finally, Peter Wolf in concert

After a short caledonia stroll around the block, we arrive at the front door of the Port City Music Hall just after 7. It's a cozy little spot, which we're told holds 550; even at that I don't think it was a full house. It certainly wasn't when we got there, still open spaces up at the very front, so I scooted up there to hold some spots while Dennis and Dan got us drinks. Good song selection coming over the speakers - a bit of Mink de Ville and Johnny Cash, Howlin' Wolf's All Night Long, another Mink de Ville.

By the time the opening band came onstage, there might have been a hundred of us clustered around the stage. I wish I could remember the act's name - two guys, Morris? Boris? Sludge? Sledge? and Jim Haggerty, forming the Morris/Boris Sludge/Sledge duo, or something like that. Their gave us a rousing 30 minutes, and if I knew who they were, I'd highly recommend checking them out. I guess you could go to one of the remaining shows on the tour and see for yourself.

I don't think Peter played for more than 90 minutes, maybe 100. But the set was jam-packed with goodies. After the first song, Peter had the event staff remove the barrier set up two feet in front of the stage, putting us in swarming distance when he'd parade along the lip of the stage.

As you might imagine, a substantial amount of the set was taken up with material from Midnight Souvenirs, and for each of the duet songs, including The Greenfields of Summer with Neko Case, It's Too Late For Me with Merle Haggard, and Tragedy with Shelby Lynne, he had a story to tell about how he got together with them to record the songs, including one involving two bottles of bourbon with Lynne. Early in the set he did Cry One More Time, describing it as a song of his that Gram Parsons sang. Peter had some good stories, and some funny ones - including how he got John Lee Hooker's business card. He's actually got the card up on his website. (While you're at the site, click on BIO and on the second page, there are two photos of Peter and Van back in the Boston days.)

The band was introduced as mainly the same as on the album, minus Larry Campbell (that would have been a shocker). We had pedal steel, keyboards, guitar, bass and drums, with Peter on marimbas and harp when the occasion warranted. The only thing missing was the sax, which adds a huge sound in key places on the album.

Peter gets his whole body into the songs - a mix between Mick Jagger, minus the prima dona, and a gazelle. A man in motion. He gets the beat in his feet, and they get going, and the energy from the music seems to explode from his body, driving the song. Song after song, although sometimes he took a break for a sit-down on a stool, but never for more than a song, sometimes only half the song, and the music would hit his feet and he'd be off again.

It was definitely a J. Geils audience - when he pulled out Night Time midway through the set, there was a rush from the crowd; same for Must Have Got Lost and Love Stinks (where he got Boris/Morris to do the basso profondo voice in the refrain; a great touch). More of a raging guitar solo audience than a pedal steel one perhaps. They got what they came for in Looking for a Love, which closed out the first set. That song made the rest of the show seem like a Perry Como rap.

I highly recommend getting out to see Peter if he's coming to your town. The current tour goes until early June, and it's pretty much east coast, so if you get the chance, go for it! His voice sounds in good form. You know what else really impressed me - his diction. Impeccable - I could hear every word. I think he might be the only person I can say that about. Altogether a great show.

Thanks, Dan, for the photos!

breaking news: found needle in haystack

It all started in 1992, when Sleepless came out. That's when my quest to see Peter Wolf started. I hadn't been much of a J. Geils Band fan. Maybe I didn't give them enough credit, but to my "walking through meadows with Van" sensibilities, J. Geils was too short on lyrics and too long on frantic. Sleepless was a whole 'nuther thing. I liked what he was doing and wanted to see him do it live.

Chances of getting that to happen were somewhere between needle in a haystack territory and when hell freezes over, the big snag being he didn't play any shows. Every so often I'd hear a report that he'd showed up at some club somewhere, nothing announced. Enough to make my mouth water, little good that did me.

It must have been summer 2005 and Dennis heard about a concert held in conjunction with some arts and music festival going on down on Cape Cod; there were going to be a couple of good artists - James Montgomery and Marcia Ball on the bill, and I don't suppose we would have gone except for the announcement that Peter Wolf was going to join James onstage for a few songs.

So, we took the opportunity, figuring it might be the only time. It turned out to be an excellent night of music - I'd never seen James Montgomery before, so I was getting to hear his harmonica styling for the first time. It's good stuff - very intense, and I like that. He's a working man. Peter was the icing on the cake. He came out and played three songs, all three of which I've forgotten by now, and off he went. Dennis and I convinced ourselves that it was worth the three- or four-hour drive to the Cape. A legend in his own time. At least in my mind.

Flash forward to last month: Midnight Souvenirs was released, and that's pretty much all I've been listening to since. These days I don't get in a lot of music listening time, so it's pretty precious to me - as such, you're going to have ta' be a serious contendah if you're going to knock Van out of position. Wolf has taken over my listening airwaves.

Better still, Dennis found out that he was playing one night up in Portland, Maine, in support of the new album, and did I want to go? Um, yea! Peter Wolf in concert - a huge, huge item off my music bucket list.

The day of the show Dennis and I were driving up in time to grab a bite to eat and hoping to catch up for a pre-show quiet drink with Dan Hart, denizen of Portland. Haven't seen Dan since the big party at Rockwood Music Hall in in NYC last February, when we were in town for Van's shows at the WaMu.

It serves to remind me that for far too many of my friends, the only time I see them is before a show, and we've both got a drink in our hand. I'm sure there is a lesson to be learned here.

In the meantime, the three of us have a show to get to. Doors open at 7.

Note to self: I've got to learn to write shorter posts. Now I've got to put off my review of the show till the next post. I'll get right on it! Dan's sent me a bunch of photos he took at the show, so I'll have fun putting that together. Till next time!

a confluence of events

The record's stuck. The record's stuck.
On Peter Wolf's Midnight Souvenirs. It's been in constant rotation in the car since I got it a month ago, and when I'm not listening to it, I've got "Tragedy" playing ear candy. It hardly seems like eight years ago that Sleepless came out, and I used to take that one driving too. Definitely, Wolf is road music.

I'd ordered it from amazon.com, and in the same package was Tom Russell's Blood and Candle Smoke and the two new Van-related books, When Rough God Goes Riding by Greil Marcus and Hymns to the Silence by Peter Mills. Both were discounted, Marcus's heavily, if I remember rightly.

I hope so; it's not worth the suggested retail price. The most interesting parts of the book are these bits of arcane knowledge (non-Van content) that Marcus references to make a point about something in Van's music, or he'll go off on a tangential anecdote, and after each one of these, I'd go, wow, I didn't know this, I don't know that I needed to know this, but surely I am a better person for having more knowledge. The other good part is that Marcus abruptly dismisses a huge 17-year swath of Van's music; if he'd liked those years, it would have just meant having to read about more Van Morrison songs that Greil Marcus really likes. It was good that the book was short.

I used to read Greil in Rolling Stone back in the day when music was starting to get good for me, and I always enjoyed reading him - a good wordsmith and from the bit I saw of the video of a book reading he did recently in support of Rough God, well-spoken and confident, a little aristocratic. I was reading Greil before I read Lester Bangs, so you could say I was weaned on rock and roll through Greil's eyes. He really liked Van in those days. And he really liked the music I was listening to, and it was all one big happy time of it. So, despite bad press from listers, I was, in advance, disposed to liking the book, with no grievance to bear.

There's a line in the book that Greil recounts. He must have been talking up his impressions of Astral Weeks performed live and his wife turned to him and told him that's what he should be writing about - Van Morrison's music. And so he did. I don't doubt that Greil is a fan of one particular aspect of Van's music, something that speaks to him personally and he feels passionate about it, but I didn't sense any of that passion coming through on the page, and I didn't find his analysis of the music that insightful. But hey, it's not everyone who gets asked to write a book about Van's music, so good on him for getting it done. I'm sure he gave it his best shot.

I think I was embroiled in the headwinds of Greil's take on The Last Laugh, Van's duet with Mark Knopfler, when a local author's book came to my attention, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life by Steve Almond. Dennis had seen him do a book reading at the Newburyport Literary Festival and got Steve to sign the book for me. Here's what he wrote...

To the Drooling Vanatic Shannon -
Please find (if you don't have already) "Who Drove the Red Sports Car" and CRANK IT UP
xo

This guy is one seriously devoted fan of the music, there aren't enough hours in the day and night to cram it all in, and it's all good, the louder the better. Ergo, the Drooling Fanatic - it's too good to stop now! It turns out he was giving a reading up in Concord the following week, so Dennis and I went along to that. And he's just as good in person as he is on the page - he keeps you laughing, mostly at yourself, because you know exactly what he's going through when the music takes over. I love the story he tells about this hot young thing. for whom bedding is all he's got on his mind, and things are going pretty good in the foreplay to bedding part, and just when he's thinking it's time to make his move, he walks into the living room and Air Supply is playing on her stereo. While it didn't put the kibosh on his short-term plans for the weekend, he couldn't stomach the idea of a future that included her singing "I'm All Out of Love" as if she really meant it. And that was the end of Elise.

Turns out, while Dennis was at the literary festival, he spotted a poster for Midnight Souvenirs in the window of a local shop, and when he went in to buy the CD, he found out that Peter was playing a few shows in northern New England before heading off to tour the album at spots along the east coast, plus one stop in Chicago.

The closest show we could get tickets for was up in Portland, Maine, which is a bit of a hike up the road from here. It's been years since I've been wanting to see this guy live, and the way he tours, it was now or never I figured. It turned out to be a superb night of music...I'll tell you all about it next time.