SomeAngryIndian

The Dismemberment Plan at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C.

Every year since starting college I try my hand at a new band/album in order to generate further interest in music as a whole. I hate ruts. And if I don’t refresh my playlist every so often, I stale. As my alter ego, the Chancellor, might say, nobody wants to be a citizen of a Stagnation. Oh ho.

No. I always considered myself a Beatles fan ever since one unnamed, glorious, jootiful young boy told me about them when I was a fresh teenager. I remember making a minidisc(!) of Beatles 1 (with bonus tracks!) and falling asleep to it at a hindu camp (yes, hence my angry indianness). But it wasn’t till my freshman year of college that I finally, really, truly tackled the quadrupled-sided white monolith known as The Beatles (aka The White Album). The following semester was all Pavement all the time.

Sophomore year I ordered Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (not to be confused with The Aeroplane Flies High) and I was floored. You can’t write enough about that album. More Pavement albums followed.

Last summer I decided to try this band I’d heard of once in passing. They got their name from a line of dialogue in a Bill Murray movie (Groundhog Day). They were called The Dismemberment Plan. I ordered their first critically successful CD, Emergency & I.

It was love at first spin. (See a previous entry on them for how much I adore them).

Notice something about the bands I’ve mentioned? All of them are broken up/deceased. Yup.

Now that fellow who informed me about John, George, Paul, and Mr. Starkey? He’s the same guy who lamented the fact that our mutual friend’s favorite bands were Alice in Chains and The Verve. You see, Layne Staley is dead (R.I.P.) and Richard Ashcroft needs an attitude adjustment (Urban Hymns almost never happened cuz of the guy) and so our friend could never see his favorite bands live. Ever. Never. Maybe solo stuff. And yes technically AiC tour now but without Staley well…fuck that.

And fuck me for loving Pavement. And sometimes I wish I’d been born earlier than six years before … . And Jeff Mangum can’t handle how we want to be the carrot flowers to his king (and touch him) so he’s in a cave in East Pakistan. And Dismemberment Plan…

My love for the Plan is new, but I immediately kicked myself for getting attached to an experience I could never have. It wasn’t like following up on Arcade Fire or refreshing atease every two seconds for new Radiohead info. They were broken up. The end. Then something tragic happened.

J. Robbins of Jawbox fame had a son last year. His son, Callum, was later diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). A bunch of bands got together to play two nights to raise money for the Robbins family. The Black Cat housed it for free and City Paper made posters and wristbands for free. All the money, besides Ticketmaster charges, went straight to the Robbins.

Those nights were last night and Friday night. The big news for music fans was that The Dismemberment Plan reunited and headlined for the event.

To the concert:
They opened with an oldie, Do The Stand Still. I was worried they’d focus a lot on old songs, because I really wanted stuff from Emergency as well as Change. Luckily, I more or less predicted what songs they’d play, so I was prepared. Along with Do the Stand Still, they also played OK Joke’s Over, Onward Fat Girl (which closed the main set), Bra, Ice of Boston (which opened the first encore), and Rusty (which ended the concert). On album, these songs only hint at the Plan’s future greatness. In concert, they were electric and danceable and oh man.

I can’t remember the setlist item by item, but here’s what they played from Emergency & I: everything but Memory Machine, The Jitters, and 8 1/2 Minutes. I thought that was particularly funny since 8 1/2 and MM were the final two songs they played during their “last concert” in 2003. Anyway, 9/12 songs is fantastic. From Change, they played: Face of the Earth, Pay for the Piano, Following Through, Time Bomb(!), The Other Side, and Ellen and Ben. 6/11 ain’t bad at all.

(Funny story about Pay for the Piano. I used to hate it. Oh man. My brother too. I just thought it didn’t fit. Too…pop. But it’s grown on me, the ugly duckling. And, I thought I was being dumb, but I wanted to hear it live. Which I did. And it was so much better.)
The setting was intimate, loud, and hot. Everyone was pressed up against one another and dancing (including yours truly). Travis Morrison, the lead singer, who looks like he could be Ed Norton’s little brother, is one of the greatest performers I’ve ever had the pleasure of paying to see. It was more than energy. More than his dancing. More than the fact that playing music for us gave him a huge smile all throughout the night. It was love. Love for the scene, the people, the music. Genuine affection for the whole experience. Check out his upcoming solo album and go see him live.

That affection was present even when people bombarded the stage to dance and grab his left butt cheek. It was in the setlist too, as shown above, he delivered exactly what we wanted. And they kept going. Two encores? A runtime of almost 2 hours? What a band.

I was anticipating a lot. Nerves wracked and eager, I wanted so badly to hear The City and Time Bomb. Whatever they played. I gotta hear those two songs. My favorites from Emergency and Chance, respectively.

I’m kinda scattershot right now. Too much I can say.
Focus. Back to the concert. Hey man. How was it?

Everything I could have asked for. The second song was What Do You Want Me to Say and I was jumping and waving my newly long rocker hair around. There was a long stretch of songs starting with Spider in the Snow. Marvelous, gorgeous. Few songs were note and pitch perfect but the Plan sacrifices that sort of sonic perfection for the performance and in the end, any mistakes only illuminated the messy, hyper, sweaty, intense experience.

After Spider in the Snow I got my wish.

As he began to strum the opening notes of Time Bomb I looked around and people were getting a little weird and very, very worked up. I think Time Bomb is, in terms of composition, their finest hour. The performance was indescribable. I am reeling from it even now.

Picture having the most perfect time with that girl you think is so hot and funny and everything ends up perfect and you’re dizzy from how great life can be. Now picture sleeping with her afterwards. Yeah. See…right after Time Bomb, they played The City.

Now The City is my favorite Plan song and many people seemed to share that sentiment. I got this idea from the cheers and the singing along and the moshing and hopping and gangbanging. You see The City is a song about a loneliness and inadequacy that eats at you while you are in a place you hate. I thought it was ironic that so many people were coming together and loving this song about…yeah? Whatever.

It was nice to get those out of the way because afterwards I could just enjoy the experience itself.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

WHAT A GREAT FUCKING CONCERT.

I’m sorry. Maybe someone is genuinely reading this for a deeper reading/fuller description of the goings on but really this is what the experience boiled down to for me: I got to see a band whose music I love love love and thought I would never see live ever but I got to see them live through chance and despite the tragedy that made the events transpire I enjoyed a night of unity and bliss and ecstasy and one of the best experiences of my fucking life and it was beautiful to be a part of something life-affirming in multiple ways. Here’s to Callum growing up to have these experiences too.
Summary:

The concert was good. It was great. It was fantastic. It was like having a 360 degree orgasm that stretched your senses out to the farthest edges of the universe and you didn’t just see God you were God and you were Everything and One and Nothing and ok maybe not that good because I am human after all but goddamn. Best Non-Radiohead concert ever. That’s a big thing to say. I know. AHHH.

Maybe I’m finally listening to my parent’s words about karma, or maybe it’s all the episodes of My Name is Earl that I’ve been watching, but I don’t think I deserved this and I need to improve my life now or pay it back for the goodness of the past two days man what a feeling man what a what a what a night.

BJORK ON WEDNESDAY AND SATURDAY!!
ARCADE FIRE NEXT TUESDAY!!

I apologize for being so so scatterbrained but hey that’s what yeah happens see you next time kiddoes.

and this is where i live but i never felt less at home YEAH YEAH YEAH