this make a good entry?’
Suddenly your life becomes that Warholian thing where every moment of your life should be something you can sell, you’re always taking pictures, taping everything, and then I think it’s just psychologically strange.
So I’m crossing the street and the air is thick and sweet and smells like moist, warm soil, and I think to myself, ‘Dude, your life is good. This is a good life. You are lucky. Relish it. Remember it.”
And I think about how I have willed my life to be great. And I have worked tomake it great. And I think about how I have chosen to work hard, and to imagine the possibility that there is more to changing one’s life than just wishing. There is vision, and action, words and deed and faith. And then, though, there is magical thinking; the thinking that magic is possible. There are near misses, miracles, shooting stars, and moments when love taps you on the shoulder and says, “Good show.”
So I stop at Broadway Farms (ironically named, huh?), purchase a bag of Happy Herbert Pretzals, an Amy’s Organic Cheese Pizza, and a six pack of Harp, and then walk home in the rain.
As soon as I get upstairs, I take of my jacket, put down my bag, pour a beer, walk upstairs, and write “The Year Of Magical Thinking” (with special thanks to Joan Didion).
“Remember this,” I sang.
You’ll miss it when you’re gone
The way we always woke up with the dawn
Remember this you’ll miss it when you’re old
The way we clung together in the cold
Before the comet breaks the skyline
And the lightening splits the sun
Remember this someday it will be gone
Sometimes it’s all about the thinking. And the magic. And remembering, if only for an instant, to remember.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Actual Email, Vol. I
What follows is an actual email exchange between myself, one of my most-esteemed colleagues, and one of our journalist heroes.
From: KL
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 1:43 PM
To: BW, RM
Subject: From a film publicist — note the underline ref at the end…
In addition to an interesting plot, there’s a character arc dealing with an aging rock musician who never quite made it in the music industry and the limited options available to him after that — a phenomenon inspired by one of the the writers seeing the singer of Faith No More working as a line cook in Cleveland…
From: RM
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 1:53 PM
To: KL, BW
That has to be Chuck Mosley, the original singer, as opposed to Mike Patton… though I wouldn’t put the whole Andy Kaufman-esque restaurant gig past Mr. Patton.
From: Wagner, Benjamin
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 1:57 PM
To: RM, KL
Either way, it informs my daily (hourly) inner dialogue (yes, dialogue) about whether or not I chose the right path (aspiring rock star or aspiring media giant).
From: BW
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 1:57 PM
To: RM, KL
Or as Yogi Berra said, “When I come to a fork in the road, I take it.”
I’ll Be Me (For A While)
Like my friend James says, it’s not like you stop spinning you wheels.
I was walking home Thursday night from another twelve hour day reinventing the Network of Fun. The weather had deteriorated from sunny, calm and sixty to cloudy, blustery and thirty in anticipation of Friday’s Nor’easter. I was woefully underdressed in my sweater and sport coat. I felt tired, cold and defeated. A cymbal crash and chunky guitar announced the sluggish and sloppy but sublime arrival of The Replacements’ “I’ll Be You,” and broke me from my malaise.
“A dream,” Westerberg sings, “Too tired to come true.”
I lived with my band, Smokey Junglefrog, during my senior year at college. By then, we’d release two records, established ourselves on campus (and a bit beyond) as the preeminent art/pop/party band (at least in our minds), and even toured a bit beyond Upstate New York.
We lived in a fairly standard colonial on the backside of a park (Thorndon Park) on the hill above campus (the one I sing about in “Summer’s Gone,” as it turns out). The front door was bright red. There was a couch in the backyard. And each of us — Fish (drums), Pablo (bass), Jamie (guitar), and me (vocals) — had our own room. More importantly, though, The Smokehouse (as we came to call it) had a huge basement.
The basement was a key criteria in our housing search. I distinctly recall gingerly explaining to our prospective landlord (a Syracuse Supreme Court judge) that we were a band (albeit a conscientious one) and we needed a large, cement basement with thick walls and no windows.
250 Greenwood had just that. And though it flooded a few times that year, it provided us something we’d never had prior, or since: our own private rehearsal space. With a kitchen. And four bedrooms.
We furnished the basement with scraps and debris from the street. Four heavy, soiled rugs hung from the rafters, our primitive stab at soundproofing. A few bare light bulbs fell from the ceiling. The ground was cold and hard. I often sat in the corner, scribbling lyrics as the band riffed on new ideas. It wasn’t much, but it was ours. And we spent a lot of time there, exploring sounds, experimenting with musical styles, laughing, drinking, and — of course, inevitably — arguing.
The resulting performances were legendary (again, at least in our own minds). Like the frat party at which I created a circuit between the ungrounded microphone and beer-soaked floor. Or the attic party on Ackerman Street at which a drunken, dancing coed fell down a tall, steep set of wooden stairs the returned to the dance floor as if nothing had happened. Or the time Jamie, pickled on Boone’s Farm Grape, fell into the drum set… and finished the song.
Nearly fifteen years later, it doesn’t take much to transport me to that basement. The slightest provocation takes me there: The Replacements (who we frequently covered) blaring over my iPod, rehearse with Chris, Tony and Ryan for a show (like this Sunday’s Rockwood Music Hall performance), or the faint whiff of mold floating past my nose.
And so it was again last night as the four of us began rehearsing at Ultrasound Rehearsal Studios. The rooms are well appointed: a house drums kit, full range of amps, and PA system. They are, like New York City venues, churn and burn. Band’s get two hours flat for sixty bucks.
The result, then, is a certain task orientation. Worse, there’s often lack of exploration and experimentation. My frequent refrain, given one, two-hour rehearsal prior to a gig has been, “Listen, if we just know the changes, I’m fine with that.” The result, though, is that “Milk & Honey” sounds a little bit like “Summer’s Gone,” or “Go Back To Sleep” sounds a little bit like “Cry.”
For Sunday’s show, though, I took a different approach. We’re recording the performance for a potential EP, so we’ve got to sound like we know more than the changes. We have to sound like we’ve explored the songs, even if we end up right back where we started.
So I booked three rehearsals.
I imagine that doesn’t sound like much. Most working bands rehearse all the time, right? Maybe so. If you’re twenty. And live together. And have nothing else to do (like get paid). In a city like Syracuse, or Athens, or Minneapolis, maybe. Not New York. Space is tight here. Time is money.
The upshot, then, is that the band sounds great. We spent forty-five minutes on “Maybe, Maggie.” We spent thirty on “Harder To Believe,” only to bring it home to its straight-ahead, four-on-the floor approach. Moreover, we laughed, and drank, and settled into it. Which I think will be apparent at Sunday’s show (and/or the subsequent EP).
Life is a “Choose Your Own Adventure.” Unlike the books, though, you can’t dog-ear the page and try another story arc. I may keep spinning my wheels, and imagining the road not taken. But this is it. This is the path I chose. Raucous, smoky, beer-soaked basements will always hold sway over my nostalgic imagination. But tonight, I’ll take Manhattan.
