Thank The Past We Liked Good Music That's Still Good Right Now

Who can resist the rabid punky edge of Interpol?! I couldn't ten years ago as a high school freshman, and seeing them again in Portland the other day, I raged my whole body to the music still. The lights followed the cutting riffs as the smooth bass rippled beneath; the jumping and headbanging was hardly enough outlet for the energetic excitement. Killer show.

My first Interpol show, I was 15 in 2005; they played in between Tegan & Sarah and The New York Dolls at Yankee Stadium in Staten Island (minor league). The balladic Canadian sisters were cute, and my little girlfriends and I got their signatures on our tickets, with crappy flip-phone pictures. Interpol was incredible; playing all the favorites and never toning it down. Banks had a cigarette hanging from his mouth for half the day-lit show, sitting on a stool and not looking at anyone, like he was playing on his back porch. It was so enamoring we left two songs into The NY Dolls, mutually agreeing going back to Jersey to toke up would be a more fitting close to the music high day than staying for the headlining band The Killers.

I loathed Mr. Brightside.

I must say, in ten years Banks does not look or sound like he's aged five minutes. This show at portland's State Theater was a powerful performance for alll the band members, who each surged that gust of "AH!!!" into the constant climaxes of the music.

Admittedly I've barely heard their latest album, but from what I have randomly on Pandora. "It still sounds like Interpol," was the best I could surmise before the show. 

"That's...GOOD!" my girl said, and i outwardly agreed, and my impression held true. Every song carried as much energy and raw edginess as the last. "Slow Hands" jammed as hard as where that song has always taken me and higher. The builds ups and bridges had everyone in the pit dancing their asses off. The new songs fit well within the classics. And like my girl said, "There wasn't a song I didn't dance my fuckin' ass off to."

And yes, they played "Evil."

Fare Thee Well Done

Did he do it? How could he not do it?! Trey totally honored Jerry's signature sound of guitar with his high-pitched, searching-through-the-sounds upbeat playfulness with the Grateful Dead. After seeing the July 4^th show streamed at the State Theater in Portland, then streaming the audio free online after too many failed video attempts, I can say he did it. Trey raged Jerry for the “Fare Thee Well” Tour, totally channeling his guitar spirit yet playing with it in his Trey-zy way. With Phish for brains, I was stoked to still hear Trey at the core of the Jerry whittling and winding. Yes, the proof was in my third eye, as Trey even emanated the inner-visual I always get from Jerry's guitar, a green flower garden movin' and groovin and opening and closing blossoms to the slick licks, stems slithering like snakes up and down to the wormy diddlin'. But the Phishy flutter was flowing there too. I heard Trey come out in his rittling strummy build-ups before plunging into the high wails of a Jerry sound. Bridge into "Truckin'"? So Trey-zy!! He projected Jerry. But he kept it Trey. As well as tasteful. What more could a Dead-head ask for?

Well, to at least hear the damn shows that everyone we've ever met flew and caravaned out to in Chicago. I was lucky to have a line on free tickets for the streamed shows in Portland for the 4^th, and passed the Sunday tickets off to my co-parent so he could have a night too. After all, he was the one who hitch-hiked his way through Dead shows selling tie-dyes in the '80s, then helped haul Phish's equipment from $5 shows at the end of the decade, watching them rise as the Dead scene fell to dope and federal infiltration...all of which has transpired the cult-jam scene each band has molded and transformed...and basically this musical culmination happening would mean a whole big wow of a world to the daddyo.

So when I get a link from my boy down in Maryland for streaming the show, I'm stoked! The Couch Tour/Stream Scene has been growing so that people are throwing parties projecting the show on the sides of their houses, having July 4th parties based around streaming the show after bbqing. Some have paid so they can replay the shows all month. So I send this link out to like, ten people as broke as I am with the same warning from PJ: “Do not post, spread the love among family.” Then from PJ, my phone bleeps, “CHINA CAT!” Then from my co-parent, “I called the opening song china cat (smiling-with-sunglasses-on emoji) !!!!!! Love love love,” which is obviously one of my Top 3 Dead songs, so I go downstairs after just laying my daughter down to sleep and click the link. Ugh. Not working, check back later. Kait texts, “It says copyright infringement.” Michael, “Error message, bad link.” Ooops.

But then, this!

And so, a few of us stranded on the east coast were thankfully able to tune into the show. Like, Trey singing "Althea"?!?! My heart burst of the wettest dream alive in my ears!! And even without the video, we still all got madhouse picture messages of everyone we've ever met at the epic music event of the summer. And realize, yeah, this couldn't have happened at a camping venue. That amount of people is a city in itself and would surely sink a mountain. But hell yeah for the heads—Trey synced right up with the band and merged the musical legacies of America's biggest jam bands. So big, not even the internet can stop the rest of us from listening.

Photo by Meggy Schaeffer--Bear's Stadium July 5th