New York Rock 'n Roll Holiday

One day last summer, while I was wandering around the music stores near Clark and Broadway in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, a couple of old friends from my college radio days and I were discussing the difficulty of negotiating vacations with our wives.
My friend Dan volunteered,”You know, Carol just doesn’t understand that all I want to do when I’m in another town is wander through the bookstores and the music shops for a few hours and then get a beef sandwich.”
It’s a complaint that I’ve heard many times, with a personal twist here or there, from most of my married friends.
Music, books, and beer: those are the big three for me. Keep me involved with at least one of the above, and chances are that I’ll be having a good time. So when our friend Anne invited us on a tour of Midwest baseball stadiums a few years ago, that was a fine plan, because I could drink beer at Tigers Stadium during the day and then take Anne and my wife Melissa out to music clubs at night.
My wife’s notion of a vacation is more varied than mine, but it tends to center around food. I like food too, of course, but I enjoy it a lot less when I know it’s going to skin me 20-some dollars a plate. About the only meal that I feel about good paying more than $20 for is a good steak. And while I don’t really want to eat any more than the standard dollop of food that they tend to serve at these upscale, French- or Mediterranean-themed restaurants, I can’t get the Middle American idea out of my head that I’m not getting my money’s worth. But ply me with enough overpriced wine and I’ll forget about it for awhile, at least when I’m on vacation.
Another landmine that I try to limit, if not avoid all together, are the vacation activities that remind me of the field trips that my parents dragged us through each summer like a rite of passage: the museum tours, the monument gazing, and the gawking at natural phenomena that I still feel compelled to do from time to time, if for no other reason than to justify all the energy and expense it took to get there. While it beats shopping, I think of these tourist tours as more duty than a pleasure, as something I do to placate that moralizing nag inside my head, when I would be much happier just spending the day on a sunny beach or in a dark bar.
My wife Melissa and I were in New York City earlier this month to visit our friend Becky, and I had a perfect holiday, one that exceeded my expectations. It almost goes without saying that music provided an unexpected cornerstone of the trip.
Sure, we ate our share of overpriced food, including the dreaded New York City brunch, the kind where they feel compelled to fuck with my pancakes by putting crap like lemon and poppy seeds inside them, but I’ll have to say that the food was almost universally good, even the designer brunch. More importantly, I had a few of those magic musical moments upon which you hope to stumble but can never depend, music being a fickle love, like pretty art school girls or the Northern Lights.
That first afternoon in Manhattan, the three of us (Melissa, Becky, and I) ate fancy pastries in Central Park while looking down at on a small lake full of toy sailboats. I was perfectly happy to just lay there, drifting off, but Melissa would periodically be bothered to distraction by one of the ambient sounds, bolting up to blurt out “Will that saxophonist quit playing ‘Caravan?’”, or “I keep hearing a violin and some strange singing.”
A little while later, as we were walking towards Sheep Meadow, we realized that Melissa was not entirely delusional, and that the violin and singing she kept talking about were coming from Thoth. On a set of stairs leading below a large decorative arch were written a set of abstract symbols in colored chalk, looking like the kind of scratchings one might make before offering up some chicken’s blood to the gods. Under the bridge stood a man in a loincloth and high heels, chains strapped around his torso, his hair pulled back in a ponytail of dreadlocks, his eyes made into Egyptian horus with black liner, a large feather sticking up out of his headband, a man of indeterminant age and race, but who I guessed to be in his late 40’s. A man who went by the name of Thoth.
Thoth began his performance (which I later learned he called “prayformances”) by shaking his anklets, which formed percussion instruments, to a tribal beat, and then he began some energetic sawing on his violin, which, while somewhat directionless, was surprisingly tuneful. Occasionally, Thoth would break into song, in which his indecipherable falsetto would sporadically be broken up with the staccato ramblings of what sounded like a lunatic alter ego.
After the prayformance, I went down to check out Thoth’s CDs, which he had on display. I bought one, and he signed it for Melissa. Thoth and I started talking about the invented language that he sung in. He showed me his handmade flashcards which had over 500 characters, each of which had its own definition. He began to read some of the chicken scratches on the sidewalk: “For instance, this says Aug Menaldun”, pointing from right to left.
“I notice your language is read from right to left,” I observed.
Thoth looked back at the ground, seemingly confused for a bit, smiled, and then replied, “Well, today it is”.
Melissa, Becky and I started talking to him about Sigur Ros, who have their own invented language of Hopelandish, and I got to thinking about how both of these invented languages are more gimmick and performance technique than they are something meaningful in their own right, that both Thoth and Jonsi are using the facades of their invented languages to create the illusion of meaning, which frees their vocal stylings from the necessity of being literal, as their invented words mean whatever the respective performers they say they mean. This is sort of the inverse of James Joyce’s language in “Finnegan’s Wake”, which showed off the many ways in which Joyce could manipulate language and meaning to do his bidding, whereas Jonsi and Thoth have invented languages because they can’t find a way to shape real words into what they want to say. In essence, Joyce’s language represents the triumph of the rational linguist, while Jonsi and Thoth represent the resurgent Dionysian impulse(and in such a scenario I’ll side with the Dionysian dudes rather than the showoff.)
Since seeing him perform at the Trefoil Arch in Central Park, I’ve had a chance to check out Thoth’s website. Thoth’s expansive 3-volume work, of which I bought Vol. 1, is titled “The Herma”. It tells the tale of the imaginary world of Festad and its hermaphrodite hero/ine.
In the real world, Thoth seems to be vexed at many turns by American corporate culture, by pollen, and by the cops. He accuses advertisers of being “adjuncts of egotism” and imagines a world where products will be presented “humbly, gently” rather than aggressively marketed, thus allowing spirits like himself to thrive.
I like Thoth, and I am glad that, bare pimply ass and all, he could welcome me to New York.
That night, we took the bus down to the Lower East Side to get dinner at Becky’s favorite pizza place. From there we wandered the streets, looking for a music club, eventually settling on the Lakeside Lounge, a little hole-in-the-wall with no cover charge that might be able to pack 50 people in its small performance space and another 50 or so around the bar. That Thursday night, it was maybe half crowded. We caught the last part of a set by Spike Priggen, who has a semi-regular slot at the Lakeside.
We walked in to the sounds of some pleasant power pop, a style that I have had a soft spot for ever since my days as a teenager back in L.A. circa 1980, when I was one of the few beach punk kids who openly admitted liking bands like the Zippers, who I remember having a great time pogoing to at a New Wave clothing store in Westwood one Saturday night, and the Naughty Sweeties.
The three of us were able to slide right in to a booth directly in front of the band. I guess that Spike recruited a group of all-stars from the New York club scene for his Thursday night gigs at the Lakeside, and it was clear right away that the band had far more firepower than it needed to play these simple tunes. At times, two percussionists, three guitarists, and a bassist would all be plowing their way through a song, but every member seemed to know his or her place, deferring to the lead guitarist in his Steve McQueen shades to steal the limelight, the other guitars harmonizing in the background, at points bringing to mind Thin Lizzy and the Buzzcocks, the twin paragons of rock guitar harmony against which all others must be judged.
Then they started in on this perfect pop song that I assumed just had to be a Big Star cover, and said as much, until I realized that I didn’t know the words, and surely I would have already known a Big Star song this good and been singing its chorus, which was a typical lament of young love, about about how “every broken heart is like the first one”, along with the band. Here I am in the middle of Manhattan, escorting a couple of beautiful women, a cold beer in hand, listening to this perfect song, the kind Brian Wilson used to refer to as “teenage symphonies to God”. I was in bliss.
The third musical discovery during our New York trip lacked the accidental magic of the others, but it was probably the best find. It was hot and stuffy when we awoke the next morning in Becky’s apartment, the sun beating through the curtains, my brain bleary, and the Organic O’s or some such cereal about two steps tastier than cardboard stuck in my craw, while all I could think about was how good some buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup would taste. But, while it took awhile for me to notice, the music in the background was amazing. “What is that you’re playing?” I kept asking. “It’s the National, and quit asking, because I’m going to burn you a copy”, Becky replied.
After the National, Becky played us two or three other CD’s, the names of which escape me, as these groups will for me forever be the dim bulbs that dared shine their lights in the face of the sun. Because the National’s “Alligator” is just that good.
I guess these guys have been around for several years, so I might be coming a bit late to the party here. But let me say that the National’s “Alligator” rocks from first chord to last, like few albums I’ve heard in a long time.
On each of the twelve songs, the band has driven their tractor up the road to plow a different field. From the heavy rock drums of “Abel” , the driving bass and ringing guitars on songs like “Mr. November”, the pretty violin riff in “Val Jester”, the oboe and clarinet opening of “The Geese of Beverly Road”, each song has its musical pleasures, some out in the open and easy to find, other more reluctant ones that come to you in their good time.
There is also a unifying theme, which I would describe as the vibe of the young artist in New York City, the ecstatic selfishness of a bright-eyed cynic, defiantly shouting his joy to the world, yet with this creeping suspicion that a lot of folks just think he’s an asshole and that this will be crystal clear once the high wears off.
Matt Berninger’s lyrics are off-the-wall good, often making you laugh as they cut, with the added caveat that the deepest cuts are often self-imposed.
“It’s a common fetish for a doting man to ballerina on a coffee table cock in hand” Berninger sings to a waning and somewhat incredulous love in “Karen”, concluding by saying “Believe me, you just haven’t seen my good side yet”.
On “The Geese of Beverly Road”, he sings,“Hey love, we’ll get away with it, we’ll run like we’re awesome.” But the specifics of the invitation sound a lot less attractive: “Come be my waitress and serve me tonight. Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon”. “Looking for Astronauts” gives a more realistic assessment of what is means to be loved: “You know you have a permanent piece of my middle-sized American heart.”
If rock ‘n roll is about anything, it’s about the life affirming selfishness of youth. Who doesn’t want to be in the singer’s shoes when the National sing, “I am a festival; I’m a parade, and all the wine it’s all for me. I’m a birthday candle in a circle of black girls, because God is on my side. I’m sorry, the motorcade will have to go around me this time because God is on my side. And all the wine it’s all for me.”
And that’s just how I felt when I flew back to Chicago that Sunday.