Tibetan Freedom Concert - Part I

If I had to point to one moment in time when the complete irony of my attempts to become hip unfolded, it would be this day. 

My memory is just a tad cloudy, but I believe that by this time I had moved into my friend Greg’s house, which was a terrifyingly dilapidated farm house on the outskirts of Montgomery County….in some strange no man’s land between Olney and Laurel.

(If I was living at Greg's, that meant that I was quickly entering into one of the most exhilarating times in my life. Greg had defected from the Queegs and brought me with him. He then proceeded to move me into his house of horrors, where the two of us could practice all hours of the night as he wrote songs and plotted his next project: an exceptionally loud and noisy punk-pop outfit that would go on to become the Patsies....this minor act of betrayal nearly cost me the friendship of Queegs front man, Matt Reidl, and to this day I consider it to be a testament to his character that we are still close, despite my impulsive decision to ditch his band in favor of a tone-deaf song writer's odd Frankenstein of a band. Friendships have been sacrificed over less).

Anyway, it was kind of a big deal that the Tibetan Freedom concert would be in D.C. that year. Typically this event took place in San Francisco or NYC, but here it was at RFK Stadium: two full days of bands running the gamut across just about every single type of popular music from the mid-to-late 1990s.

All my friends were going to this event, and I definitely wanted to get in on the fun.

But the fact is that I’m not exactly a fan of festival concerts. I don’t like standing around in the heat with no shade to be found. I don’t like getting clipped $5 for bottled water. And I don’t like getting kicked in the head by crowd surfers (because, as my tall friend, Phil, puts it, if you’re over 6 feet tall and you’re in front of the stage, you’re just a speed bump).

The idea of two days of stadium festival madness wasn’t really my idea of fun, so I figured I’d just eyeball the line-ups for each day and decide which one was more to my liking.

I have to admit, this made for a pretty difficult choice. The event organizers had done a ridiculously wonderful job balancing each day’s performers so that there was something for everyone on each day. (Of course, this also meant that there was an awful lot of mid-90’s turd-rock on each day as well – more on that shortly).

My decision was to go with Saturday. That would allow me Sunday to recover from the intense sunburn I was undoubtedly going to experience from standing on the RFK field all afternoon.

If I remember correctly, I thought it would be cool to see Beck, and I thought it might be kind of neat to finally see REM, since I knew I’d never actually go to one of their concerts. And more than anything else, I desperately wanted to see Sonic Youth.

(See, this is key……when a kid raised on classic rock and heavy metal joins a punk band, moves into a scary group house and goes to see Sonic Youth, I like to think that he has finally emerged from his cocoon of bad taste, and arrived at the full-fledged mothdom of hipseterism).

Of course, like pretty much all of my plans to be seen as anything other than a dork, this was doomed to fail. It all started with the dumb decision to only purchase a ticket for the first day, but, of course, things got considerably worse from there.

To be continued....

Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc




I'm going to try and be diplomatic about this.

Eric Clapton brought us Badge. And he brought us Layla. And he brought us Cocaine.

That alone -- not to mention all the bad-ass Cream stuff, and Bell Bottom Blues, and Can't Find My Way Home -- should be more than enough to cement him in a place above all judgment by a douche bag like myself.

That would be, unless the 1980's had never happened. And everything since then.

Simply put, there is no rock pioneer on Earth who has taken a larger and deeper plunge into irrelevancy than Eric Clapton.

Oh, sure, the Stones may have embarrassed their legacy more. And the Who may have doublecrossed themselves to the greatest degree. And Elton John and Rod Stewart may have come across as the most half-witted doofuses (sometimes I wonder if those two are the same guys who wrote "Every Picture Tells a Story" and "Honky Chateau"....seriously - is it even possible?)..

But Clapton? Clapton somehow managed to hang onto his completely bad-ass legacy without once leveraging it in any meaningful way in his "adult" career.

I challenge you: Name me ONE Eric Clapton single (not entitled "Tears in Heaven") worth remembering in the 1980's or 1990's. "She's Waiting"? No. "Running On Faith"? Close, but no. "I Can't Stand It"? Give me a break.

((I admit that I had forgotten about "Forever Man." And I admit that I really like that one. But I also admit that it sounds a whole lot more like something that would have been in the background during a car chase on Miami Vice in 1986 than on a rock legend's solo album)).

So, how did I end up at this show?

My best friend and former roommate from college was a big time Clapton disciple, and back then I wasn't the judgmental fuck that I am today.

That's not to say that I wasn't uncomfortable about going to see Eric Clapton. But Jay was in town for a conference, and Eric Clapton happened to be playing in town that same week, so I bit the bullet and made the best of things.

Little did I know what a snoozer this concert would be. Holy fuck. Boring beyond boring.

This was the "Pilgrim" tour, and it was an album probably best remembered for the decidedly adult-contemporary single "My Father's Eyes". I think it was also the opening number for the show - a telling sign of what was to come. The following several songs were of a similar fare - thoughtful but uninspiring (and uninspired) mid-tempo numbers, none of which I can remember particualrly well. (Most likely because I was fuming over the FOURTY-FUCKING-FIVE DOLLAR SEATS -- $45 to sit at the top row of stage right).

I do remember that he did a pretty great version of Cocaine that night, which had most everyone out of their seats for a minute or two. But in order to get there, we had to sit through another dozen mid-life crisis pop songs and that fucking "Wonderful Tonight" piece of dreck, which no one should ever have to listen to again after prom and/or their best friend's wedding.

I have to assume that he played "White Room" or "Sunshine of Your Love" or one of the other undeniable classics from his catalog, and I'm sure that I enjoyed them, or at least gratefully accepted them as a welcome reprieve from the rest of the evening's content.

But it didn't really make much of a difference. This evening was not about good taste or bad taste. It wasn't about my wonderment about how Mr. Clapton filled the MCI Center on the shoulders of such an unexciting album. It wasn't about the cost of the ticket or the warped value of the performance. And it wasn't about the very obvious double standard against the likes of Mr. Clapton while I gladly shelled out mountains of cash to see the Rolling Stones multiple times on each tour in the 1990s.

It was about hanging out with my best friend from college and running out to make last call at Nanny O'Brien's after the show, and perhaps relive a little college glory...which, by that time, felt like much further in our past than three years.

And even further today.

Washington Wizards vs. Seattle Supersonics

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Washington Wizards vs. Seattle Supersonics
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

Growing up as a sports fan in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s, there were some damn good times. The Skins could be counted upon to go to the Super Bowl every few years – and they typically raised a banner when they went. The Orioles won a World Series when I was at that perfect baseball age of 9 years old. And maybe the Capitals were perennial Patrick Division bridesmaids, but they at least were a competitive team full of colorful characters, much like my beloved Skins were.

Of course, things would change over the years. Redskins ownership has since turned the franchise into a punch line. The Orioles seem further away than ever, now that we have an NL doormat right here in town. And the Caps may be the best team in town, but honestly, I’m way too fucking smart, clean and handsome for hockey culture. That’s just a fact.

And then there were the Bullets.

Now, I know that the Bullets were a good team when I was small. But I can’t honestly remember the team being anything other than sub-average at any moment when I was growing up. The Capital Centre was dark and dingy. The players tended to look a little old and out of shape. And the television broadcasts...Oh, the humanity of watching those terribly-lit games on TV, perhaps most painfully accentuated by the complete and total lack of crowd noise (which only made every single sneaker squeak sound that much louder).

Robin Ficker was pretty much the only thing that team had going for it.

To Abe Pollin’s credit, the man’s decision to fund and build his own kick-ass stadium in downtown D.C. was just about the greatest thing the guy ever did – for the team and for the city of Washington. If you've been living here for less than 20 years, it's hard to fathom just how beat up the majority of Washington used to be; Chinatown was a pretty seedy area before the Verizon Center/MCI Center came to town, and it’s probably safe to say that Metro Center was generally considered the end of the city for a great many visitors.

You can choose to disagree, but you’d be wrong to: The House that Abe Built was THE landmark investment into the future revitalivation of Washington, D.C.

That did not stop his team from sucking. Nor did the supposedly blockbuster acquisition of Fab Five college superstars Chris Webber and Juwan Howard. Nor did the effort to change the team’s name/brand from the Bullets to the Wizards. Or the following additions of names like Mitch Richmond or Rod Strickland (Don’t get me started about that Jordan guy).

Even as the triumvirate of Pollin, Wes Unseld and Susan O'Malley did everything they possibly could to bring Washington basketball into the modern age, the team rarely became more than “competitive”. It was a real shame. After a very public blunder, the management had finally woken up from a decades long slumber but they just couldn’t get their act together.

And what that meant for ticket sales was an all too familiar phenomenon: the seats remained largely empty until a team like the Knicks or the Bulls came to town, at which point the tickets would sell, just so that people could say that they saw Patrick Ewing or Michael Jordan. It was an utterly depressing state of affairs.

With the arrival of our new downtown stadium, however, there was reason to believe that this could all change. You could now travel to games via the Metro rather than trucking it out to Landover. The building had a modern design, with appropriate lighting. There were new concessions, with vastly improved sightlines. And the team looked one hell of a lot better (on paper, at least) than any other Washington basketball team (....um, Washington **NBA** team) I’d ever seen.

Games were going to FUN, and I was glad to be there as it was happening.

That’s where the irony of this ticket comes in.

Now, for the life of me I cannot remember how I got my hands on this ticket – and I should because this was the first game ever played in the MCI Center. I think I won it in a contest, but I can’t remember at all. Maybe my little brother won them? I seriously can’t believe it, but I simply have no idea how I came into these amazingly kick-ass seats.

I know that I went with my little brother, and I know (via a web search) that the Wizards were sporting a pretty cool line up that season, including Howard, CWebb, 1997 3-Point Champ (and La Salle University standout) Tim Legler and future star BEN FREAKING WALLACE, but for the life of me, the only person on our team that I can vividly remember was God Shammgod. (and that’s just because I loved his name, particularly as sung with the “YouDaManYouDaMan” song that played before all of the home games).

But I do remember seeing the Glove play that night. And I *THINK* I remember Branford Marsallis performing the national anthem. And I do remember President Bill Clinton giving the team his trademark thumbs up after the game from Mr. Pollin’s box seat.

And I remember that the Wizards won.

But that’s it. After all that effort by the ownership and management, all I can remember is that I finally got to see Gary Payton play.

How distasteful.

type o negative

type o negative
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

I was making so much progress in my early 20’s. I’d gotten into a band. I’d made new friends. I was hanging out in the city. I had been introduced to punk rock that extended beyond Raw Power and Fun House.

Things were really looking up for me and my legacy of loving bands that no one else could stand.

But then along came Type O Negative. I firmly believe that my 3+ year fascination with that band of meatheads may have cemented it for those who managed to look past the years and years of embarrassing musical loyalties I’d harbored.

To be fair to myself, Type O Negative had a moment when they were doing just about the most interesting thing in the mid-90’s metal scene. “Bloody Kisses” was a borderline tour de force when it came out, introducing underground goth sensibilities from influences including the Swans and the Sisters of Mercy, into a Brooklyn-styled Sabbath-core...And the production was so damned lush, with so much reverb and echo and creative synth work, to say nothing of the ultra-corpse baritone vocals.

And it was all accompanied with what certainly seemed to be a smart sense of humor. One could never be certain if the guys in the band actually subscribed to the self-hate, violent nihilism, suicidal thinking and scene-bashing that runs throughout the album, but it came across as a very potent form of satire.

Of course, I also was always a sucker for a well crafted image, be it Bowie morphing himself into a German Shepherd or Lionel Richie with his Fedora in the “Running with the Night “ video, or Judas Priest looking so totally cool in their tight leather pants and shades Elvis.

And Type O Negative was no exception. The first time I saw them opening for Danzig in support of "Bloody Kisses" I was absolutely awestruck: The guys all look like they’d rolled out of a gutter. They were filthy. They were ugly. They spit on the stage, drank and chain-smoked throughout the set.

And despite the gay porn moniker, Peter Steele - pale, muscle bound, 6'6" and dressed in a wifebeater with his hair covering most of his face - cut the image of a first rate front man for this particular type of morbid fare. From the balcony of the Tower Theatre, I hadn’t the slightest idea whether this man was hideous or beautiful, but I knew that I wanted to look at him.

This, of course, leads me to the other rather obvious reason that people were suspicious with my obsession with this band. I was a weird, screwed up individual in my early 20’s. And I don’t mind going on record as saying that I was sexually confused. I knew that I liked women. But I also knew that for a number of years I resented them on a level that makes me uncomfortable to explore to this day.

And I knew that the fact that I'd resisted all dating efforts had led no small number of people to begin questioning my sexual preference…or even all too regularly make rather insulting assumptions about me.

(I can’t really tell this story without remembering all the time when my mom – a retired librarian - went on a odd, rollicking monologue during a family dinner about what she would do to entertain herself should my father ever pass away. The conversation concluded with her thoughts about how her three sons could support her:

“Well, Joseph [a collegiate librarian] and I could attended the annual American Library Association meeting together, and Kevin [an accountant] will manage the finances, and Tom and I………can go shopping together!!”

I honestly can’t relive this conversation without experiencing that same Molotov cocktail of anger, self-loathing and shame that was probably the spark for the more foolishly dangerous moments of my young life. But it does make me chuckle just a little, too.

Sort of. A little. When I’m not crying and downing entire bottles of cheap Cabernet.)

The point is, most everyone at one point or another at least suspected that I liked men. And this didn’t make matters any less complex. I knew I wasn’t interested in men. I was positive of it. And the fact that so many people – especially women – were convinced that I was, only made me more hostile and resentful towards the ladies.

And that was not helping matters in the least.

The irony of this all was that I didn’t immediately fall in love with Type O Negative after that first seeing them my senior year of college. It wasn't some massive man-love infatuation - even though I did find them fascinating.

It would, in fact, be maybe a year before I actually bought the CD. And I bought it specifically because after months upon months upon months of watching a friend date other people, I’d finally found the courage to tell her how crazy I was about her....only to be sweetly informed (by e-mail) that it would never happen with us, and that she was suddenly very uncomfortable with our special friendship.

("Special friendship." That's a quote - straight from the e-mail. Those words still make we wince).

Seeking something I could listen to as a moped over things, I picked up my copy of "Bloody Kisses" at the old Tower Records on Rockville Pike. And THAT was were the obsession really took off.

Not because I was gay for Peter Steele (well, maybe a little....).

Actually, no.

Because of a girl. A girl I liked lot and who I desperately wanted to be with. A girl who didn’t like me back and who didn’t want to be with me. A girl - and a friend - who I never saw or spoke to again after she turned me down. Never even looked her up on Facebook.....in fact, never even considered it until this moment.

That experience - and my subsequent wussfest - made a lot of that album’s content seem a lot less ridiculous. The lyrics about watching a loved one die. The lyrics about suicide. The lyrics about freezing to death. The lyrics about hate and rage. Lyrics about it being "too late for apologies." The lyric about how "loving you was like loving the dead”. (How many ways did I chew over that phrase in the next several weeks?)

No doubt it was goofy, but it was also what I needed at that point.

Now, I know how utterly sophomoric as it all sounds for an adult male to immerse himself in over the top music in order to cope. But that is precisely was drew me to this band: I felt rotten inside. I felt utterly foolish and naked and embarrassed and angry and worthless. And having a big tall dude with lots of bad tattoos sing dirges to me about dead loved ones was comforting in a way that Michael Stipe never could have pulled off.

But it was essentially the same thing. Everybody hurts, indeed.

***sigh***

On to the show....

This was one of my first shows at the "new" 930 Club. Went alone. (Surprised?)

They were touring off "October Rust" - an album that was far more lush and beautiful than "Bloody Kisses", but which lacked the teeth that the previous albums had. It arguably made up with it with superior songcraft and texture. And far more vulnerability in the lyrics, which made it all the harder for me to man up and put the fucking band to rest.

That tour went on forever, but this was towards the beginning - part of the annual Halloween mini-tour. If I remember correctly, a big toilet paper war broke out between crew, crowd and performers at the end of the show, and Steele threw a gigantic pumpkin into the stage for the money shot.

Set list included (not in order):

Too Late: Frozen, Are You Afraid?, Gravity, My Girlfriend's Girlfriend, Cinnamon Girl, Light My Fire, Love You To Death, In Praise of Bacchus, Black # 1, medley of Aqualung, Dazed & Confused and My Sharona, followed by an encore of Pain/Prelude to Agony, Wolf Moon and Christian Woman.

I'm think I'm going to need to lie down for a sec after that one.

stones

stones
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc
Aaaah, the Bridges to Babylon tour.

What a tremendously half-assed piece of shit that album was. Dirty Work might be the all time worst Stones record, but I fortunately was only 11 years old when that came out. But by the time they crapped out B2B, I full well knew what a terrible album sounded like. And this, my friends was it.

Good God, where to start? With Mick Jagger's pathetic grasp at relevance by hiring a flash-in-the-pan gimmick producer team? Or how about the limp-dicked cover art? Or maybe giving a song-writing credit to a washed up lesbian icon because you're not 100 percent sure that you didn't steal a chorus from her (...but ya decided to release it as a single anyway)? How about the embarrassing decision to have a guest rap in your lead-off single by a novelty act MC from ten years ago? (Fuckin hell, we expect those sort of coked out shenanigans on a Ronnie Wood solo record, not on a Rolling Stones venture).

Any of these are reason enough to pan this album.

But reason number one in my book will always be the inclusion of a third guitar player on a number of tracks on this album.

A third fucking guitar player (not named "Mick Jagger") in the Rolling Stones???? Since when are Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards not enough guitar players for the Rolling Fucking Stones?

(Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all about Harvey Mandell (?!?!) and Wayne Perkins being all over Black and Blue......and Gram Parsons and Ry Cooder and a half a dozen of Keith Richards' other smack buddies being all over other Stones records. But those records were mostly good, if not completely fucking awesome. But this album blew).

Regardless....Waddy Wachtel?? Best case scenario he's a corporate studio rainmaker. Worst case, he shouldn't be left alone with your kids.

Save that guy for your solo tours, Keith.

And you know, the sad thing is that "Out of Control" and "Saint of Me"......coupled to a lesser extent with "Too Tight" and the more recent "Rough Justice"....will probably be the Stones' last really good rock songs.

(I almost wrong "great Stones songs", but none of those tunes really belong in the same sentence as "Honky Tonk Women" or "Let's Spend the Night Together", now, do they?)

((((Good God, those videos suck....)))

Despite this never-ending tome of head-up-my-butt-snobbery, I did decide to see this tour (....twice). A more pure music fan would not excuse this double standard, but the Rolling Stones live performance is kind of a thing of beauty for those of us who can get past the mediocrity of the Stones' studio output for the last 25 years.

In this case, I went to the show with my best friend from college, Jason, and his wife, Becky.

I hate to say this after drooling over the Stones live show, but I don't actually remember a hell of a lot about this performance. I'm pretty sure that Blues Traveller opened, and I know that we sat on the lower level in the back of the Vet.

I also vividly remember making a beer run before the show, and getting that terrible feeling in my gut as the house lights went down when I had not yet reached the front of the line. What a terrible decision to make......be a good guest and pick up the beers, or run out into the aisle in order to at least watch the start of the show, only to surrender myself to the back of the line?

I stayed in line, stuck behind a small and very unattractive (and even angrier) Italian girl who was loudly whispering to her friend that "those people" shouldn't be allowed to handle money because they're "too fuckin slow."

She gestured her little troll hand at the two African American women operating the beer stand, lest any of us miss the subtext of her statement.

Aaaah, Philly. Nothing says classy like angry, ugly, racist white chicks.

Anyway, "Satisfaction" played as I was spilling beer all over myself trying to get back to the seats, and that's more or less the only song I can remember from the set. I know that they were doing the Internet request thing on that tour, and they most certainly ended the show with the same four songs that they end every concert with.

But the big gap in the middle has sadly been surrendered over the years to the ill effects of cheap marijuana and expensive beer. And I know that's the makings of a lousy blog post. But them's are the breaks.

Because, I'm a man of wealth and taste.

Bad taste.

Denis Leary

leary
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc


Not a bad night, though nothing particularly exciting happened. No porn stars, no hollow apologies for my bad taste, (and certainly nothing as embarrassing as Denis Leary's own career decisions), just another night out with Pornmaster-T and Captain Sensitive.

Leary was coming off the success of his first album back in 92 or whenever, and was doing a tour in support for his upcoming HBO Special. Most of the material was about parenthood and the new (at that time) trend towards gourmet flavored coffee. Nothing really amazing....

The standout bit was probably his story about accidentally farting five minutes into a transcontinental flight (Alaska to Asia).....I'm not going to try and recreate it, but I think you get the schtick: he has a 20-minute layover, he smokes a cigarette, eats an egg salad sandwich from a vending machine and drinks a warm soda before getting back on the flight, whereupon he busts ass and pisses everyone off as the air is recycled over the course of the next 11 hours.

The real star of the night, though, was undoubtedly opener Jeff Garlan (Jeff Greene...the fat guy from "Curb Your Enthusiasm"). Garlan was absolutely kick-ass. He improvised liberally through his set, touching on his experiences with phone sex, his technique for stealing hotel PPV porn, and a completely hysterical bit about reaching 40 and realizing that your college diploma is worthless, and your wife despises you because her butt has gotten too big for her liking. (The repeated exclamation of "SHITTY PIECE OF PAPER...BIG FAT ASS!!!!!" was central to this bit, and became an annoying catch phrase for myself, PMT and the Captian for several months after this show).

I'm struggling with how I'm going to wrap this one up, so I'll just go for the easiest way out:

As you will notice on the stub, this concert took place during the summer, with an abnormally early door time. This meant that the sun was still up when we drove down and parked for the concert. But it was well into the night time when we walked out.

Now, listen, I sometimes like to embellish how much shadier and more dangerous the U Street area was back in the mid-90's, but it was never quite as bad as I like to make it out to be. (Compared to the sorrority house traffic nightmare that U Street is today, however, I think the tall tales serve an important purpose). The neighborhood *could* be a little rough back then, and my car *was* broken into that one time. And so was Joe's from the Milkomatics, as he was loading out from a gig at the Velvet, now that I think of it....Oh, and then there was that time when one of the neighborhood crackheads pulled a knife on me (well, a steak knife, to be honest) as I was trying to get in my car.

But bottom line, if you kept your wits, these incidents could be kept to a minimum.

There was no assuring PMT and the Captain of this as we crossed V Street. What we had on our hands were two very frightened white people. In fact, other than the one or two times that the Captain came out to the Velvet Lounge or the Black Cat to see my old band, I can say with relative certainty that this was the first and last time that either of them ventured into the non-Smithsonian inner-reaches of the dark city. In fact, since then PMT has moved to West Virginia.

That's right. West Virginia.

One night in Shaw made a hard man humble.

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midsummer nights dream

midsummer nights dream
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

oh yeah. here's the stub.