The Heart is a Bloom

i AM IRRITATED WITH MYSELF.

I haven't been to any shows in a long time.  I went to LBLB with Roo (of course) a couple weeks ago in an attempt to see Leugo, but was so distracted by actually being out and about that i forgot to watch the shows (of course). Not so soon after, I wandered up to King's to see some low-fi deepthrashmetal band I have actually never even heard of, but i got in for free, so i went. and everyone was wearing black. and i was wearing a bright white U2 WAR shirt (of course). so I felt slightly out of place before suddenly realizing it was after midnight and i had to be up for work the next morning and bolting.
then i was sitting here on a Saturday night with $7 in my checking account and listening to my morrissey pandora station, feeling slightly sorry for myself, re-reading past entries and being frustrated with myself for not going to more shows. i miss shows.

then i had this crazy revelation. Imagine...! imagine if i had been writing reviews since the beginning; I was 15 years old the first time i saw U2 in 1992 when the Pixies were the opening act. And you know, in a weird way, i almost did. I have been a writer my whole life, to be honest. I made a list the moment we got home and stuck it inside the $25 ZOOtv program i bought that night in Hampton, VA and entitled it "THINGS I WILL NEVER FORGET ABOUT TONIGHT" ... there were things like "the screaming pixies guy" and "the guys with the big papier-mache heads wandering through the crowd before the show" and "BP Fallon in the Trabant before the show" and "the guy on the bus on the way home that kept softly calling out the "woo-woooooo"'s from BAD". I don't know why i felt it necessary to write that list, i apparently have a memory like a steel trap. i could tell you pretty much 99% of the occurrences, start to finish, of that whole evening despite the fact that, yes, it was 20 years ago.

and i'm suddenly realizing I've been a super duper mega-ultra U2 superfan for 20 years.... NICE. *self-high-five*

SO... I'm listening to the Moz Pandora, and we got a little "disappointed" popping up right now and I start thinking about wow... what if i had known what to do back then? If i had known that i could have written this sort of thing instead of hoarding NMEs and Selects and Spin magazines? I saw moz for the first time in 1995 at the Ritz (now Disco Rodeo) in Raleigh. he played three or so songs before storming off stage because of his discontent with the security at the show. (he said "Gently, Gently... It's not World War Three" before walking off stage. le sigh!) I was not disappointed. I was a weepy mess. I am a morrissey-cryer. He comes out, I sob like a baby until he walks away. that's how it goes. I have seen him several times since, including Dublin, Ireland, and the same thing happened... weepy mess.

So If i start listing it all out, from the early onsets of Raleigh's own Johnny Quest, to Elbow, or Moz, or James, or Tricky, or Beck, or Moby... If I really let myself think about it; i may not have the world's most impressive resume, you know? I don't have a degree from a super prestigious school and I've been in mostly administrative accounting positions for the majority of my adult career... but, man oh man, if you start listing out the shows... the bands... the amazing shows I have seen... the incredible musics that have gone in these slowly failing ear-holes, I do not know many who can top it, except my baby boomer friend at work who went to Woodstock... The ORIGINAL Woodstock. bad-ass.

So here is my idea. I am going to list out a few shows. Some real goodun's that I've had the absolute privilege to see, and let you guys vote, via comments as to which 'blast from the past' review i shall write for my next review. bearing in mind however, unless i find shit online, there will be no pics or proof of my attendance. it will be strictly a first person narrative and you will have to assume i really went. I am promising you now... I did.

here are the choices:

Midnight oil and Ziggy Marley - 1992
Johnny Quest - 1991
Hopscotch fest year one
Hopscotch fest year two
El Ten Eleven - 2011
Lollapalooza - circa 1995/1996
YES - 1992
OK GO - 2010
The Who - 1993
Major Lazer/Rusko - 2010
U2 - 1992, 2005, 2009 - (will probably be a MEGA post, whichever one, if not all. which i would happily do, btw)
Celine Dion - 2009 (HA!! FOR REAL!!)
David Byrne - 2001, 2009 and like, a few other times i can't think of right now.
Vienna Teng - 2010
Ozomatli - 2010 (includes real good heartbreak story and awesome video)
Muse - 2010
Any others you're thinking of you know I went to and I'm forgetting right now... bring it on... mama loves a challenge.


(ps - re-watching all kinds of U2 vids from shows i went to on the youtubes, getting all kinda sentimental... so if i can sway any sort of "vote", imma tell you right now; you want real me/all passion... pick the U2sers.... http://youtu.be/87Xl5GAzuBo - YOU GUISE.)

second person narrative mode - christmas edition

Imagine you are a girl. (If you are actually a girl, this exercise will be much easier for you.) Now imagine you are not just any girl; you are an overweight, clumsy, awkward girl with a heart of gold. Imagine you have broken almost every rule enforced upon you by your parents in some misguided attempt to protect the honor of your friends and to uphold your own personal beliefs in being a friend to the friendless and living a strictly Carpe Diem life. you make poor choices, like staying out late because if you don't your friend might drive drunk or get involved with the wrong people; so you come home late and you get grounded. Imagine you find yourself entangled in these stupid scenarios over and over because you were raised to believe that your specific deity which you have chosen to worship rewards those who selflessly take care of those who can't or won't take care of themselves. Then imagine after several years, say 23 or so, of being constantly taken for granted, ignored or abused you start to question your motives. are you doing these things because you want to or because you're supposed to? Are you doing these things selflessly after all or are you assuming there is a reward? Are you supposed to expect the reward? Then maybe you have a crisis of faith here and there because ... you want that reward! you feel so guilty for wanting it and this causes so much anxiety and depression in you.

Now imagine you are seeking answers. Imagine the only way you know how to do this is a constant internal dialogue. You see everyone around you making life make sense with college degrees, husbands and wives, hobbies or sports, and with unquestionable religion. You see most everyone around you contented, calm and accepting. The only way you have found, however, to make anything make sense is to keep quiet and be alone and to escape into some music. Your headphones are your church. Your mix tapes are your religion. When the music stops, the confusion creeps in. You drown yourself in it, it is the only time your imagination runs free, there are no expectations and you dream wildly. it keeps you calm, it keeps you awake, it keeps you safe. you have no husband, you only have Bono. You have no degree, you have Peter Gabriel. You are not working a job you care about, but on the way to and from this job you get blast Jesus Christ Superstar at full volume and sing along. This somehow makes it all okay.

Sometimes when you are alone with your music, you are someone else. You are on stage. You are flawless and loved. You are thin and beautiful. Pretending you are someone you aren't becomes something you do so much it almost becomes who you are. you become an amalgamation of the pretend you and the real you. Then suddenly someone comes along, the right girl at the right time who encourages you to try and be both. why not? Dream out loud, be wild, be free, kick and sing! You may be in a stranger's bedroom at a house party and meet this girl and never think twice about it and then sometime down the road that moment becomes legend in the story of who you are together. Then one day you're sitting out on a patio of a coffee shop and this same girl decides to sit with you and you find yourself telling this practical stranger things about yourself you never said out loud before. Through a series of twists and turns, broken hearts, dead ends and towers falling, this girl becomes so much a part of yourself that you forget where she ends and you begin. You start to depend on her, to love her like family, to trust her input and opinions more than you trust your own. Her approval feels better than your parents'. You need too much sometimes and she kicks your ass in gear. you get stuck in a loop and she pulls you out. she watches you fly into the same closed window over and over again and she never judges you, she just waits until you learn your lesson. You love this girl. she is your best friend.

As you get older, it gets harder and harder to stand back up when you fall off the hypothetical horse. You feel so sure about something and it falls to pieces and you, therefore, fall to pieces. Your best friend will listen and nod and offer kind words and keep you moving. Sometimes the weight of the poor decisions and the heartbreak and the pain keep you in bed for days. Your body aches, your brain can't sit still, you walk aimlessly around the house for hours, heaving with sobs. Your best friend knows this about you, she is never cruel, she is never demanding, she is never condescending; she listens.

Somehow through the grace of your chosen deity, you suddenly find yourself becoming the person you always wanted to be. your body is cooperating and looking better, your self esteem is in tip-top shape, your mental imperfections are under control and your bills are being paid on time. and for this you suddenly start seeing those rewards you hoped would come. so then one day, you meet a man. This man takes you back to the girl you used to be before your best friend. this man reminds you of all the times when you were a kid and you just knew your chosen Deity would repay you for your kindnesses with just this type of person. The strength, beauty and goodness radiates from this man with such high intensity you want to just linger in it all day like a cat with a premium ray of sunshine. This one man represents everything you admire and respect in humanity, he represents everything you ever admired about yourself and your best friend in a beautifully bearded package. you can even see your mother and father in him, you can see such gentle kindness, such wild passion, big dreams that he will determinedly make come true, and most importantly you can see every reason in the world why you should be a better person because of him. You find yourself taking those final steps your best friend laid out for you and now through the strength and conviction of your love for this man, you are strong enough to take them. You feel justified and finally like a complete person, not just a collage of ideas. you feel whole. you finally feel better than the rest of the people who thought they had it figured out because you know the real secret; you solved the riddle of true love.

you start a project. you are on step-whatever of your never ending-step-plan to become the best you that you can possibly be by actually doing something you set out to do; you start writing. it may not be the best written thing out there, but it is yours. and with every new thing that is written, you feel more and more confident. you feel that empty vessel that was meant to hold your pride all along start to fill. you are writing for three people. yourself, your best friend and your true love; the only three people in the world you trust with your life and most importantly, your heart. you make a decision to dedicate songs to the people you love the most as a Christmas present as a part of this writing project. From day one you start to realize the two hardest entries will be for these two people. It takes you months to make a decision and as soon as you make it, you realize it was the wrong one. Imagine this: you have to stand at the graves of your grandparents. You have to look into the faces of the people who share your blood. You have to spend Christmas Eve alone and lost. You have to hear the right song at the right moment, you have to read just the right poem at the right time and you have to have just the right dream during the right nap to know the answer...

There is no one song for your best friend. There is no one song for the love of your life. They are your songs; they are every song. These two, these two random people your chosen Deity has chosen to set before you that he or she gave you to love more than life itself, they are your soundtrack. They ARE the music.



no two silly people have ever been so loved xxx

Soul Coughing - Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago

1995. Stupid year. I was 17 going on 18. I had dropped out of college for the first time already (graduated HS at 16, btw) and was spending the majority of my barely employed, anxiety riddled, coffeeshop-supergenius days wandering aimlessly with my best friend Summer and lying around one of my newer closest friends, Josh Bradley’s, house. I’m not clear on exact dates and timelines of events around this time period of my life. I wish I could say it was because of some rockstar reason like I was so busy being wasted on drugs or doing sex to the world, when the truth is something closer to the fact that during those days my panic and anxiety was so bad, I was popping Ativans left and right and spent the majority of the ages 17 through 20 in a benzo haze. Some of you were there, some of you remember.

There are a few significant events which occurred during this time, although as previously stated, I am not entirely certain of the timeline.

- Had my first boyfriend. Frank. He is crazy (diagnosed schizophrenic at this point.) we dated about a year, I broke up with him because he was, obviously, crazy. This was about 15 years ago. He still follows me around, always finds my phone number and where I live. This is one of my Raleigh legacies of which I am the very most ashamed. I was the girl who dated frank. 15 years ago.
- Met Josh Bradley, who would become one of the most beautifully influential and greatest friends of my life, via this teenage relationship with Frank
- Spent the majority of my time with this new group of friends, who would eventually become my lifelong (so far) friends… the MLP (Meredith Lesbian Posse), hippies, punks and Goths. Josh Bradley’s, (also known as PX), house was pretty much known as the hub of all things ridiculous and awesome in the Raleigh misfit scene. Somehow we ‘freaks’ always wound up there. Me on the floor playing dj, people always wound up naked. I don’t know how to describe these days. My friends could do a better job. “Meatloaf parties” eventually somehow became the name of these gatherings.
- Met the girl who would become my truest and best friend in the whole world, my sister and duprass-mate, El Jeanniño, Queen of Casinos.
- Started working at the Courtyard, my favorite job ever. Got all my friends jobs there eventually.
- Met Rob Roy. Life came to a grinding halt as he became the center of my shit universe.

Somewhere in all of this, as stated, all social functionalities of my life revolved around Josh Bradley’s house. (Note: all of my friends have nicknames in one way or another. PX was a nickname given to Josh Bradley by himself or others, not sure. I don’t adopt other people’s nicknames; it feels like cheating, so I never called him this. Sometimes I am lazy and people’s “nicknames” become their entire names, i.e. – JennyWood, ChrisCarroll, NancyBrown [note: ironically, Nancy’s last name isn’t Brown] and JoshBradley. Just realized this group of fullname-nicknamers is all in the same circle of friends in my mind. Odd.) Every night when I would get off work at the hotel, or on free days, I would head straight to Josh Bradley’s and just… hang out with whoever was there. Even if it was just Josh and he was asleep (as he is impossible to wake up. Trust me.) One would still hang out. Many a “party” was held at Josh Bradley’s while he was sleeping.

Lots of the types of things that would happen at Josh Bradley’s were entirely dependent on who was there and how many of us there were. (Note: old timers. This at University Apts, off Avent Ferry when he lived with Rich through when he lived with Wes.) If there was a large group, there would just be lots of shit talking, chain smoking and me sitting on the floor in front of the CD player, forcing my music on others. If there was only a few there would be 12 hour monopoly marathons, French braiding of Wes’s hair, being treated to a lovely rendition of “Mike Seaver is Gay” by Josh Bradley on the bass, or basically sitting around listening to music and smoking lots of Tareytons. Back in these days, Josh Bradley was still a V-card carrier, basically as straight edge as you can get except for the Dr Pepper and Tareyton addictions, and none of us really drank or did drugs. We were lame. I think some people did. We didn’t.

These times are when I discovered a few bands that would become necessary staples in my musical diet. I don’t remember when it was, but I do know it was at Josh Bradley’s house the first time I heard Soul Coughing. (Side note, I remember exactly where I was sitting and where Josh Bradley, Summer and Evil Erich were sitting the first time I heard Ani DiFranco. Talk about a life changer!) Anywho, Soul Coughing. I hadn’t ever heard anything like them. I fell in love almost instantaneously. I got (made) a mix tape copy of Ruby Vroom, ASAP and played it to death. TO DEATH. Literally until the tape itself warped and snapped. I played them for anyone who would listen. I was a one-woman Soul Coughing PR machine.

Working at the Courtyard around this time, there was a kid named Matt. You know those people who, at the time, you think you’ll never forget or lose touch with? Yeah I’m barely sure this kid’s name was Matt. I say kid, but at the time he was probably 22 and I was maybe 18. I remember thinking he was so much older than me… ha! Matt was a show-goer. This is how we bonded. I’ve always been a “who is playing? Fuck it, let’s go” kinda show-goer. This guy taught me how. I was with this Matt guy the first time I met Beck. Also the first Lilith Fair when I met Juliana Hatfield, Emmylou Harris, Susanna Hoffs, Jill Sobule, etc. Matt wanted to road trip to Richmond to see Soul Coughing… did I want to go? Uhh, durr?

Reminder: this was around the peak of my, as of yet undiagnosed and life controlling, panic disorder. I always had this obstinate urge to push myself past whatever anxiety I was feeling. I let it control me, but I didn’t. It’s hard to explain if you’re not inside this head. I would intentionally put myself in risky or spontaneous situations because my anxiety forced me to face my own death on a near constant basis, so I had to carpe diem as hard as I could. I am a conundrum, or so it would seem. My first panic attack ever was when I was 15 in an auditorium type situation. Ironically, my biggest trigger for panic attacks has since always been theaters, clubs, auditoriums, or concerts. (To understand me best, please know I knew this about myself but decided to go to school for theater. Try and understand the type of person I am that I would do that to myself. On Purpose.) To spontaneously wander off 5 hours into Virginia to see a rock show at a crowded club was probably not the best decision for me at the time, but I did it. It was my first show road trip. It was my best.

The show was at a club called the Flood Zone. Being inside that hot crowded club, hearing these songs I had loved and played so much, seeing these guys right in front of me. I knew I was hooked. Not just on them, but on the idea of live music. I was going to do this again and again, at whatever the cost. And I just remember being there, my heart beating out of my chest and being so sure I was going to pass out and die and my hands and feet going numb and just thinking, “Fuck it! This is awesome!” As predicted, it was an incredible show, this song being one of my favorites off Ruby Vroom that they played. There are 14 songs on this album and I have 14 favorite songs on this album. Ruby Vroom is a Karla-staple, and holds a permanent residence on my iPod at all times.

Side note: upon returning to Raleigh, several months later, I discovered the internet to an extent more than I had before. Found the 'official' Soul Coughing website. Sent the band a short email about how I fought through my anxiety and made it through the whole show and thanked them for making it worth my while. I got a response from M.Doughty himself, from which a correspondence that lasted randomly off and on for several years was born. Last email I got from him was about 8 yrs ago, but still, a small claim to fame for me. I saw him do his solo show about a year ago at the Pour House, still just as excellent. Love that guy.