Blame Canada

I'm here right now and you're not... However, you may be in Scotland, New York, East Asia, Russia, or Italy. (I still hate my friends)

Ryan Adams - Stubbs

Ryan Adams can be a fickle friend. I was sad when a buddy called me last Wednesday night to report a sulking Adams that played a mere hour and fifteen minutes before saying, “Thank you, goodnight” (his only three words of the set) and stumbling off stage. This could not be more different than the Adams that played Stubbs on Thursday.

Knowing that Ryan’s mood dictates his set can be a little nerve-racking. The first five or six songs he played with his hair in his face, leaning into a low set mic and interacting little with the audience or his band. Finally halfway through “Cold roses” he motioned for his band to stop, apologized to the audience, and claimed that he couldn’t hear a thing in his monitors... “Sorry... it’d be great if I were Prince or something, but I don’t even know my own songs.” Ryan then left the stage. His bandmates didn’t seem overly concerned, lighting cigarettes and telling jokes while rodies bustled about unstacking amps and shifting monitors. When he finally came out five minutes later he apologized explaining, “It’s all better now... I thought since we were playing outside it might be fun/cute to stack my amps... as it turns out it just made my guitar feed back into my amp making me sound like Darth Vader.” At this, the band picked right up were they left out and Ryan belted out with a renewed vigor that he maintained throughout the show. Much of the first set was a mix between Cold Roses and stuff from the new albums that no one had ever hear before. Here’s the set list:

Set1
A Kiss Before I Go
Easy Plateau
The End
Let It Ride
What Sin
Cold roses
Peaceful Valley
Beautiful Sorta
September
The Rescue Blues
Trains

Set 2
Call Me On Your Way Back Home
Oh My Sweet Carolina
Come Pick Me Up into brief cover of “Run For The Hills” (Iron Maiden)
Shakedown On 9th Street
To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)
Improv About Austin
Wharf Rat
Bird Song

Other highlights of the night included an improv song about Austin with a fitting refrain of:
Texas, Texas, Texas, Texas, Texas
Everything is in the shape of Texas
Doritos are in the shape of Texas
Dirt clods here are in the shape of Texas
Stubbs is in the shape of Texas

The song had a great chorus of “hot girls are 5 to 1 to ugly guys in Austin.”

The show wrapped up with Adams inviting special guest Phil Lesh (former bass player of the Grateful Dead) to play two Dead covers before thanking the audience and heading off stage. The only real disappointment was when Adams didn’t return for an encore (though this may have been due to a noise ordinance.)

I’m tire... I’m going to bed. I hope to have something from the Dallas show up soon.

A Mere 20 Hours...

Ryan Adams, Prostitutes, and Tulip Gardens

My buddy Seth uses the phrase "sense memory" a lot. Basically sense memory denotes memories evoked by the senses (yes... exactly as itsounds). For instance, if you were to walk into your old Jr. High,the smell of freshly waxed floors, dusty books and pubescent pheromones would likely conjure the emotions and thoughts that dominated your life at that time (in my case, physical self-consciousness and social inadequacy).

Yesterday morning at work I threw on a pair of headphones and scrolled through my I-tunes library. I’m learning that each Ryan Adams album is a bit like an old friend to me... the ones you don’t have to talk to everyday to remain close with. On this morning I chose Love is Hell Pt.1.

For whatever reason, Lost Highway decided to release Rock n’ Roll and Love is Hell Pt. 1 on the same day. The day they were released I was in Europe – Berlin to be exact – and I missed the better part of a walking tour of the city looking for them. While I was able to locate Rock N’ Roll fairly easily it wasn’t until Amsterdam that I found the first part of Love is Hell.

Amsterdam is perfect Ryan Adams. There’s a bitter-sweetness to it... hedonism wrapped in beauty. The sticky smell of marijuana wafts from brown cafes and mixes comfortably with cool salty air; the lights of the Red-light district dance with the warm glow of street lamps on the waters of its canals. It’s a city of prostitutes and tulip gardens.

If you are every in Amsterdam and need a place to stay, you might look for a tiny barnacle-ridden houseboat docked behind the city’s main train station. It was here that I first experienced Love is Hell. I hadn’t brought any CDs to Europe and had gone nearly two months without music (save a copy of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that I bought in Budapest). I’d lie for hours on a sofa in the ships tiny common area sating my withdraws... the boat rocking gently in time with the cadence of the music.

Funny how I can’t hear “Political Scientist” without going back there... (que Wonder Years theme)

Anyway, I’m stoked about Thursday’s Ryan Adam’s show (and Friday’s for that matter) but as this post is becoming excessive, I’ll save it for later.

Know Nothing Stays The Same

The following was going to be a reply, but got so long I just made it a post. (see lazy)

Anonymous said...
Doug, is it somehow telling that you have more to say about other people's live than you do about you own? By the way this is my favorite of your posts because not only are you wrong but you admit it. I very seldom hear that.

I’m certainly wrong enough to admit it every now and again. Also, I think that we occasionally go through these rare points of honesty in our lives where we wonder if we know anything about anything anymore… I think I’m there. I don’t think it’s a bad thing – not like questioning convictions or anything… rather looking around and realizing that so many people are, in so many ways, smarter or wiser than I am. To be honest, lately I don’t feel smart or articulate about much of anything… I think its God’s little way of humbling me.

As to finding other people’s lives more interesting… that’s not true… it’s just Melody’s right now. I think we go through these other points in life where we truly change as a person… I mean all the way to our character and the core of who we are… I don’t think it happens often, maybe only a handful of times in a lifetime, but when it does it’s sudden and beautiful and painful all at the same time and it’s the closest thing to being two places at once that you’ll ever feel. It’s not like being conflicted but rather holding two conflicting ideas in your mind and believing them both equally. It’s like something akin to homesickness. I think I just stopped making sense.

Anyway, I think I’ve been there and it seems kind of like what I've seen on Melody’s blog lately. While it’s sad, it defiantly makes for better copy than my average day. I guess this is basically just me stealing Melody’s crap for material on my own blog…. Sucker.