The Rock Show

You ever been to see The Pixies? It’s a very tense, very dangerous, very loud show. You gotta keep your eye on Black Francis. He might sneak up on you in the crowd and start pounding on ya.

But you got kids now who could give a damn about The Pixies. They sneer at most everything that’s not in their confined music radar. Sound familiar? I got these two sons, and one’s metal and one’s pop. I got the Slayer in one ear, Katy Perry in the other. I took ‘em aside one night and said, listen, here’s Johnny Cash and here’s Iggy Pop and I want you to understand them both.

And I left the room and they went to YouTube and found Motorhead and Flyleaf. It’s a G-minor frustration loaded into a phaser pedal, but I got all my old CDs and the albums I want to burn onto CDs, and I’ve got my mom’s old Platters tape to remind me about how it is to listen to whatever the hell you want to listen to when you’re growing up.

People hated Buddy Holly and they hated Dizzy Gillespie. And Frank Black screams during “Gouge Away” so loud you can feel it for days. And Kim Deal screams so off pitch you almost go back in time.

I saw Peter Murphy once and he complained so much I almost went out and bought a Garth Brooks album. At the Jesus and Mary Chain show, there was so much smoke from dry ice I couldn’t see the band. It coulda be anybody. And I saw Muse and they were so good I almost died on the spot.

Last night I went to a metal show with all these kids and their parents (including me!) and this one dude from a guitar shop was there, mentoring a student, and I wanted to punch him because he sells these guitars so overpriced that none of these kids can buy them. But there he was all Billy Squier and he had this look on his face like he’d invented boredom. Maybe he had these little guitars in his pockets he wanted to sell for $15,000, but nobody had any money.

I saw the Doobie Brothers when I was 13 and my older brother was getting high and I was freaking out, and it was so goddamn lame. I saw Willie Nelson and it was like being up near God. He had the most beautiful, pure sound from his guitar that I’ve ever heard. It’s so much better in person, it’s almost not real.

At the Violent Femmes show it was actually Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians and that was the most depressing thing ever. Then I took my son to see the Femmes (his first show!) and Gordon Gano was so short it was funny. But “Country Death Song” just killed. And when they played “Children of the Revolution” I wondered what the people thought when they first hear Marc Bolan play that song.

Joey Santiago comes at you like a wall of sound, a real wall of sound, not that Phil Spector wall of sound that you hear about but can’t figure out what it is, if it’s real or not. (It’s not real.) Santiago sears this noise into your brain, and if you’re my age, you feel 1989 all over again. And Frank Black is screaming and Kim Deal is screaming, and your soul is gone to heaven.