Auf der Maur at Slim’s, 02 July 2004

(apolo­gies for tak­ing so long to fin­ish this and get it online)

First, I had a great time.

Sec­ond, to all of you who wrin­kled your noses and declined my invi­ta­tion, it’s just as well. You prob­a­bly would­n’t have been into the show. I hate to write that out, but AdM is prob­a­bly com­ing back into town in Sep­tem­ber or Octo­ber, accord­ing to MAdM. That’s like­ly to be a bet­ter show.

Before I get into the rea­sons why, let me tell you about get­ting to the show. I worked late at the office and went to the Gap to buy some jeans to wear to the show. I walked to Aquat­ic Park and wait­ed for the #19 bus, which I mis­cal­cu­lat­ed would drop me off a block or two from Slim’s.

As I wait­ed and watched the light of the set­ting sun play over Alca­traz, two young women asked me for direc­tions to Van Ness. After some back-and-forth about there being a lot of Van Ness and some increduli­ty that what looks like a dead-end real­ly does have a side­walk that con­nects to Van Ness Avenue, the two thanked me and went on their way. This left one beau­ti­ful, and by that I mean drop-dead gor­geous, girl. She looked up at me, smil­ing, from the seat of the bus shelter.

She kept look­ing up at me silent­ly for long enough that I thought that she must want some­thing, too. Jok­ing­ly, I asked, “do you know how to get where you’re going?”

As it turns out, she is a stu­dent from the Czech Repub­lic on hol­i­day. I polite­ly asked a few ques­tions about how she likes San Fran­cis­co and chat­ted for a few min­utes. I told her what I was on my way to, and she com­plained that she liked going out but did­n’t have much mon­ey. San Fran­cis­co is so expen­sive. I called upon my inner sleaze­ball and invit­ed her to come along to Slim’s, but she declined. I must be get­ting old, because I think there’s some­thing inher­ent­ly scary in a 20-year old stu­dent in a for­eign coun­try accept­ing an invi­ta­tion to a con­cert from a 34-year-old at a bus stop. If she’d accept­ed, I would have brought her along, though.

What did take me aback was that she com­pli­ment­ed me on my Eng­lish. Well, I live here and it’s my only lan­guage. She’s the Czech. Should­n’t I be com­pli­ment­ing her? She explained that a lot of peo­ple she talks to here she can­not under­stand because they speak too fast or not clear­ly. I can under­stand that, but I take it as a point of nation­al shame that Amer­i­cans as a whole speak so poor­ly that this girl, whose Eng­lish was quite good, felt the need to com­pli­ment a native on his native tongue.

When I relat­ed this sto­ry to Arpine, she said the young lady was prob­a­bly hit­ting on me, but that seems unlike­ly con­sid­er­ing that she declined my invitation.

The #19 Polk is always an inter­est­ing ride. Once on the bus a young punk rock girl sat next to me and intro­duced her­self as Annie.

“Hel­lo Annie, I’m Steve.” We shook hands and she pro­ceed­ed to ask me all sorts of ques­tions about what busses to take from where to where. Her stop came and went. She seemed torn between des­per­ate­ly want­i­ng to get whereev­er it was she was going and being too high to focus on the task.

Usu­al­ly talk­ing to strangers on pub­lic trans­porta­tion is threat­en­ing. Go fig­ure. Must be the full moon or something.

I arrived at Slim’s and went to the Will Call win­dow. The girl in the booth hand­ed me a pair of small red tick­ets, like the ones you might get at a church raf­fle. I went to the door and gave the guy both tick­ets. I did­n’t real­ly care; the sec­ond tick­et was going unused. But he stopped me and asked who the oth­er tick­et was for. I shrugged. “It’s a spare.”

A guy in line piped up, “hey, can I buy that from you?” so I said, “he’s with me.” I let the guy buy me a soda at the bar in exchange for the tick­et with no fur­ther expla­na­tion. I did­n’t even intro­duce myself, but went in search of the coat check.

The first band was Boy­jazz. Kin­da raunchy gross stage hys­tri­on­ics. Think Led Zep­pelin as sev­enth-graders, but in the bod­ies of col­lege dropouts who drank too much beer. But they seemed to be hav­ing a lot of fun, and that sense of fun was infec­tious. You can get away with a lot of stu­pid shit when you’re hav­ing a good time and it shows.

The sec­ond band, The Hus­bands, by con­trast, did­n’t look like they were hav­ing any fun at all. They were noisy, brash, angry, and seemed to Take Them­selves Seri­ous­ly. Ugh.

Then we wait­ed. And wait­ed. I got to the cen­ter of the floor because I was look­ing for­ward to hav­ing my world rocked. The crew at Slim’s seemed to be pay­ing a lot of atten­tion to the boards and the instru­ments and tap­ing stuff down and sound-check­ing every­thing. There seemed to be a lot more going on to get ready than usu­al, but I thought per­haps I usu­al­ly did­n’t pay enough attention.

My new the­o­ry is that AdM relies on a more con­trolled envi­ron­ment than Slim’s was able to pro­vide to get the sound on the CD. The entire show sound­ed off, and not just more raw or dif­fer­ent. It sound­ed botched and bad. The musi­cians were con­stant­ly wav­ing at the sound­board for adjust­ments and the sound would get incre­men­tal­ly better.

The oth­er hole in AdM’s boat that night was MAd­M’s flu. She apol­o­gized for not being at 100% and in fact played with tremen­dous ener­gy, but she just did­n’t have her voice with her.

I love her music, and I’m will­ing to for­give a lot. I was hap­py just to see her play at all and hon­est­ly hap­py just to sup­port her tour out of appre­ci­a­tion. I got to hear the songs I love and with a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion set aside the bad sound and the com­pro­mised voice; MAdM and the band played well. It just did­n’t come through the way it ought to.

For my sake, I’m glad she played. How­ev­er, I almost wish she’d have can­celled. Most of the audi­ence that night was not made up of hard-code AdM fans. There were a lot of peo­ple new to AdM and who were get­ting their first impres­sions. With­out hav­ing a foun­da­tion in the music, it would have been easy to walk away think­ing that the show just plain sucked.

What did suck was the audi­ence. Maybe, for the rea­sons above, I can’t blame them too much, but I went to have fun and move around and dance some. Even though there were peo­ple around who clear­ly liked AdM (one woman behind me shout­ed a mar­riage pro­pos­al to MAdM), I don’t think I’ve ever been in an audi­ence who so stead­fast­ly refused to dance. There I was, and one oth­er guy next to me who want­ed to get a mosh­pit going. That was it. The rest of the audi­ence was a room full of statues.

Even after MAdM point­ed out that some of us were danc­ing and exhort­ed the rest of the audi­ence to maybe move a lit­tle, it was no help. Even when the guy next to me and I were slam­ming into every­one around us, the oth­ers good-natured­ly pushed us back but did­n’t start in them­selves. Final­ly, even the guy who want­ed to get a pit going gave up and disappeared.

In the end, I had a great time because I was deter­mined to have a great time. I sim­ply refused to accept any out­come short of total enjoy­ment. I was­n’t going to let any­one spoil my fun.

The rest of you prob­a­bly would­n’t have been into it. Hope­ful­ly when Melis­sa and entourage come back in a cou­ple months, the venue they play won’t have the tech­ni­cal issues Slim’s did, and she’ll be long over the flu and in good health. Next time, you’d best let me drag you to the show, too. OK?