THE THIRTYING: week five

So, the top of the post says “week five.” But, to those who have been following the escapade that is The Thirtying, you’ll know this is isn’t true. Life caught up with me and made me into a bad editor. The site’s been silent and I’ve had this column in my inbox for longer than I’d like to admit. Well, this week we find Dan at a Gutter Twins show…

They didn’t play “Dollar Bill”. There was no reason to expect that they would, I guess, but I secretly hoped. This is the danger of going to see rock shows by people with a CV that dates back several bands and side-projects and solo albums. You want them to play something that they’re bored with, maybe have already forgotten about.

Last week I dragged my wife, because I am Old and have a wife, to the second live show in the short career of the Gutter Twins, a 90’s rock supergroup of sorts, featuring Greg Dulli from the Afghan Whigs and the Twilight Singers alongside Mark Lanegan from the Screaming Trees and occasionally Queens of the Stone Age, as well as a handful of solo records. They both sing lead vocals on almost every song, and all of the material in the main set was brand new, save a couple of covers. No material from either’s earlier bands until the encore.

Both Lanegan and Dulli have impressive post-90’s careers, of course, but it was interesting to notice that when people were calling out for songs, they weren’t asking for “Papillion” or “Strange Religion”; they wanted Whigs and Trees stuff.

Well, of course they did- it was a crowd of old people, y’all. I’m twenty-seven and I felt like I was in high school. There were occasionally people our own age where we were- right up at the front, thanks, still rock ‘n roll animals here- and there had to be a couple of people younger than us somewhere, but most of the crowd were in their thirties or older, the same age as the dudes onstage singing.

The band sounded great. The songs are all spooky and haunting, which are elements that have defined both Dulli and Lanegan’s post-90’s work, to varying degrees (Dulli is spookier, Lanegan is haunting-er), and they seamlessly blend both their styles, which is no mean feat given how disparate they are from one another, especially vocally. Lanegan has a dry baritone growl and Dulli sings kinda like an off-key drunk selling his songs through sheer conviction.

I say all this, mind you, under the full disclosure that the Afghan Whigs are pretty much my favorite band ever, and the first time I saw the Twilight Singers remains one of the coolest experiences of my life. So if you’re a fan of Dulli’s and you’re pissed that I’m calling him an off-key drunk, dude- that’s the point.

Anyway.

This column is supposed to have a point, but tonight I just want to think about the show, and rock music.

Oh, and the crowd. Because the crowd was wild. I’ve got my share of intense rock show crowd stories. I saw the Spectacle and Requiem play in a tiny community space in Jackson, Tennessee with a dozen self-professed rednecks who would knock each other’s teeth out for fun during the good bits of each song and then hug each other. I’ve still got a faint scar from that time when the guitar player from the Dillinger Escape Plan jumped off his stack and swung his guitar as he came down in the crowd. He cracked me upside the head and I bled a lot on the person in front of me. Andrew WK was in the crowd; you can’t leave a rock show just because your head hurts when that dude is watching you. I saw Megadeth in Mexico, where they take Megadeth fucking seriously. I don’t shock easily.

But the crowd at the Gutter Twins show- man, that shit was intense. And it was unprecedented, given the type of music they play. I mean, there are some big rock jams, some fast and heavy guitar parts, but they’re also a fairly soulful, contemplative sort of band. And all of the thirty and forty year olds around me didn’t give a fuck. Yeah, it kinda looked like they had something to prove. When the band busted out with “Idle Hands”, there were elbows flying and mosh pitting of the sort I haven’t seen at a show in years. At one point a guy next to me decided he wanted to bodysurf, and if you’re thirty-something years old and determined to bodysurf to a song called “I Was In Love With You”, then, for the love of god, all I want in life is give you a pair of hands to put your foot on as you begin your ascent. Up and- bam. The poor guy landed on his elbow. No one besides me seemed to want to see him succeed, and he limped back out of the crowd, sadly aware that everything was not going to feel good as new tomorrow.

And that’s the weird thing, the thing that you don’t quite get until you’ve seen a bunch of grown-ups all lose their shit at once because a couple of forty year old men onstage started to play a Jose Gonzales song. It’s hard to figure out what to do at a rock show when you’re not there to get fucked up and charge into strangers, secure in the knowledge that you’ll all feel fine in the morning. When the less hip of your contemporaries are at home watching idol and most of the other old folks are in the back looking for their golf buddies…How do you just rock?

No good answer here. I can tell you that watching a bunch of grown-ups go apeshit and start a moshpit is mostly embarrassing and sad. It’s like watching ex-gamers who successfully navigated away from their d20’s after high school all pull out their dungeon master’s guides for one last romp while their girlfriends think they’re at a strip club. There was a guy there with a bald spot and a red goatee and a thick Scottish accent who took great pleasure in being the consumate rock and roll killing machine- howling between songs, elbowing unsuspecting women in the head, just out of passion… for the music, man, punching himself repeatedly in the head to get riled up… and that’s awesome, if he’s at a Pig Destroyer show and is barely out of his teens. Because then it’s convincing- you can look at the guy and believe that maybe this is what he does; maybe he’s just this fucked up rock and roller who goes to shows and gets crazy, and he spends the rest of his time sleeping on his friend’s floor and smoking weed out of a coke can. But if he’s clearly late in his thirties, it’s hard to buy it. Yeah, he’s Mr Rock and Roll tonight, but tomorrow he’s gotta go to the office and take shit from a boss, smile at a receptionist. Tickets for the show were £20, and no one’s buying them for him…

But that isn’t the point, either- because these people aren’t you, and you haven’t got anything to prove, either. You can keep them to one side, take the show on its own merits, and enjoy it however the hell you want to. It’s not about the crowd, either trying to condemn or embrace them. It’s about what you’re there to see, not who’s there to see you. And so what if they didn’t play “Dollar Bill”? The new songs are great, and in a couple of years, I’ll wish they were still playing all of them live, too. You move forward, yeah, but so does everyone else. It’s nothing to worry about. Not at a rock show.

- Dan Solomon