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Random Ticket #45

Band: Sleater-Kinney

Where: Irving Plaza, NYC

When: December 14, 2015

Night three of five of S-K’s ‘Vanishing Tour’ and maybe the least memorable. Irving Plaza is a place I thought was super cool when I was younger, but also a place I hadn’t been to probably since someone kicked a contact lens out of my eye at Vandals show at least a decade before. The long, narrow room, the overhang, getting stuck near the back bar, having to pee and being unable to find the bathroom. In my memory I saw the drummer from Rainer Maria hanging out with Meredith Graves from Perfect Pussy (who opened the show) in the upstairs lobby area. Later, I saw Meredith Graves on MTV and was confused. 

This night was one mostly spent waiting for the next one, when the Vanishing Tour was truly about to move into truly tiny venues Sleater-Kinney had no business playing in in 2015.

[ljbarks]

Random Ticket #44

Band: Rainer Maria

Where: Bowery Ballroom, NYC

When: December 31, 2014

Reunion shows are tricky. Whatever you remember the band is, from a time when you were younger and they were younger, it won’t be that. Sometimes it can be just as good, sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes it’s something else. Nostalgia, “cash grab” that everyone used to comment on every post on BrooklynVegan, progress, rebirth. 

Reunion shows are doubly tricky when you worked so hard to go to the band’s “LAST SHOW EVER” eight years before. Slept in Penn Station for it. Still flash back to that December night whenever the opening notes of ‘I’ll Make You Mine’ shuffle into the headphones. 

Sometimes though, you wait eight years and just get to a band you loved, one that meant everything to college you, all grown up, take the first step to making music again. It’s still different, but so are they and so are you and that’s not always a bad thing. 

This show was on New Years Eve. I am not a huge fan of shows on New Years Eve. It’s a time where you really realize you’re at a show by yourself. I’m also not a big fan of New York or taking the train to New York on New Years Eve. And yet. For the chance to see Rainer Maria again, fuck all those things I’m not a huge fan of, because I’m a bigger fan of Rainer Maria.

The Bowery is weird, because they made a clone of it in Music Hall of Williamsburg, and MHoW was the last place I saw Rainer Maria, the place where they played their last show, except it wasn’t MHoW then, and Northsix wasn’t a clone of the Bowery. 

Petal and Moss Icon opened, though I think I missed most of Petal thanks to some combination of my inability to be on time and  NJ Transit’s general ineptitude at transportation. Rainer Maria still ruled. We rang in 2015 together, as ‘Atlantic’ played and a weird disco ball, that usually unused relic, spun from the ceiling. 

[ljbarks]

Random Ticket #43

Band: Pennywise

Where: Roseland Ballroom, NYC

When: November 12, 1999

This was when I was still relatively new at going to shows and the start of a weekend that closed with Blink 182, Fenix TX and Silverchair in Asbury Park two days after this. 

All and Strung Out opened for Pennywise and Roseland, with its weird giant basement lined with tables with people selling buttons and patches and records, quickly became one of my favorite places to see shows. It’s long gone now. 

I found the listing for this in the newspaper. Then this postcard came in the mail. 

We either went to the Ledgwood Mall and bought tickets at Sound-O-Rama, or I borrowed my parent’s credit card to call Ticketmaster and order them over the phone. 

We sang along to every song. We smoked too many cigarettes. We reveled in what was one of our first “big” punk shows and being in the city on a Friday night, 17 and without supervision. We went home ready to do it again on Sunday. 

[ljbarks]

Random Ticket #42

Band: Blink 182

Where: Convention Hall, Asbury Park, NJ

When: November 14, 1999

Friday we saw All, Strung Out and Pennywise in the city. Sunday we hopped in the car and headed south to Asbury Park for Blink 182. Fenix TX and Silverchair opened for them. Fenix TX is one of those bands that I’ve seen a bunch of times, but never on purpose. Silverchair was a band I loved, though I don’t know if I was as mad that they were opening for Blink 182 as I was the time Bad Religion opened for Blink 182. I didn’t remember that the two shows were in the same weekend until a friend who went to both made a joke about it a couple years ago. I’m sure we were all exhausted at school on Monday and felt like it was all worth it because we’d just had the best weekend of our lives. 

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Random Ticket #41

Band: The War on Drugs

Where: Radio City Music Hall, NYC

When: October 8, 2015

This was the second time I’d seen War on Drugs, and idk, Radio City was a weird place for it and it made the show feel kind of disconnected. We were way up in the balcony. Everything about it seemed rushed. The band seemed uncomfortable and like they were maybe kind of going through the motions or something, just trying to get through this. Maybe it was the room or the night, but for how good the records are, and for how much it felt like the perfect night when I’d seen them outside in Brooklyn a year before, something just felt off about this one.

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Random Ticket #40

Band: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals

Where: Hammerstein Ballroom, NYC

When: October 31, 2007

This was a night. 

First Ryan Adams show. One of the first -- if not the first -- for our cousins show crew.

Meet at the mall. My uncle decides he’s gonna come in later with a friend. Gives us the keys to his van. There’s a cooler with a couple beers in there. 

We drive to the city, traffic. Ditch the car in some garage in midtown. This becomes important later. Some garage.

We have the beers from the cooler but because I’m the only one that’s over 21, what else we can do is kind of limited. We go brown paper bags. I buy bodega tallboys for everyone and we drink them in Greeley Square. The guys use the pay toilet in the park and then we’re out of change. Head to the big Macy’s across the street. Three-quarters drunk, we get all the way lost. Can’t find the bathroom. We must’ve asked a half dozen different employees where it is, the alcohol hilariously kicking in a little more each time we go up or down another escalator. Finally find the bathroom.

My uncle calls at some point, tells us we’ll get food when he gets there. We meet him on a corner and he takes us to a bar instead, despite me being the only one old enough to drink.

They eat pizza on the street. Maybe I had garlic knots. They have seats in the balcony, I have a ticket for the floor. No idea why. 

The memory of the actual show is fuzzy. ‘Halloweenhead’ gets played, because it’s Halloween. According to the internet, he played 33 songs. I was irrationally mad after that ‘New York, New York’ wasn’t one of them.

My uncle was the correct amount of mad that upon leaving we had no fucking idea where the car was. 

“Some garage.”

 We wandered for a while, a mangled ticket with no identifying information our only guide. He ducked into some random garage to ask if they knew where this other paper scrap might be from. 

“Here,” they say. 

“That’s here.” 

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Random Ticket #39

Band: Phosphorescent

Where: Webster Hall, NYC

When: May 27, 2014

Legitimately one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Webster was one of my favorite venues in the city, and I hope it returns someday. 

This five months after the MHoW shows that became Live at the Music Hall. That record is ridiculously good (the solo version of ‘Wolves’ is one of my favorite things ever), and this one could have been another live album. Instead, there’s barely a trace of it on the internet. There’s not a single video of it on YouTube, Instagram wasn’t enough of a thing then (I don’t know that you could even do video on IG back then?), and not only is there no setlist on setlist.fm, there’s not even a blank spot where there should be one.

And I kind of like it better that way. Like it belonged to the 1500 of us in that room and it’s ours, and only ours, forever. We got to witness and talk about it and that’s just where it lives, like things used to. Before. 

There was a moment towards the end of the set. I don’t even remember what song, specifically, so much as just the night as a whole, but there’s was this moment where everyone was in it, 100 percent. There, in the room, in the moment, in the music. Fuck the outside world.

Probably 15 minutes later we all went down the steps, spit back onto the street the way only a show in New York can do. With each block, the ringing in your ears gets a little less, your fellow pedestrians are fewer and fewer people wearing the same paper wristband you are, all of it always feels like it fades too fast. 

We hung out in front of the pool hall across the street for a minute, not wanting the moment to end just yet. 

[ljbarks]

Random Ticket #38

Band: Watsky

Where: Stage 48, NYC

When: November 8, 2014

This place is horrible. This is the one and only time I’ve been there and it doesn’t seem like they do shows there anymore. It’s some kind of club situation. The layout was weird, the sound was blown-out and generally awful, the people working there weren’t particularly nice or happy about being there, and even though the ticket says 18+, I remember being the oldest person there by a good margin.

It’s a shame the sound was so bad, because I was really excited to see Watsky. I think his combination of spoken word & more straight-up rap is pretty cool. Alas. There’s no setlist, though in my memory, he did ‘Sloppy Seconds’, which is probably my favorite Watsky song. The live band was also awesome.

Bonus, the openers were Kyle and a then relatively unknown Anderson .Paak.

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Random Ticket #37

Band: Titus Andronicus

Where: Webster Hall, NYC

When: February 29, 2016

I have seen Titus Andronicus many times. I have been to Webster Hall many times. I did not remember, until right now, that these two things ever happened together. A little googling tells me Craig Finn opened. I remember seeing Craig Finn. I like that Clear Heart Full Eyes record a lot. As I go back, I remember a night where I saw Titus and Craig Finn do a bunch of covers together, including ‘Bastards of Young’ and ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’. Alas.

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Random Ticket #36

Band: Conor Oberst & Friends (Natalie Merchant, Suzanne Vega, The Felice Brothers, The Lone Bellow, Laura Marling, Jonathan Wilson, Conor Oberst)

Where: Beacon Theatre, NYC

When: December 8, 2014

This was one of those things where everyone comes out and plays a song or two. There’s collaboration and lots of talking and it’s a benefit for a small radio station. 

Jonathan Wilson, in my memory, just played one very long song. It confused the audience of mostly middle-aged and older radio patrons and delighted me. 

Natalie Merchant did some weird things, or maybe I just assume she did some weird things because of that part of the Mermaid Avenue DVD wheres she’s picking fuzz or something off Billy Bragg’s shirt or hair or whatever and like, eating it? She definitely sang part of ‘Time Forgot’ at Conor Oberst and then they did ‘Weeping Pilgrim’ together. She sang ‘Kind and Generous’. I once owned a Natalie Merchant CD and some member of my family borrowed it like 20 years ago and I no longer own a Natalie Merchant CD.

Then Conor Oberst. 

There’s this part of ‘Landlocked Blues’ that talks about kids playing guns in the street. 

And there's kids playing guns in the street And one's pointing his tree branch at me So I put my hands up I say "Enough is enough, if you walk away I walk away" And he shot me dead

On this night, four months after Michael Brown, Conor sang it like this:

And there's kids playing guns in the street And one's pointing his tree branch at me So I put my hands up I say "Enough is enough, officer if you walk away I walk away" And he shot me dead

As an encore, everyone came out and did ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ together. I slept on the train on the way home. 

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Random Ticket #35

Band: Blink 182/Fenix TX/Bad Religion

Where: Waterloo Concert Field, Waterloo Village, NJ

When: May 28, 2000

Everything about this was strange. The location. The lineup. The whole thing.

Waterloo Village is, by my recollection, a place children went on school field trips to learn about the history of Native Americans in New Jersey. This is everything I knew about Waterloo Village, and my interaction with the place came from said field trips, mine sometime in elementary school. 

That Blink 182, this huge band, was playing in a place that was entirely in the most rural part of New Jersey and featured a longhouse was incredibly confusing. I was unaware the place had a long history of live music. Unaware until even right now, and it’s eighteen years later.

Fenix TX is a band I’ve seen at least three times, and though I can claim it was never on purpose, I also own at least one Fenix TX CD so maybe I should stop lying to myself. 

This was a month before I graduated high school, but even at 17 and during Blink’s heyday, I knew it was wrong that they were the headliner and Bad Religion was relegated to an opening slot. It was wrong, even if just on principal, even if the album they were theoretically touring around was The New America. 

Blink 182 probably played all their songs. I guess this is growing up and the one about aliens existing and whatever. I don’t think I actually ever cared about Blink 182 so much as I cared about there being a “punk” band that was accessible, that my friends were into enough to go to this so I could watch Bad Religion. Maybe I loved it then, too. 

Mostly, we walked around and smoked cigarettes. My uncle brought my cousin, who was 11 at the time. We ran into them. My uncle told my mom the next day about the cigarettes. I think she already knew, but feigned some kind of disappointment. I lied the way a high school kid lies, some “holding it for a friend” shit. Why bother.

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Random Ticket #34

Band: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

Where: PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ

When: September 11, 2014

Hindsight.

I almost didn’t go to this show. My friend and I had made plans to go, get lawn seats, hang out, have a couple beers and watch Tom Petty. We used to go to shows together a lot when we were younger. But people grow up into different people, sometimes. I guess. But we’d made a plan. And then she had to work or something. 

Normally, I have no problem going to shows alone. Some of the best ones I’ve seen have been shared solely with a room full of strangers, shared with my friends only via some shitty Instagram picture. But this one I felt weird about doing solo. Something about having a lawn seat alone seemed weird and sad in a way I couldn’t get around. 

I made a half-assed post on Instagram or Facebook or something a week or two before this was happening, a kind of last ditch effort. “Someone go to this with me.” And to my surprise, someone answered. Told me she was going with a bunch of people but I was welcome to join. Now, we go to shows together pretty regularly. Then, not so much. This was maybe the first one. 

I met them in the parking lot. A bunch of people whose names I couldn’t remember five minutes after I’d met them -- my fault, not theirs. We drank beers, slowly made our way inside, with probably half a dozen children between them all in tow. Missed most of Steve Winwood. Probably made it in time for ‘Higher Love’ which was towards the end of his set. I like Steve Winwood more than I should. 

Then came Petty. There’s something about a show like this, now. I can’t remember many specifics, and the lawn is not a place to watch a show so much as just to take it in from the edges. Tom Petty, The Heartbreakers, all of it, somehow a weird soundtrack to a night spent watching Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. The kids were upset. They wanted to be somewhere else. 

A few years later, the first friend and I made plans to go see Petty at Prudential Center. And then we slept on buying tickets and missed it.

“Next time,” we said.

Four months later, Tom Petty was dead.

Never got a next time. At least I had this time.

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Random Ticket #33

Band: many, many bands // Warped Tour

Where: Randalls Island

When: August 4, 2001

Randalls Island is terrible, this was fun because I was 19, I wrote about Warped Tour here.

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Random Ticket #32

Band: Fleet Foxes

Where: Williamsburg Waterfront

When: September 24, 2011

This was incredible. Outside, with the river and the skyline at our backs. Fleet Foxes sounding huge as the sun set. 

This part of the waterfront is a very nice park now, but then it was a weird empty lot slowly being eaten by gentrification and the fancy ultra-modern steel and glass apartment buildings that come with it. 

The story of this day: we had a big group of people. Drove to Jersey City to meet other friends. Hung out at their place in the Heights for a while, before being convinced to walk from JC to the PATH in Hoboken. It was weirdly humid this day, and I had some kind of head cold that I’ve forever blamed on seeing Wilco in Central Park in the pouring rain the night before. My cousin Ben complained about his boots. We walked far. 

My cousin Andrew, who was a teenager in 2011, was with us, and as we walked down Washington St. in Hoboken, he proudly announced that his mother had given him $5 for Subway. He wanted to know when we were getting lunch at Subway. Asked a bunch of times. We told him we weren’t going to subway and wondered why his mother had made this very specific promise. 

It was only an hour later, as we got on the subway, that realized it was all a hilarious miscommunication. She hadn’t given him $5 for Subway, but for the subway. Teens.

The show was absolutely incredible, though I think we missed most of The Walkmen’s opening set while on the beer line. 

After, sweaty and happy we went to The Bar.

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Random Ticket #31

Band: Modest Mouse

Where: Hammerstein Ballroom

When: August 9, 2004

This was...not good. I saw Modest Mouse another time like a year later (in Central Park for SummerStage) and my recollection of that one was that it was even worse. 

My sister came to this with me (this was the ’Float On’ era, so). Wolf Parade opened. I bought their self-released CD (this) at the show because they were so incredible. 

And Modest Mouse? This is the only time in my life I remember literally falling asleep standing up. 

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Random Ticket #30

Band: Dolly Parton

Where: Radio City Music Hall

When: May 1, 2008 (March 7, 2008)

Looking up the setlist for this show, I discovered that it was rescheduled from March to May because Dolly had back issues or something. I don’t remember it being rescheduled but everyone knows everything on the internet is true so. 

This is probably up there with the most expensive ticket ($100 before fees), but it’s also Dolly Parton and who knows if I’d ever have another chance to see her. Dolly Parton.

My memory says I went by myself because convincing anyone to spend a million dollars to go to this was a hard sell. This was during the Backwoods Barbie era, so ‘Better Get to Livin’’ and all that mixed in with a lot of classics (’Jolene’, ‘Coat of Many Colors’, etc.). She also did ‘9 to 5′, which is one of my favorite songs (and movies), and was the song I set my alarm clock to play for a good five years of working a job I hated. 

The New York times review talks a lot about Dolly’s stage banter, and I remember how hilarious and charming she was. This was a full-on stage show, and combining that with bits of hilarious commentary without it feeling forced or rehearsed is pretty tough. But if anyone’s capable of it, that person is Dolly Parton. I also remember the energy. Dolly was 62 at the time, and recovering from a back issue, and she still danced and sang and ran around the stage. I was impressed watching it live, and a decade later, it’s still one of the my all-time favorite live experiences. 

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Random Ticket #29

Band: First Aid Kit

Where: Hammerstein Ballroom

When: October 24, 2014

We hyped this show super hard, after being so impressed with First Aid Kit at Webster Hall a few months before. But the show just didn’t translate as well in the doubly big room. Still cool, but the Webster one was definitely better. Also randomly ran into someone who knew me but I didn’t remember, which is a super fun way to feel like an asshole for the remainder of the night.