August 18 2007: John Prine, Josh Ritter - Charlottesville Pavilion, Charlottesville VA

Third stop on the list: expensive folk music in Virginia.

So I was camping with Ryan and Heather at Shenandoah and we decided we needed to check out Charlottesville, where none of us had ever stepped foot one, and watch Josh Ritter play some tunes. For $35. But somehow $50 bar tabs and care-free on-vacation living seem to make $35 folk shows not seem like as big a deal as they might otherwise. And it was pretty great fun.

The amphitheatre was right in the middle of the downtown area, and about the size of the Pines in Northampton, and we got some really nice spots on the grass and watched Ritter win over folks who’d mostly (as we could tell) never heard of him. He opened with “Monster Ballads” into “Good Man” into “Wolves,” all of which sent tingles down my spine. He only did one new one (“The Temptation of Adam”), which was a shame because I was really really excited about hearing how “Rumors,” aka the greatest song of all time, would sound with just an acoustic guitar. “Harrisburg” was great, “Kathleen” was strange to hear without the usual Oh My God He’s Playing Kathleen cheers at the opening guitar bit, and “Girl in the War” was nice to hear, as always.

And then as he closes (with “Kathleen”), he gets a standing ovation! And the people keep cheering until he comes back out and does “Me & Jiggs.” And it was a great show…but…but I think I just perpetually hold Ritter to such an insanely high standard that he’ll always slightly disappoint me. Especially on songs like “Girl in the War,” which is near perfect but he never seems to quite pull it off live in a way that rings 100% true with the way it sounds in my head (which is directly informed by the one time I saw him when he DID play it brilliantly, the first time I ever saw him play in '04, when he opened with it and brought down the house). But that’s just my problem. And the first step is admitting you have a problem.

And then John Prine played for almost two hours, mostly keeping me utterly rapt but sometimes losing me a little bit. He played the two songs of his I knew (“My Mexican Home” and “Paradise,” which Ritter took the third verse on), and absolutely blew me away with three songs I didn’t know but that I intend to hunt down on record: “Six O’Clock News” (somehow he really drove home that “C’mon baby spend the night with me” line), “Angel from Montgomery” and “Sam Stone” (brilliant! “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes / And Jesus Christ died for nothing I suppose”). In all he was fantastic. Backed by a bassist and a guitarist, and I really wish I had known more of his stuff going into the gig.

And then when the show finished we made our way to the South Street Brewery where their Satan’s Pony ale reminded me more of Mac and Jack’s African Amber than any beer I’ve had otherwise. So Ryan and I had a few. Naturally. And then back to the Motel 8. What a night.

August 10 2007: The Thermals, the Big Sleep - Maxwell's, Hoboken NJ

Second stop on the list: moderately priced punk rock in New Jersey.

I’d never been to Hoboken. It seemed like a perfectly nice town for the ten blocks that I walked between the PATH station and Maxwell’s. And there was a nice view of Manhattan from the waterfront. But not such a nice town in that there wasn’t anyone I could sell an extra ticket to. Oh well. The show was moderately priced, after all.

The Big Sleep opened, making this the third time I’ve seen them open a show this year. And I still don’t much dig them. But then the !!!Thermals!!! came on stage as a !!!trio!!! I could barely contain myself. I think they opened with “I Might Need You to Kill” and then went right into “An Ear for Baby,” but memory can be hazy sometimes. But they definitely played a whole lot of great songs like “God and Country” and “Back to Grey” and “No Culture Icons” and “Overgrown, Overblown” and “Ultra Violet” and “Here’s Your Future” and “Pillar of Salt” (way better as a trio than the way they played it in Cambridge earlier this year as a fourpiece) and “St. Rosa and the Swallows.”

And it was just so great to see them at such a small place. Probably the smallest place I’ve seen them play since 2004, when they were doing an after-the-Pixies-show show in Bend (Oregon, naturally).

And I always think it’s pretty stupid when the band does the whole “hello X town!” thing, and at this show Hutch at one point asks “Who here’s from Brooklyn?” and some of the crowd cheers. And then “Who here’s from Manhattan?” and “Who here’s from Jersey?” But then after this he asks, nay demands, “AND WHO HERE’S FROM PORTLAND?!?!?!!!!,” and he was just so excited about Portland that I could not help myself as my right fist punched the sky and I responded, “Woo!” And then I felt kind of dumb, but it was ok. Cause fuckin PORTLAND man!

And then as if to entirely justify my above described actions, they covered “Big Dipper” and it was fucking amazing and I’ve never been so glad to hear a song that’s not a Thermals song at a Thermals show. And they followed that up with “It’s Only Trivia” and then that was it and I left floating.

August 9 2007: The Hold Steady, the Big Sleep, the Teenage Prayers - Prospect Park Band Shell, Brooklyn NY

Yesterday was the last day of school, and I had no intentions of staying put for 26 whole days waiting for the fall semester to start. So first stop on the list: free rock and roll in Brooklyn.

I got up early enough to make it into town to catch a noon Mets game, met up with Josh at his place afterwards, and we headed to Prospect Park (it being conveniently located just a few blocks away from Josh) at around 6, making a concerted effort to pick up a sixer of some 7.5% Jamaican stout en route. It was a maybe 70 degree evening, the sky was blue, the humidity was nonexistent, and we could just tell that shit was going to be good.

Enjoyed a few tunes from the Teenage Prayers, whom Josh in some preshow online investigation into the opening acts discovered were supposed to be “a more soulful Steve Malkmus,” but all I could tell was that we were really close to the speakers, which were really loud in my ears. Josh felt similarly. So we put a backpack and a shirt over our chairs and retired with the stout to the lawn where we leaned back and enjoyed ourselves. The aforementioned perfect qualities of the evening’s weather were here multiplied exponentially.

And then after an hour or so the Hold Steady’s appearance on stage started to seem pretty imminent so we reclaimed our seats up front and tossed back some Scotch from a flask throughout the set, and shit. I hadn’t seen them since I’d REALLY started to dig their stuff, and Josh had never seen them, and then they go and open with “Stuck Between Stations” and the spirit just led. In all they played everything from the new record except “Chillout Tent” (including “Citrus,” which I hadn’t seen played before and which I really really like), and “The Swish” and “Barfruit Blues” (which I hadn’t seen before) and “Stevie Nix” and “Multitude of Casualties” and “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and “Modesto is Not That Sweet” (which I hadn’t heard before but really enjoyed), and they closed the encore with “Killer Parties.” And really, “Killer Parties” seems destined to go down as one of the all-time greatest songs to close a gig with. That baseline, those guitars, the ridiculous and ridiculously brilliant lyrics…mere words cannot describe.

So all in all the show was fabulous and my feet definitely left the floor a few times and the alcohol was at just the right place in my brain and many a moment left me literally grasping at my chest for my heart. It was amazing.

And, perhaps more telling than anything else: Josh Livingston was dancing. Really dancing. Possibly even dancing, in the parlance of our times, like a motherfucker. Such is the influence of cheap whiskey and great rock and roll. And the Hold Steady are truly a great rock and roll band.

August 3 2007: The Rentals - Hawthorne Theatre, Portland OR

I was in town for a long weekend to see a cousin get married, and grasped the friday night of the weekend by the fucking horns and saw the Rentals play. What a great band. Matt Sharp just kills me. And on top of it all, I went to the show with my very good old friend Katie, with whom I spent considerable time in my younger days, much of which just happened to be spent making out to “Seven More Minutes.”

We had a couple beers at the Bar of the Gods before the show and then, in a demonstration of just how aligned the stars were on this night, got to the Hawthorne Theatre (which is just a renamed Conan’s, aka that place on Hawthorne and 39th) with EXACTLY enough time for us to get two drinks and then find a bench to stand and dance upon. Because once we had that bench (about halfway back in a small room, along the left wall, easy access to the bar, and pleasantly out of reach of punk ass kids who were into jumping around) firmly underfoot, out come the Rentals with “The Love I’m Searching For.” And we’ve each got some Maker’s in our hands but dancing ensues, especially when tunes like “Keep Sleeping” and “Naive” and “The Man with Two Brains” and “Friends of P” and “Barcelona” and “The Cruise” (with lead vocals by Sara Raddle, with whom I am presently and will forever be in love) get played. And they closed the set with “Please Let That Be You,” only to come back out again and finally close the whole thing with “Waiting.” Wow.

And my only beef with the show (aside from having a non-Sharp member of the band sing on “Getting By”) was the way the crowd fucking exploded when they played “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams” to start the encore. Just like they did in New York last year. Seems to me that you’d get more excited about Rentals songs than Weezer songs if you’re at a Rentals show. And it seems a shame that the biggest crowd response came for a Weezer song. Cause give me those Rentals tunes over Weezer tunes any day of the week.