Review: Crowded House at the Somerville Theatre

Rather than attempt to be coherent, I’m going to do this in a more stream-of-consciousness style, because I’m still buzzed and not interested in making sense. First, I want to thank the Swami for indulging my need to go to both shows, even though they were on a Monday and Tuesday, because I really couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d missed one.

First night (setlist, although see below for more details): We were up in the front part of the balcony, but I wasn’t about to complain because I damn near missed out on getting any tickets at all. (Foolishly gave up a pair of orch seats right at 10:04 on sale day and then couldn’t get anything for an agonizing fifteen minutes.) It’s not like the venue is huge, either, so you’re never that far from the action.

Funny thing is that I thought the show started out kind of low on energy, although we got some songs I really enjoy (“Everything Is Good for You” and “Say That Again,” for example). And they’re workshopping new songs, which is something special that I’ve never seen with the Crowdies before. But then things really took off. We got absolutely scorching versions of “When You Come” (which Neil had to interrupt because he thought he was going to sneeze, heh!) and “It’s Only Natural,” with Nick at one point cheerfully abusing a tambourine like a madman. And the encores kept the energy level high, with a great version of “Fingers of Love” featuring one of Mark’s magisterial solos.

And then—chaos! Neil actually agreed to attempt someone’s impossible request of “Mary of the South Seas,” which he has obviously forgotten almost entirely. He sang the chorus a couple of times while the rest of the band looked quizzical (Mark did his soldierly best to accompany on harmonica). Then Neil started thinking about all the songs he’s written that mention names. So he played “Lester,” “I Love You Dawn,” and “Hello Sandy Allen” while calling chord changes out to Nick. Then somebody yelled for “Log Cabin Fever,” which Neil again did his best at. (Unlike Neil, I remember the second verse, dammit, but I was too far away to yell it to him.) At this point I was thoroughly falling out of my chair. During the rockout end of the song, Neil was playing alone, then said “You know it’s all in E, boys,” and the rest of the band finally joined in—though of course it did not resemble the actual song. Then we got the insanely obscure “Evelyn” and a bit of “Iris,” and finally the whole awesome detour was capped off by a full and gorgeous version of “Catherine Wheels.” What else can I say!

Actually, I should mention the night’s theme of Sharks, which is a kids’ game where you try to make it across a room without touching the floor. I’ve been informed that it’s nuts that I hadn’t heard of this game, but apparently the Kiwis have come up with something entirely original. And it led to a fair amount of silliness, which is another reason to love seeing these guys live.

Second night (see discussion thread here): I figured it would be hard to live up to that first night, but they still put on a great show. I also had the best seats I’ve ever bought for a show in my entire life, second row center section. The ticketing gods smiled upon me that day, and I am grateful.

They stuck to the set list this time, but the best thing about CH is that they can do a second show with hardly any overlap. I’m a huge fan of the unpredictable set list. As for songs, there’s never any reason to regret hearing “Private Universe,” and they did a kickass version of “Chocolate Cake.” But the highlight for me was “Whispers and Moans,” which I truly thought I would never hear in person. Ohhhh yeah.

It feels very, very weird to not be at a Crowded House concert tonight. And what a treat it was to have two shows in a row. Considering that I went from 1994 to 2007 without any live CH, but have seen four shows in the last ten months, this is just what a fan needs. Whoop!

(Postscript added on edit: I should also mention that Mark, in his suit and tie, looks more and more like an English teacher rocking out on stage. I also spotted Nick and Mark on the sidewalk shortly before show two, but managed to keep my cool [i.e., chickened out] and didn’t bug them. Another opportunity to look like a crazed fan avoided.)

Overhyped

I feel obligated to respond to the suggestion that LeBron James is not overhyped, as I claimed over here.

A short discussion of semantics is called for as a preliminary. Labeling James overhyped has nothing to do with whether he’s a good basketball player; it would be downright idiotic to claim that he has no skill or talent. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s about the hype. In the immortal words of Public Enemy, don’t believe it.

First, he hasn’t actually achieved anything. And no, I don’t believe for a second that a player has to win a championship to be considered an excellent player. But consider the attention James gets, the adulation, the seemingly unconditional love and attention. And consider what he has delivered in return.

Second, he receives insane levels of preferential treatment from the refs and the league. He travels to the basket all the time. Players who foul him receive harsh punishments; when he metes out similarly flagrant fouls on other players, he is protected from the consequences.

Third, he’s just a lousy representative of the NBA. Do I have to bring up the Darfur thing again? He’s a manufactured superstar who has done very little to earn respect for what he does, but rather seems to just sit back and let the league crown him as king because they need individuals to feed their hype machine.

Really, how can he not be seen as overhyped at this point? It will be very interesting to watch the Cleveland-Boston matchup in round 2. I hope KG goes easy on the poor guy; he has such a tough time getting fouled while he’s traveling his ass towards the basket.

Wiiiiizzzzzzz

They won! They won! A close one, too. Agghh, I am prematurely aging watching these guys play. LeBron is overhyped, big time.

Glad I could track down this clip of Soulja Boy doing the DeShawn Stevenson’s “I can’t feel my face” thing from Game 3 in DC. Heh!

Vinyl Elvis

Hm, I need to stop thinking about how badly the Wizards are playing in the playoffs. Because they are playing very, very, very BADLY. It’s killing me. But I can’t blog about that, it’s really too painful.

So yesterday Elvis Costello released his latest album as vinyl only (though there is a promise of a CD version to come out later). It’s interesting to watch the reaction of the fans, because two things become clear: (1) both he and many of his fans possess a huge, I might even say irrational, love for vinyl LPs; and (2) I don’t.

I suppose there’s a reason one refers to the formative years as being, well, formative. During mine, there was one record player in the house, and it was smack in the living room. And the floor in there was incredibly susceptible to vibrations, so if you wanted to listen to a record you had to announce your intention so that everybody could sneak around and not make the record skip. The implication of this is that playing music in record form was not in any way a private activity, even with headphones. So if it hadn’t been for the cassette tape, I wouldn’t have had any freedom to listen to whatever I wanted, or to give the music the kind of undivided attention that music sometimes demands. (Or to get emotional when the music demanded that you got emotional.) This set of circumstances also means I never had the magic moment of putting a needle down on a record to hear it the first time, and so I don’t have a desire to recapture this with Elvis’s new one. (I also don’t have an audiophilic passion for the topic of fidelity, but that might be worth a whole post of its own.) But I can’t fault Elvis for engineering that experience anew for a lot of people who find that important, so that’s cool. Although he’d better put the damn album out on CD too, dammit.

Through a strange coincidence I also watched the movie High Fidelity for the first time last weekend, and of course it’s awash in record-store geekery and nostalgia for the vinyl. God, how I wanted a summer job in a record store when I was younger. It’s probably for the best that I was never granted such a platform where I could feel cooler than the rest of the world, heh. But as a mini-review I’ll say that I wasn’t super impressed with the book, and the movie didn’t work any better. For a John Cusack plus Tim Robbins flick, I would definitely watch Tapeheads a few more times rather than see this one again. (Heh, according to the IMDB rating I am in the minority opinion there!) And for John Cusack directed by Stephen Frears, for the love of Pete you should totally go with The Grifters—much better.

Think there’s any chance the Wizards won’t get swept? Aaaaargh.

Alternative minimum schmack

It’s that most momentous of days today, tax day. Funny how income tax in the US reveals so much about us, both in general and individually. Let’s start with the former and move to the latter, in an orderly, linear fashion that upholds the spirit of the tax forms themselves.

First, I noticed that it was a complete mob scene at the post office yesterday, which suggests that a lot of my fellow Americans are just as procrastinatory as I am. Although my rationalization for sending my taxes in at the last moment is that I’m putting off giving up my money as long as possible, so that I can earn a little more interest. However, that was probably more than offset by the extra stamps I randomly put on the envelopes to avoid waiting in the huge line to buy the exact postage. So that again shows a collective lack of planning by me and my fellow countrymen—another valuable insight.

I also thought about the common wisdom about a few tax-related topics, and by common wisdom here I of course mean stubborn ignorance. The best example of this is the deduction for interest paid on a home mortgage. People often like to blather about the wonderous shower of money that rains down upon you when you own a home, because hey, you can deduct the mortgage interest off your taxes! But hello, if you think about this for two seconds, you realize that you aren’t making any money. You’re just not paying tax on top of the interest that you already paid. In other words, you’re getting kicked in the head, but not stomped on the foot. I suppose that could be seen as a net gain in the optimist’s world. Speaking of optimism, viewing a tax refund as a good thing is a bit wack in my mind. Congratulations, you’ve been giving the government a free loan of your money rather than saving it yourself. This in the same country where people shriek about being trapped in a nanny state when it comes to things like wearing a seatbelt, or being allowed to blow cigarette smoke in other people’s faces.

Now to some specifics. I learned (once again) that I am exercising a smart career choice by not being an accountant or tax professional. I made two giant, honking errors in my first draft of the tax forms, which would have cost us some $1100. That ain’t too cool. I also am finally coming to grips with the reality that I should really get some damn tax software to figure all this stuff out, rather than doing it by hand. There’s just some persistent, crazy corner of my brain that doesn’t trust that the software is any better at this than I am; or rather, that a roomful of programmers, all equally or perhaps slightly less smart than I am, could actually achieve a better result than I with my pencil and my calculator. Hell, Danielle cheerfully reported to me that in New Zealand the government figures your tax for you, and then sends you a check or a bill. Can you imagine this working in the US? People here are suspicious of the freaking census, for chrissakes.

Anyway, I hope the Postal Service enjoys my extra fifty cents or so of postage. I wonder if I can deduct that off my taxes next year. Just think, that’s free money!

Disillusionment of the day

Hmph, I just learned over here that what everybody calls wasabi is not actually real wasabi, but some kind of concoction using regular horseradish. More can be read about this diabolical conspiracy here. I feel cheated!

Although this will in no way prevent me from having huge sushi cravings at least once a week. And there’s a restaurant in Waltham named Ponzu that serves little nuclear bombs called wasabi pork dumplings, which are basically (faux-) wasabi laced pork meatballs wrapped in wonton wrappers. They are evil, they are delicious, they will kick your ass and make you cry for your mommy. Who could refuse food that does all that? If you survive, you feel like the ultimate stud; if you die, well, you died eating a pork meatball. An anecdote for the ages!

Parking enforcement, yo

I made a special trip with the camera to capture this one.