Watching And Listening

Thursday night I went to see Neko Case at the good old San Francisco Bath House, scene of many fun times over the past couple of years. It’s a pretty small place but I’ve seen some very good shows there–Kristen Hersh in 2007 springs to mind, for example, plus lots of local stuff. I was very pleasantly surprised to see the posters a couple of months ago, and was very excited to get tickets following some discussion with a friend re: which one of us had the biggest crush on her–I still maintain that it’s me, by the way, because my crush is based on beautiful and pure things like admiration for excellent lyrics and singing and very good hair instead of his crush, which is just based on wanting to take her home after the show—although Neko, if you’re reading this, please don’t take this as a sign that I would not totally make out with you if you felt like it, or that I wouldn’t make you tea and bickies or talk about animals with you, or whatever you wanted, because that is just the kind of considerate and generous crush-haver I am.

Anyway, yeah. I couldn’t believe that the show wasn’t completely sold out like two seconds after the tickets went on sale, or that I was going to get to see her in such a small intimate venue, but I was very pleased to see that they added a second Wellington show on a Thursday, so I made ready to go to that one. I was patting myself a little on the back for several reasons as I got ready:

a) I was going alone. I love doing stuff alone and especially like going to shows by myself for some reason—in my head it makes me into this sort of cool unapproachably independent loner whose love of music transcends her need for the social validation of having, like, friends or whatever. You know, man—just all about the music.

b) I had gone to my stupid body pump class, which I sort of hate but sort of keep going to for reasons I don’t completely understand, right after work and was really sore and tired. But! Please see the aforementioned cool loner thing—whereas I’m fairly sure that cool loners don’t put on shelf-bra camis and lift weights to Prince soundtracks, I am equally certain that even if they are feeling sort of sore and tired they just shrug it off and slouch on down to the club anyway. (Even if they have work the next morning).

c) I had on this cute shirt and earrings that my mom sent me and I was feeling pretty foxy. Both items were from Target, it’s true, but of course that’s the beauty of New Zealand: no one here can tell! This is also the beauty of wearing clothes from those little independent designers Glassons and The Warehouse in the States.

It was a warm night for a change and I didn’t even have to wear a jacket as I walked down to the bus stop and up Cuba Street. I was there a little before Luke Buda got started so I got something to drink and went out onto the balcony, looking down at the street and enjoying the unique sensation of being warm in Wellington. I ran into a couple of acquaintances while I was sort of staring off into the middle distance, as one does, and so instead of being a cool loner I ended up chatting and laughing along with everyone else until it was time to squirm myself up to the front of the stage and wait anxiously until the band came out.

My crush notwithstanding, I don’t feel like I know Neko Case’s music all that well, and had only downloaded her latest album the night before and listened to about half its songs that morning on the bus, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, really. The first thing that surprised me was—and I realize this is stupid—that she had such a big band backing her up. I always just think of her as a solo act. The band seemed to be comprised mainly of burly guys with beards, and then of course there was the supporting singer Kelly, who was awesome and hilarious and wearing a very cool dress I coveted immediately and who is clearly wives with Neko. Neko herself was a total rock chick, in skinnies and Vans and a cool shirt and crazy long hair, and her onstage banter with Kelly was honestly just so funny and silly and made me think, sort of grandiosely I suppose, that there were two girls I would really get along with, like if I ran into them at Fidel’s or whatever. (I did end up glimpsing the guy with the very flowy-est and florid beard the next night at the Mighty, but I was too shy to say anything to him).

The Thursday show turned out to have been their last show of a year’s tour, and so they were all pretty slap-happy—“We’ve clearly licked the poison frog of this tour,” someone said at some point, and the crowd picked up on it and was very happy and ridiculous too, especially, it seemed, the people who had seen the show the night before and come back for more. This attitude took away not one jot from the amazingness of the music, by the way—something I kept thinking as they would switch out guitars or whatever, is how much work goes into this, how much time and thought and effort to make it seem like those songs, that music, is just born right there on the stage, ready to be ingested and transformed and turned every which way by the people standing below. Neko herself would bop around a little to some of the faster songs but during some of the slower and more emotional ones (especially during my beloved “I Wish I Was The Moon,”) where she wasn’t playing guitar, she would just stand there with her arms to her sides and that voice would just rip out of her, just be torn right out of her body. It was incredible to watch, and listen.

I thought about that, standing at the front of the stage and getting sort of sore feet even though I wore sensible shoes: watching and listening can become the same things, or similar things, in the right context. My brain rarely stops observing and describing, it hardly ever shuts up at all, but there is something about watching other human beings sing words and make sounds in a rhythmic and melodic fashion, all at once, right in front of you with no filters and no do-overs, that puts me in a space that, if not quiet, is filled with something other than my own mental putterings. I don’t know how some of the music seemed to vibrate at a frequency that was calibrated specifically for my heart in my chest, or some of the lyrics seemed like my own thoughts that I didn’t have to go to the bother of thinking (“it was so clear to me, that it was almost invisible”) but that’s how it was, that’s how it is sometimes. I stood there and smiled and swayed with everyone else, listening and watching and singing along when I knew the words, spending those short fast hours of my life in one of the best ways I know.