Seriously - shrimp on a stick.
Things Tabby and I learned this weekend watching Rachael Yamagata and Ryan Adams at City Stages in Birmingham, Alabama:
1. Chicken on a stick and Def Leppard go together like big fat sweaty guys with exposed chest hair sitting in lawn chairs gobbling down chili dogs and Citizen Cope?
So out of a whole three-day festival, I was only excited about seeing three bands – the aforementioned two and (although Def Leppard was tempting, that’s not what I’m going to say) this guy named Citizen Cope. So at 4 p.m., Tabby and I summoned ourselves out of our swanky hotel room and into the sweltering Alabama heat and headed toward the Miller Lite stage (I think that was the name. Would it matter if I got it wrong?) But what was much more amusing than Citizen Cope, who was actually not that great, was the wide assortment of things that City Stages offers you on a stick. Chicken, sausage, corn dogs, and I shit you not, shrimp. No, seriously. Shrimp. On a stick. We passed all these fine offerings on our way to Citizen Cope. But none of that could top the fat guy in the lawn chair I got to watch French kiss a chili dog while listening to Citizen Cope. As I was staring at all the food falling from the edges of his mouth and onto his hairy chest, I wondered what else might be in there: jelly, syrup, nacho cheese, an entire McGriddle. The possibilities were endless. Then I noticed he had a pierced tongue. My mind began to wander further. Could it be possible that he took out the barbell in his tongue to store even more food in there – maybe a pea or two? And was he planning to stretch the piercing over time to larger gauges, eventually to a size that could hold a 10-piece bucket of chicken? No, that would be dumb, I thought. He could just go get some on a stick.
2. Rachael Yamagata will kick your ass
If you ever get the chance to see Rachael, I say go. In the world of female artists with that odd brand of subtle sex appeal (ex: Fionna Apple, Erin McKeown) she’s near the top of the list. Although, I didn’t feel it was necessary to yell out how sexy she was. The guy behind me had that covered. (See lesson # 5.) I was most impressed with her voice. It’s one of those things that just can’t come through on an album without sounding over-produced. But when you hear it in person, you’re blown away. Not Shrimp on a Stick blown away, but blown away still.
3. Ryan Adams is the next Ryan Adams
I’ve been to a lot of shows in my day. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so comfortable with a guitar. I guess me at 27 years old seeing Ryan must be like someone of previous generations watching Jimi Hendrix or Keith Richards. Fucking amazing is what it’s like. For some strange reason, he played the first song “A Kiss Before I Go” and some of “Beautiful Sorta” on one foot. Even when he broke into these ridiculously long guitar solos leaving the rest of the band just standing there watching, he stood mostly still on one foot. At one point, he created what I think is a new Yoga move called the Cigarette on Lip While Singing Can Balance One-Leg Guitar Thrashing.
There’s just something amazing about seeing someone who is so understanding of his guitar, someone who just plays. I would imagine it’s like how when I type, the words just come out. I don’t think, “OK, Taylor. Get right on over to that R. OK. Now over to the I. Yeah, you got it.” I just type. And that’s how it seemed with Ryan. Almost all of the guitar solos seemed just made up on the spot. His band clearly hadn’t rehearsed any of it with him. He seemed in his own world, just rocking out, not caring if we all stood there with our mouths open or if we all left and went to see the Black Crowes a few stages away.
For a while now, Tabby and I have been listening to Ryan obsessively. My brother turned me on to Heartbreaker shortly after it came out and I’ve bought every album since. But never before we saw him last year in Memphis have we listened to Ryan so constantly. There’s something about seeing him live that just sort of explains some of the things that you wonder about when you listen to the records. No time to get it all in now. Believe me, there’ll be more posts about Ryan.
4. We officially hate the South
What is it about driving away from Canada that causes you to want to hold you arm out the window of your car and bitch slap the tobacco juice out of every one’s mouth? I'm from the South and I suppose if I moved to New York or somewhere and someone challenged me on being from the South, I'd defend the South. But just between Southerners, I’ve gotta say, the further south you go, the worse it gets. Save a few minutes during Ryan and Rachael when the idiots behind me weren’t yelling, the whole experience was pretty fucking lame. The people there bother me in that way that you're embarrassed by certain members of your own family. They’re dumb and lazy and inconsiderate and for some reason the lower their IQs are, the louder they talk. Their mullets aren’t even amusing anymore.
5. Ryan hates you, too
I cut my teeth on punk shows in crowded venues and the band’s mom’s living room so I’ve never been too knowledgeable about Frisbee throwing and autographed boobs and yelling out song requests. And if I was at say, an AC/DC concert, I guess I wouldn’t have any problem with this stuff. But at a Ryan Adams show, you expect the crowd to be a little smarter. Not in Birmingham.
Here’s a sampling of the shit the guy behind me yelled during Rachael Yamagata and Ryan Adams’ sets:
To Rachael: “Take it off!” “You’re hot!”
To Ryan: “Your bass player is hot!” “Play (fill in a billion song titles here – none of which got played)!” and when Ryan complained that he smelled something on fire, “It’s you! You’re on fire! And your bass player is hot!”
I wasn’t the only one upset by this. At one point, after someone yelled “Play Freebird!” Ryan launched into a rant about how, yeah, he wrote Freebird when he was a young boy. He was sitting in his bedroom with a four-track, thinking about being in jail and dying and how you’re never truly free, and how a bird is always a bird. It can never become another animal. Then he explained that Anne Rice might disagree. What if Tom Cruise’s character in Interview with a Vampire bit the bird? Then it could turn into anything, Ryan explained. And then a rant about Scientology and Katie Holmes followed. The whole crowd of idiots laughed right along unironically.
After a few more song requests, Ryan said (completely deadpan) “You all should go over and see the Black Crowes. They’re a professional band. And we don’t give a fuck. They’ve got better weed than me.”
Finally, I turned to the guy behind me after he’d yelled his 100th idiotic phrase and said, quite politely I thought, “Dude. Calm down.”
He shot back: “I won’t calm down! Do you know where you are? You’re at a concert!”
“No," I thought. "I’m in fucking Alabama.”
1. Chicken on a stick and Def Leppard go together like big fat sweaty guys with exposed chest hair sitting in lawn chairs gobbling down chili dogs and Citizen Cope?
So out of a whole three-day festival, I was only excited about seeing three bands – the aforementioned two and (although Def Leppard was tempting, that’s not what I’m going to say) this guy named Citizen Cope. So at 4 p.m., Tabby and I summoned ourselves out of our swanky hotel room and into the sweltering Alabama heat and headed toward the Miller Lite stage (I think that was the name. Would it matter if I got it wrong?) But what was much more amusing than Citizen Cope, who was actually not that great, was the wide assortment of things that City Stages offers you on a stick. Chicken, sausage, corn dogs, and I shit you not, shrimp. No, seriously. Shrimp. On a stick. We passed all these fine offerings on our way to Citizen Cope. But none of that could top the fat guy in the lawn chair I got to watch French kiss a chili dog while listening to Citizen Cope. As I was staring at all the food falling from the edges of his mouth and onto his hairy chest, I wondered what else might be in there: jelly, syrup, nacho cheese, an entire McGriddle. The possibilities were endless. Then I noticed he had a pierced tongue. My mind began to wander further. Could it be possible that he took out the barbell in his tongue to store even more food in there – maybe a pea or two? And was he planning to stretch the piercing over time to larger gauges, eventually to a size that could hold a 10-piece bucket of chicken? No, that would be dumb, I thought. He could just go get some on a stick.
2. Rachael Yamagata will kick your ass
If you ever get the chance to see Rachael, I say go. In the world of female artists with that odd brand of subtle sex appeal (ex: Fionna Apple, Erin McKeown) she’s near the top of the list. Although, I didn’t feel it was necessary to yell out how sexy she was. The guy behind me had that covered. (See lesson # 5.) I was most impressed with her voice. It’s one of those things that just can’t come through on an album without sounding over-produced. But when you hear it in person, you’re blown away. Not Shrimp on a Stick blown away, but blown away still.
3. Ryan Adams is the next Ryan Adams
I’ve been to a lot of shows in my day. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so comfortable with a guitar. I guess me at 27 years old seeing Ryan must be like someone of previous generations watching Jimi Hendrix or Keith Richards. Fucking amazing is what it’s like. For some strange reason, he played the first song “A Kiss Before I Go” and some of “Beautiful Sorta” on one foot. Even when he broke into these ridiculously long guitar solos leaving the rest of the band just standing there watching, he stood mostly still on one foot. At one point, he created what I think is a new Yoga move called the Cigarette on Lip While Singing Can Balance One-Leg Guitar Thrashing.
There’s just something amazing about seeing someone who is so understanding of his guitar, someone who just plays. I would imagine it’s like how when I type, the words just come out. I don’t think, “OK, Taylor. Get right on over to that R. OK. Now over to the I. Yeah, you got it.” I just type. And that’s how it seemed with Ryan. Almost all of the guitar solos seemed just made up on the spot. His band clearly hadn’t rehearsed any of it with him. He seemed in his own world, just rocking out, not caring if we all stood there with our mouths open or if we all left and went to see the Black Crowes a few stages away.
For a while now, Tabby and I have been listening to Ryan obsessively. My brother turned me on to Heartbreaker shortly after it came out and I’ve bought every album since. But never before we saw him last year in Memphis have we listened to Ryan so constantly. There’s something about seeing him live that just sort of explains some of the things that you wonder about when you listen to the records. No time to get it all in now. Believe me, there’ll be more posts about Ryan.
4. We officially hate the South
What is it about driving away from Canada that causes you to want to hold you arm out the window of your car and bitch slap the tobacco juice out of every one’s mouth? I'm from the South and I suppose if I moved to New York or somewhere and someone challenged me on being from the South, I'd defend the South. But just between Southerners, I’ve gotta say, the further south you go, the worse it gets. Save a few minutes during Ryan and Rachael when the idiots behind me weren’t yelling, the whole experience was pretty fucking lame. The people there bother me in that way that you're embarrassed by certain members of your own family. They’re dumb and lazy and inconsiderate and for some reason the lower their IQs are, the louder they talk. Their mullets aren’t even amusing anymore.
5. Ryan hates you, too
I cut my teeth on punk shows in crowded venues and the band’s mom’s living room so I’ve never been too knowledgeable about Frisbee throwing and autographed boobs and yelling out song requests. And if I was at say, an AC/DC concert, I guess I wouldn’t have any problem with this stuff. But at a Ryan Adams show, you expect the crowd to be a little smarter. Not in Birmingham.
Here’s a sampling of the shit the guy behind me yelled during Rachael Yamagata and Ryan Adams’ sets:
To Rachael: “Take it off!” “You’re hot!”
To Ryan: “Your bass player is hot!” “Play (fill in a billion song titles here – none of which got played)!” and when Ryan complained that he smelled something on fire, “It’s you! You’re on fire! And your bass player is hot!”
I wasn’t the only one upset by this. At one point, after someone yelled “Play Freebird!” Ryan launched into a rant about how, yeah, he wrote Freebird when he was a young boy. He was sitting in his bedroom with a four-track, thinking about being in jail and dying and how you’re never truly free, and how a bird is always a bird. It can never become another animal. Then he explained that Anne Rice might disagree. What if Tom Cruise’s character in Interview with a Vampire bit the bird? Then it could turn into anything, Ryan explained. And then a rant about Scientology and Katie Holmes followed. The whole crowd of idiots laughed right along unironically.
After a few more song requests, Ryan said (completely deadpan) “You all should go over and see the Black Crowes. They’re a professional band. And we don’t give a fuck. They’ve got better weed than me.”
Finally, I turned to the guy behind me after he’d yelled his 100th idiotic phrase and said, quite politely I thought, “Dude. Calm down.”
He shot back: “I won’t calm down! Do you know where you are? You’re at a concert!”
“No," I thought. "I’m in fucking Alabama.”
posted by Taylor at
11:08 PM
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