The Concerts: 2003

In retrospect, 2003 would have to be considered a down year after the palindromic delights of 2002. I mean, what else is there to accomplish after meeting David Bowie? Driving to New York state to see David Bowie, I suppose. While I don't want to poo-poo the whole year, consider the following shows:

Interpol / Calla [St. Andrew’s Hall 1.11]
Ladytron / Simian [St. Andrew’s Hall 2.25]
Idlewild [Magic Stick 4.24]
The Faint / Schneider TM [Majestic Theater 5.15]
Adult. / Magas [Magic Stick 5.17]
Dave Gahan / Kenna [Majestic Theater 8.2]
Electric Six / Junior Senior [Michigan State University 8.11]
David Bowie [The Chance, Poughkeepsie, NY 8.19]
The Dandy Warhols [The Metro, Chicago 9.6]
Fischerspooner / Kenna [Majestic Theater 10.4]

See? Not a lot of shows, and what shows there were weren't exactly life changers. But as always, there were some goodies here and there:

-- Finally seeing the release of New Sacred Cow (an absolutely wonderful debut from Kenna, who was later profiled in Blink by noted New Yorker author Malcolm Gladwell; promos circulated pre-internet for two years until the proper '03 release), and having Kenna kick my ass in bowling at the Majestic Lanes in Detroit before the Dave Gahan show

-- Making the long-ass drive through Canada to get to Poughkeepsie (only 90 minutes from NYC) in New York for a small-club Bowie show, arriving just in time to watch him work the crowd in the parking lot

-- Finding the joy in the double feature of E6 and the late and lamented Junior Senior, a one-two punch if there ever was, highlighted by my first dose of E6 leader Dick Valentine (and his mid-song breakdown during "Improper Dancing" into an a capella verse from "The Rose")

-- Gutting it through one of the worst shows I can recall seeing in the meandering ploddings of The Dandy Warhols, who clearly weren't interested in being anywhere, let alone Chicago

And that's that. I started my sixth year at NCMC and my second year at Record World, while beginning a Master's in General Humanities degree program through Central Michigan University. So I suppose that all that combined busy busy helped keep concert attendance low. '04 offered a first (Coachella!) and a last (Bowie!), and that's where I'll pick up next time.

Comments

"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...

Some 2024 Listening Pleasures

It started with a gift of two JBL Control 25 speakers, and by "gift" I mean "borrowed" -- a.k.a. "will never return" -- from an obsolete tech detritus pile at work. I may have snagged more than two gifts, of course, but the raw footage proving such a claim remains elusive. And after installing the JBL speakers into the upper corners of the music room, and after installing speaker stands for the rear speakers I already had, and after making the hard choice between a big-ass bean bag and a comfy leather recliner to properly center myself in the audio field (R.I.P., big-ass bean bag), there was only one missing piece: the Apple TV 4K unit. So for me, 2024 was the year I streamed a lot of music in Atmos through Apple Music, surrounded by new tunes and old bops in thrilling new dimensions. Some might say you don't need surround sound, 'cos the two ears + two speakers modality has been dandy for a while now, but that's like saying you don't need ...

The Natural's Not In It

For nearly seven years on the button, Courtney and I lived on Perch Lake, just outside of Gaylord. Right next to Perch Lake was The Natural Golf Course, eighteen holes that twisted and turned through the best nature that the 45th Parallel could offer. The picture above is the view of the first green, and if you left the wooden bridge to the right and briefly ambled through the woods and over a rusted metal fence, you'd get right to our old driveway. Every now and again, an errant golf ball would appear at the edge of our property, like a single egg laid by an itinerant duck. Of the three major elitist sports -- golf, tennis, skiing -- I golfed because the barrier to entry was pretty low and the interest in golf on my Dad's side of the family was high, from playing the sport to watching it on television on the weekends. As spare clubs were abundant and my growth spurt had yet to overwhelm statistical norms, my grandmother would take prepubescent me to the Roscommon driving ran...

THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

Search This Blog