For the last few years, I have aspired to write about every show I see. In reality, I have not even come close to doing so, I have barely written anything, which is a shame… for me, at least. So, I’ve tried to recalibrate my expectations of myself and am going to try and summarize each month of livemusic’n, hit some of the high points and try to wrap it up in a single theme that captures both the music and my thoughts on music and whatever. We’ll see how it goes!
To start, my take on my October showgoing with the theme of “nostalgia acts.” That phrase is a bit of a perjorative, the thing you’d say about a bunch of washed-up geezers who are still out there just to make a buck or because they can’t let it go and get out of the way and make room for the young up-and-comers. But the fact is, music is the ultimate vehicle for nostalgia and it’s present in some of the best, most original, and most envigorating music out there. Looking back on the shows I saw in October, it was a prevalent theme worth diving in to.
Near the beginning of the month was a special show at Sultan Room, put on by Joe Russo, who was joined by Marco Benevento, Brad Barr, and Andrew Barr. I wore a My Morning Jacket sweatshirt to this show. It’s cool and it fit the weather, but the reason I wore it was purely for nostalgic reasons. You see, back in 2005 MMJ toured, bringing along the Slip to open for them. The Slip being the progressive jam-turned-indie trio featuring the brothers Barr. At the time, I was just getting hooked on MMJ, but there was another band that I was really enamored with: the Benevento Russo Duo. As it so happened at one, just one, of the MMJ shows, my beloved Duo would be opening the night. That’s right, it was a Duo > The Slip > My Morning Jacket bill and it was happening a shortish drive away at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia. Even though they were playing in NYC the same week, I had to be at that show and thank goodness, it was a barn burner from start to finish, one of my favorite concerts ever attended. I was thinking about that confluence of awesomeness as I waited for a condensed version of those two opening acts to play together. I was also thinking about a show on my birthday a couple years after that, a show that Marco headlined at Sullivan Hall, in which he played in a trio with Brad Barr and Joe Russo, one of the best shows I’ve seen on my birthday.
All that — birthdays and sweatshirts and road trips to Philadelphia — was hanging in the air in Bushwick that night as the music was being made by this Voltron of nostalgia on the stage, making the show a powerful, meaningful one, enhancing the sounds, bringing extra oomph to an already oomphtastic set of improvisation. The music didn’t need that extra hidden personal context, but man, it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all. It was fucking bliss. As fate would have it, to my right stood GA, a friend whom I drove down to Philly back in 2005. Whoa! The jams meandered and grew, searching the past for common ground and then forging never-before-explored new regions. The double-drummer Russo/Barr backline was something else and Marco seemed particularly thrilled to find himself so much space to work with. Late in the show the freeform was shed for songs. Duo songs. Hearing them played always brings me back, but that night I was caught in a timewarp tornado, dropped into an Oz of shows past, somehow every time I had heard those Duo songs returned to me all at once. It was powerfully emotional, I do admit that the chills gave way to tears. Double whoa! What a show, what a night!
Of course, the universe, in its infinite wisdom, had my number and the middle of the month was dominated by two nights of, who else?!, My Morning Jacket at the Beacon Theatre. First night was the local version of the 20th anniversary party for their seminal release It Still Moves. I was brought back to the first time I saw MMJ at the Bowery Ballroom, a bunch of guitar-slinging hairballs rocking the shit out of their amazing new release. To think about the mountains they’ve climbed since then, the catharsis of a My Morning Jacket show on full display on Broadway. That first night was glorious. Not only the music, but the energy in the room, the familiar faces from 20+ years of livemusic in NYC. I returned for the second night, how could I not?, the night they appropriately played “Only Memories Remain” even though such a sentiment was far from the truth. The second night was when they played Cat Stevens’ “The Wind,” one of my favorite songs of all time, the heaviest of nostalgia whallops: childhood and teenage summertimes and dad’s record collection and more all packed into two short verses of beauty. Whallop! Helluva show.
The end of my October was a trip to Savannah to see Widespread Panic’s Halloween shows at the Enmarket Arena. WSP is one of my all-time favorite bands, a band I’ve seen well over 100 times over 30+ years, that brings me back to all sorts of places and times, that’s a part of my musical muscle memory like few others. Nostalgia act? You better fucking believe it!
The opening night was a perfect encapsulation of why I love this band. The second set was a dream set, every song a favorite, tied together expertly. Someone on Mastodon responded to my posts about being at Panic by saying they were suprised I was a WSP fan because their music doesn’t have the complexity of the music I usually listen to. I know the point they were trying to make, but I think Widespread is quite complex, it’s just that they don’t use odd meters and key changes and complicated compositions to get there. What they do is actually more interesting and the weekend was a prime example of their complexity, the complexity of an expertly writted short story that doesn’t need to tell you what it’s about to bring depth and meaning. John Bell’s lyrics tell a story like few others and the music pushes forward that story in tandem. The second set of Friday’s show was a great example. It featured some of Panic’s best written songs (IMO!), Pigeons and Pilgrims and Conrad, songs that both take me back but are also timeless. What are these songs about? Whatever you want them to be about. But the imagery and the music and the narrative all work together in a singular thing, a song, to work your mind and your body like few bands can. The set itself told a story, what it was about, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all in the how it’s told and man, did it tell it. Peaking jams, deft segues, each song perfectly placed, building to a natural, satisfying climax, a perfect set of Widespread Panic (for my tastes). All setting the stage for the grandest storytelling and nostalgia to come on Saturday…
Even though the calendar said 10/29, Saturday night was Halloween inside the Arena. Widespread Panic’s Halloweens were originally just an excuse to play some fun covers for the first time, I’ve seen a bunch of their 10/31 shows and they are fucking fun as hell. Almost as fun as Phish’s. But in the last few years, they’ve elevated their Halloween shows to something more thematic and the theme for 2023’s show was made clear when you entered the arena… The Wizard of Oz. Is there a story more nostalgic than the Wizard of Oz?
Here Widepsread Panic’s storytelling was in maximum overdrive as they used their set to tell the story of Wizard of Oz through music, mixing their originals and standard repetoire with new covers and some bustouts/rarities to do so. What’s remarkable is that the set worked on its own as a well-formulated WSP set, each song appearing at the right time in the night even without the story. That’s Panic for you. A rundown of their Wizard of Oz wizardry:
The theme of Wizard of Oz (WoO) is “There’s no place like home” and Panic subverted that message with their opening tune “Wish You Were Here” played for the first time in 6 years. Of course, the Pink Floyd is also a nod to the Dark Side/WoO connection. Next up was Panic original “Jack” a slow-build song with evocative lyrics loosely based on a standard deck of cards, but features a wizard. So now the stage is set and the story can begin. By the way, there are scenes from the movie and other clips and art projected on the screen behind the band, the band is dressed as characters from the movie, and there’s a yellow brick road on the floor.
“Better Off” is a song set on a farm, like the beginning of WoO, even though its what-it’s-about delves a bit deeper. It’s also a song with an irresistible Little Feat bounce and was just the right fit for the 3-slot. At this point, the story is just getting going, but the show needed some zing to blast off musically, and “Greta” was there to make it happen. At first, I thought Greta fit in because it talks about a “silent hurricane” doing damage, which is sorta like a tornado, but on relisten, I think the opening line “there’s a pack of rabid dogs” is a cheeky reference to Toto who has attacked Mrs Gulch. Dave Schools howls “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too” as the jam gets going. After a pretty ripping jam, the band settles down and Jimmy Herring lays down a gorgeous rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” which builds to a stormy jam that was clearly symbolic of the tornado. The short jam melts into “Rebirtha” which features the (brilliant) line “she left town like the Wizard of Oz, the first 20 minutes in black and white.” Feels like that song was written in the hopes they’d play a show like this one, even though it was almost 30 years ago.
OK, so now we’re in Oz!!, and what better way to celebrate than Panic’s debut of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place.” While they’re playing this, they’re showing scenes of Munchkins dancing on the screen. I wouldn’t say they nailed their version, but it’s hard to not enjoy this song in any form. After that, they did a little jam/riff on the Wicked Witch theme which somehow exactly echoes the bridge in the WSP song “Walkin” which, as it turns out, is a perfect choice for this moment because it’s when Dorothy starts walking. It’s kind of confounding how well it all fit together and, again, musically, the song was a great fit for that point in the set, somehow avoiding any it’s-starting-to-drag energy that could have easily infiltrated such an endeavor. A lesser band might have chosen to play Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” at this moment. Widespread Panic made the much better decision to play a debut cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Golden Road” which is like a yellow brick road, but is much more danceable. WSP rarely fails, and they were nailing every moment of this one.
Now it’s time for Dorothy to meet some friends, so there’s “Weak Brain, Narrow Mind” for the Scarecrow, a sidestep into a newer one “Life As A Tree” (Dorothy and Scarecrow pick apples off the trees) and then Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” for the Tin Man (sick!) and original “Tail Dragger” for the Cowardly Lion. The set closed, somewhat hilariously with another rollicking original “Puppy Sleeps” except you should read that as “Poppy Sleeps,” i.e. the merry band of walkers falling asleep in a field of poppies as confetti fell from the ceiling. I mean, every second of that set was {chef’s kiss} perfection. What could they possibly do in the second set?
I’ll tell you what they did, they shifted gears entirely, the WoO was in the rear view, and the show was now “Blizzard of Ozzy,” a bunch of Black Sabbath and Ozzy covers interleaved with more originals and other covers in a rather fucking-blazes! set of no-holds-barred Widespread Panic. I mean, Iron Man and The Wizard and Crazy Train and more. If I had one complaint all weekend it’s that they played “Mercy” in the second set Saturday and did not jam it at all. Because then my nostalgia meter would have been off the charts. Alas! Can’t have it all. What a fucking show!
Other nostalgia-ridden stuff in October included Charles Lloyd celebrating 80 years (what’s more nostalgic than that?) at Rose Theatre with Zakir Hussain and Eric Harland; Miles Okazaki playing Monk at Lunatico (hearing Thelonious Monk songs always takes me back); Laurie Anderson with Sexmob suffusing her performance-art set with heavy doses of her own nostalgia in her unique storytelling way, a masterful set at BAM; Scott Metzger sitting in with Daniel Donato at Brooklyn Bowl for the highlights of a show filled with highlights, seeing Scott play in any setting will always be a mix of all the times I’ve seen him and all the wonderful memories he’s provided and all the memories still to come; and finally, on the last day of October, the Halloween Hop at Knockdown Center, three rooms of rotating bands all doing 10–15 minutes of full-band covers, so I caught strongly nostalgic-and-fun-af whiffs of Neil Young and Crazy Horse and Nirvana and Tina Turner and more. Here’s to making more memories.
October roundup:
27 shows = $27 donated as part of #livemusicchallenge to Seeds of Peace.
Five star shows seen in October:
! Russo/Benevento/Barr/Barr @ Sultan Room
! MMJ @ Beacon (x2)
! Widespread Panic @ Enmarket Arena (x2)
Reviews written (for Bowery Presents) in October:
