Part Time Hipster

Review of Persephone’s Dream, 8/26/11, Greensburg, PA

So there I was, in St. Clair Park in Greensburg, ready for another Summer Sounds concert.  Now, let me say I wasn’t expecting an incredible amount of quality.  Not to say that the bands that play there aren’t talented or anything like that, but last week there was an Eagles cover band (7 Bridges - they actually sound a lottt like the Eagles if you’re into that sort of thing) and next week is a Dave Matthews cover band (which for some reason has “Phish” in the name, giving me one more reason to hate them, other than the fact that they love Dave Matthews so much they tour covering his music, ew).  People go there and share a bottle of wine and their stories from the week.  In the past few weeks, I’ve had discussions about philosophy and the merits of folding the edges of book pages to hold one’s place (some people think it defaces the book.  Hmm… meant no disrespect.  My aunt helpfully gave me a bookmark after we got home that night tho).  It’s always a fun little gathering that’s low pressure and relaxing for a guy with social anxiety problems.

However bad the music may be, I enjoy sitting outside and casually drinking with family and friends.  It’s kind of an open secret that people drink there; there are signs up that say “NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES,” but the signs are slightly overgrown with ivy.  I think is an apt metaphor for how the people treat that particular rule every Friday night.  This night, however, I decided to be the “bad boy” of the park and brought along some European absinthe instead of wine.  Adding to my feeling of naughtiness was the fact that my uncle and aunt (who I’m staying with) were out to eat for their anniversary so, since I knew no one there, I really had no one to keep me in check.

The band seemed like it could go either way from their website (http://www.persephonesdream.com/).  They were playing what was billed as a concept album called Pan - An Urban Pastoral.  They have blurbs all over their site about how awesome it is from magazines and such, so I was relatively excited to see if it could live up to the hype.

On the website, the band had stated that the show would start at 7:30, so I louched one up at home with my slotted spoon before heading on down there at right around 7:30.  I took my trusty chair and lunchbox over to the food booth and got an ice-cold water and a giant cone of raspberry-chocolate ice cream, which was probably the best part of the evening.  The chair and I then went to the usual spot where my aunt and uncle’s friends sit, but could find no one I knew so I was to be on my own for the rest of the night.

I took a seat farther forward than usual to get the full effect of the show.  From what I’d seen on the website, it was a fairly visual presentation, so I wanted to make sure to get the most of it.  Turns out there really was no need, other than to make out the symbol behind the drummer that appeared to be some kind of generic “rune.”  Despite what was advertised, there was little dancing throughout the whole thing.  Mostly everyone stood stoically in place while performing, with a few obligatory “RAAAAAGE” walkarounds and half-assed stage antics that would have made Jimi Hendrix cry.

I admit, I should have known something was up when people started leaving all around me before the show even started.  I turned around and asked the friendly people behind me where the band was.  ”Oh, they already played a first set, they’re going to come out and do the album in a few minutes.”  What?  Then and there I knew I was in for a heckuva ride.  I couldn’t even trust the band’s website.

Finally, as the sun was setting and I had my glass out, the band retook the stage.  And boy, what a show.

From the first song (all of the songs seemed to open or close with a bell motif that seemed to be stolen directly from any 70s-80s horror movie, especially the times when John Carpenter wrote his own music), the main element of the show seemed to be sloppiness.  I can take a bit of theatricality, I even me enjoy some artsy weirdness from time to time.  I pride myself on being fairly open to all types of artistic expression.  But when your drama is created by women “interpretative” dancing to a spotlight that can’t seem to decide what color it wants to be in THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING SHOW, it wears on the viewer a bit.  The spotlight was particularly a big problem.  The operator seemed to be inexperienced: I wrote in my notes “I could have done it better.”  I’m talking switching colors randomly while focused on the singer in the middle of a line.  Not only that, but it was all over the place, focusing on the bass while the guitarist was soloing, switching from a pinpoint to giant-ness in the middle of songs for no apparent reason, things like that happened the whole show.

Seriously, just sloppy all around.  The band sounded a bit like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (of which I am also not a fan - back when I did drugs, I took a whole bunch of vicodin at it and still had a terrible time), but without all the shredding.  The music basically plodded on, led by the keyboardist who apparently was channeling Denis DeYoung, the singer from Styx.  Seriously, if they had busted out into “Mr. Roboto,”  I would not have been surprised.  There was really nothing interesting or edgy or new about the music and I was listening for it.  The band’s website calls them “prog” a number of times, which I assume means progressive.  This band wouldn’t have been progressive even in the 70s.  I wanted to shout “ELP DID IT,” South Park-style, only South Park is good in its own way while this band was just rehashing ELP without the epic-ness.  Even the bass, which at times would randomly pop into slapping (some of the best parts of the show, mind you), I mean, I would say he was drunk, but a. he didn’t look like the drinking type, more the type who plays Magic: The Gathering on Friday nights and b. drunk people usually play with more soul.  I play the bass and take it seriously.  This dude was really bugging me with it.

The music had been subtitled as “An Urban Pastoral,” so I was listening for both urban- and pastoral- sounding themes.  In one of the songs, dorky-Denis sang in predictable rhymes something about the pavement and storefronts, but other than that I couldn’t really tell what was “urban” about it, other than the slap bass.  The “pastoral” was basically non-existent.  Heading over to trusty wikipedia we find a pastoral is ” ” basically negating the “An Urban Pastoral” subtitle in the first place, and also making the silly jew’s harp twangs and slide whistles (yes, seriously) seem ridiculously silly.

There were some high points.  I heard nary a wrong or out-of-key note the whole night.  The costumes were kinda neat.  I caught myself tapping my foot a couple times, though that could have been the alcohol.  Some of the songs were actually pretty ok.  It just wasn’t all that memorable.  The singing was pitch-perfect the whole time.  The girls had pretty good voices and so did nerdy-Denis-DeYoung.  Even this were tainted by the general sloppiness of the whole thing though: for much of the show, the singing appeared to be completely independent of the instrumental aspect, and it was very hard to make out what the girls were saying.  I’m not too experienced with this kind of thing, but I would guess they were too close to the mic.

This has been a year laced with some of the best concerts I’ve ever seen (Dispatch in Chicago is high in my mind, as well as the Avett Brothers and moe.’s IPad performance from this year’s Summer Camp in Chillicothe, IL), this one stands out as the absolute worst concert I’ve seen in 2011.  I went in wanting to give it a chance; in the end, I was wishing I didn’t have so much absinthe left in my cup so I could leave sooner.  That’s a position you never want to be in at a concert.  This felt more like a high school band’s second-ever show than a professional band actually doing putting on a performance.  Final score: wouldn’t see ‘em again, kinda sad I went through all the trouble of worrying how to get down there.  Avoid unless you have a really high tolerance for low stage values, or if you’re on acid.  But only if it’s really, really good acid that can make you look around and think you’re in some kind of neo-steampunk Grecian world.  And if you can find that, hit me up.

Do you ever look at pictures of people from a long time ago and thing “God dammit, live it up!  You’re gonna die in eighteen years!”  Why don’t I think that when I look at people in the street?

Dream Journal Pt. 2

I was in Roman times, and Rome had become so partisan and bickering that they had become the equivalent to our Fox News and MSNBC.  Eventually it got to the point where the Roman Fox News had no more to argue about - it was only reactionary and really wasn’t saying anything at all.

I somehow got to eat lunch with the editor of Rome’s New York Times’s editorial board.  The main point of it was to ask him for a simple thing:  I wanted him to have all his writers apologize for engaging in the partisan bickering when really, there were way more important things going on that needed to be recorded, that needed to be dealt with NOW.  He told me that he realized the Roman Fox News situation and had wanted to do it for some time, but hadn’t realized people had wanted something like that.  He thought they enjoyed the bickering.

I told him, “Well, they might enjoy it, but they sure as hell don’t need it.  Rome is falling and they need to know what’s going on.”  He said he would do his best and walked away from me and, in that crazy way that only dreams can work, I turned back to my food in the cafe and the stone tablet appeared before me after I turned away and turned back.  Slathered across its stone pages were apologies, just an entire news-tablet full of apologies to the people for engaging in the mudfest and promising to to do better.

Let me tell you, it was very refreshing, and the people seemed to love it.  The Roman Fox News was still there, but it was relegated to the small amount of people who actually believed in it.  No one with any intelligence paid any attention to it.  The apology had reawakened their sense of honor, their true sense of love for the country by acknowledging its faults but loving it anyway.  I stopped random people on the streets to ask them what they thought about it and generally they loved it (except, of course, for my one dream-friend who loved Roman Fox News but refused to accept anything negative about it.  You can’t win ‘em all though.  I think the point is that some people you can’t win with at all.)  It was really cool, and I felt like I had really accomplished something.

Then I woke up.

If I Should Die

Note: it wouldn’t let me line break for some reason, so I put in slashes to break up the stanzas.  How annoying.

If I should die on a trip up

Please tell my mama not to cry

As much as we all will try to fight it

In the end, all of us have to die

\

If I should die in some silly way

I don’t see how that matters much

I wasn’t born in a spectacular display

I don’t need death used as a crutch

\

If I should die extremely slowly

Take the tubes out from my chest

At my funeral play happy songs

Read some poetry, my best

\

I tell you now, I love my family

My friends and my lovers too

I’d say I wish there more time

But in the end, what a selfish thing to do

\

To everyone who’s ever loved me

Big, small, or the day we met

I’m sorry I made you sad by leaving

But know I left with no regrets

\

My little brother’s now a man

My sister is a woman too

I’d love to stay and help them grow and learn

But it seems to me my days are almost through.

\

I’d love to stay and help them grow and learn

But against time, there’s not much you can do.