Love is Blind

I want to start at the end, because it was impossibly beautiful -- a true moment of Zen I had while driving. It was one o'clock in the morning, post-show, almost raining but not quite. The sun roof was open. I was driving barefoot. The air was deep amethyst, ultraviolet pollutionsky. I found this traditional Irish radio program that was playing softly. Shea was asleep in the passenger seat. And I was smiling to myself because I felt like when I left that down-home filthy full-of-love Blues bar just an hour before, I had left behind me a layer of useless snakeskin that no longer fit.

I let go.

Lupos is a total shit hole club. I'd never been there. I know Met Café, its mini-me, is a total shit hole club. But Lupos is just a larger scale. It's like the Paradise after the apocalypse. With a few more feet on either side.

The show was sold out but we got there a little too early. Jump, Little Children was playing and then Howie Day was headlining. I don't like when Jump opens for another band because they never really open up. They don't seem to get playful and luxurious like they do when they've got the stage to themselves. But I was excited as hell to get a double hitter that night, with Howie and Jump playing together.

There were a total of four bands playing, which for ten bucks isn't bad, but after the first two bands -- some lousy beer commercial soundtrack crap and a little blond chick on the piano -- I wanted them to pay me.

I don't know. Jump came on. This band has been one of my favorites for probably 5 years now, and I've seen them play more than twenty times. Their shows have moved me enormously in the past, and not to the "I'm crying at the hands of Andrew Bird" way, but in the "I want to be that happy" way. Inspired me to create, to do what I love. I'd leave smiling and write for three days straight without food or sleep.

But last night, though I must confess that Matt Bivins is hands down the sexiest performer to walk the earth, I felt untouched. I felt disconnected. In short, I didn't care.

This was a big shock to me; two years ago Shea and I had planned a roadtrip to drive down to NC for their annual Dock Street Theatre formal affair. That's how much I loved them. I don't know. Jay Clifford's voice is so beautiful it wounds, but last night I couldn't get into the music. It just rang flat for me. They only played a handful of songs before they were ushered off.

When did Howie Day get so fucking famous? I don't understand it. One minute he's picking his nose on stage in coffee houses and the next he's got a fleet of a dozen techs on stage tuning his $3,000 guitars. I say good for him, I think that's fantastic. Except that his show didn't leave an impression on me. Maybe it would have, had I stayed for more than three songs.

He was playing with a generic back up band, and while his passion and foot-stamping post-adolescent aching is what I love about him, that all got swallowed up by the band playing behind him. It killed it all for me. That and all the drunk Todds with their white college hats in my face.

Three songs in, Shea and I looked at each other and shrugged. I sat down because my back hurt. He looked bored. "What do you think?" He shrugged. "I don't know -- what do you think?" I said I think I'm bored. I wanted to hear "Madrigals" really bad I remarked that I could just go home and put on the CD.

Which reminds me of Shannon and I having one too many bad shows at the Middle East before we decided we should just stay home, turn the music up too loud, and blow smoke in each other's faces to create an authentic MidE experience.

So we left.

I was feeling disappointed. I felt like I was letting go of this part of me that I held dear -- the part of me that I thought could still really, really, like easy pop music played by far-too-beautiful boys. The part of me that was defined by the autumn of 2001, listening to the Howie Day "Happy Endings" bootleg, sprawled on my bed and aching beyond all mortal bounds over a boy the color of September. The loss of that scared me.

We're walking to my car and I realize in a panic that I'm out of cigarettes with an hour drive ahead of us (and there's nothing in Providence -- and I mean nothing) -- not even a Store 24 in sight. There's this bar across the street from where I parked and we can hear the music pouring out, and I figure they sell cigarettes so Shea and I go in.

You have to go down below street level to get in, and we are enveloped completely and instantaneously by Blues, smoke, and a golden, explosive energy. The room is throbbing.

I feel overwhelmed by goodness, deep down goodness, and smile on my face is enormous. I shake my head in disbelief. The band in on the floor -- the place is the size of my kitchen -- and the bar-goers are sitting at an L shaped table that boxes the band in. The crowd is as local as it gets. There's a line of Harleys parked outside. People are dancing on tables and doing shots off each other's bodies. The singer is pulling people up out of the crowd to sing back-up with him. Dirty, wailing Blues fills the room, and this old, bald, fat black man with fingers quick as steel and his bassist with the ponytail and zebra skin pants are more beautiful than a rumpled-headed Howie could ever dream of being.

That's what I realized.

The bands in New Orleans make me fall in love with them every time I'm down there. It's infectious, and it's about movement, about dancing and screaming and feeling life in your bones, and it don't matter how many teeth you be missin as long as you can sing.

The juxtaposition is ridiculous. The feeling of leaving Lupo's lukewarm and unsatisfied, and being tossed into the middle of this crazy mass of lovers whooping and feelin the pain of the world with such joy it was palpable… as we left the place, I took off my shoes in the street and walked through the rain and got into my car, realizing music ain't about the skin-deep, and Blues always been, and opened my sunroof and drove off into the night in my moment of Zen.