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BRAIN TUBA: In The Heart Of The Heart Of Tour (For Her Majesty)
by Jesse Jarnow - jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu"Ye Gods," Philip said, looking at a car about to pass us in the left lane. "Is that who I think it is?"?
I craned my neck in the back seat. "Beats the fuck outta me. Who do you think it is?" Then, as the station wagon sped past us, I saw the back of the driver's head, the mass of curly blonde hair. "Shit. Is it?" I asked in tentative recognition?
"What's going on?" Annie asked, now drifted out of sleep.
"Boys," said Carrie, Philip's girlfriend, riding shotgun.
"Hold on a sec," Philip said. He darted the car into the left lane, past a furniture truck, and back into the right lane, moving parallel to the station wagon. He drove level with it for a second. "I think it is..."
I looked. "Yeah, it's him."
"Wait... no it's not."
"It is... or maybe it isn't."
(Annie: "Who?")
"What difference does it make?"?
(Carrie: "I dunno.")
"If it is, it means he'll be at the show tonight."
"So will a couple hundred other people."
"I'm just sayin'..."
Annie went back to sleep.
A little bit less than a week later, strange rumblings in the flatlands, wondering about the need (or ability) to make sense of any of the trip. Things happened, that's for sure. Time passed. A good time was had by all; or so all claimed when all stepped out of the car on Wednesday morning, tired and aching from the drive the night before. A good time; yeah, yeah, right, right. Where in the tangled mess of consciousness and sleep, music and silence, gravity and transcendence, was the good time itself? Where was its beating heart? Ultimately, of course, it was a composite - everything is - but what lay at the center?
The stock answer, filled in a bubble with a number two pencil, is (of course) "the music, man". But it's not. Fact: On May 2nd and 3rd, three friends and myself traveled to Ann Arbor and Indianapolis, respectively, to see Trey Anastasio perform. And that's where the trick is. The shows were the goal, yes, but they're not core of the story, of what has happened, if that makes any sense. They are the center around which all events are arranged, but only part of the memory. It's something that lies in the middle, perhaps removed from the shows altogether, that make the shows worth while.
It's another kind of jamming. A band might jam because they want to discover something, to go someplace new. That's exciting for the audience, to be swept up in the music as it goes to a locale potentially wholly undiscovered. It's a definite adventure. In a good song - encompassing structure and improvisation - the one absolutely perfect moment might well fall anywhere: a lick played during one of the verses, the transition from one section to another, or, more often than not (simply by virtue of its length) the improvisation. It's the one perfect moment that leaves you simultaneously breathless and screaming.
On a trip to see a show, the show itself is well part of the predictable structure. It's rigid and ritualistic. One gets to the lot. One wanders; running into old friends, making new ones, checking out the vendors' wares, eating dinner, etc.. One enters the venue, past perpetually frustrating security guards, into the concert area. Wait around for the show to start late. Music. Set break... it goes on. It's weird to fathom how moments of pure bliss can occur within this tightly constructed framework. They do, though. It's an isolated kind of freedom, however. At some point, the listener has to be sucked back to the confines of the venue. Still: like a well-crafted song, the possibilities even within the structure are infinite. That's why we keep going back. If such a thing is possible, though, the possibilities outside of that structure are even more infinite. While getting to and from shows is also a highly evolved and almost ceremonial process, the bounds are less, the time is greater, the percentage for emotional return higher.
We were pencil-necked geeks about it; Philip and Carrie weren't actually, Annie and I were... or, at least, I was. We were going to the Murat Theater. It was the Murat that was historical and, ergo, worth remembering. We thought. Actually, it was the show at the Murat that was worth remembering, or so we (I?) had declared on numerous occasions. Not so much the show, actually, but the music -- notes, drifted off into air, caught on tape. The air vibrated and the building became holy. That's about how it broke down.
The tourist district of Indianapolis, as we drove through it, seemed like the tourist district of just about any major midwestern city: office complexes with sheer black glass walls reflecting gleaming public works constructed in marble and etched with the names of civic leaders. And family restaurants, lots of family restaurants. We stopped at a traffic light. Men held typed cardboard signs reading "I need at ticket". They walked around with a fistful of tickets each, spread open like winning poker hands. "Who needs tickets?" they barked.
"Shit," someone in the car said. "Popular show." We turned the corner and practically drove into a huge stadium. "A-ha. Wrong show."
After the Indianapolis show, we decided to drive back to school -- a hearty five hours away. Philip and Carrie would split the driving for the first half while Annie and I slept. Reverse roles, repeat. Once behind the wheel, though, Annie decided to keep on going till we got home. I kept her awake. Among other discs, one of the albums in the car's CD changer was "Abbey Road" by the Beatles.
My primary association with the album itself, as opposed to the music on it, is one that came tumbling back in a sleep deprived haze somewhere in I-71 dawn. I didn't realize until that night how it'd shaped my listening to the album over the years. When I was younger, my mother used to take me to the record store and the book store every Friday after school. Beyond the folk music that I was weaned on, my first musical love was the Beatles. Even though it was rare that I would actually purchase something, I would spend much of time in the record store in the Beatles section, flipping through the albums.
Through this, and the stacks of vinyl at home, I got to know the covers of the Beatles' albums more than anything. I would stare at the covers, confused at the progression in less than ten years from mop-tops to long-haired weirdos (1). One day, we went into the store and there was a new section there: compact discs. They were new and phatty or something. Though we had no CD player - we wouldn't for another five years, at least - I immediately walked over and looked in the "B" section. There were no Beatles' albums there.
Mom and I were regulars at the store (2). While I was looking at stuff every week, Mom would talk to whomever was working. Occasionally, I'd talk to them too. I asked the owner why there were no Beatles' CDs. "It's because they haven't released any yet," he said. "Except..." he said, stepping into the back room and reaching onto a shelf, "...this." He held out a copy of "Abbey Road", infamous cover shrunk down to a barely recognizable several inch square -- positively tiny compared to the radiator flood-beaten copy my parents owned. "It's worth $200." I gaped it. "It's not for sale". I had no way of playing it anyway.
Nonetheless, $200 became a magic figure. It still seems like a big sum of money. As I still do, I dreamt about what I would do if I ever got hold of that much money at once. I would buy "Abbey Road". It wasn't for purchase, I knew, but I trusted the basic idea that the manager would relent when he saw how badly I wanted it. I never bought it. The only copy I own is a slightly-better-than-my-parents-copy record picked up at Goodwill for $1.
It was too easy. The day had pretty much broken when Here Comes The Sun came on. Really. Philip and Carrie slept in the back. Annie drove. We listened in near silence. The car turned off the highway as the second side of the album began, medleyed songs slipping into each other as the tracks changed. Moving through towns that neighbored our own, we passed people leaving their houses to go to work. The CD ended a few minutes before got home. We finished the drive in silence. It was the first time I'd heard the album on CD.
Tired as I was, I was content in the car.
(1) Oddly enough, if one followed a series of a photos of myself taken over the course of the past ten years he would see a similar transition.
(2) The store, a bitchin' indie shop called Soundtrax, is still there. It's located in Huntington, New York. Many of the employees who worked there while I was in elementary school are still there. And they're still friendly.Jesse Jarnow would like to go to Halifax, air masses blowing eastwardly.
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