It is currently the opening hour of tomorrow by my reckoning.
As I type I feel somehow…washed. As though something happened to scour the detritus of lingering musical memory and rewrite vast swathes of it. Neurological defrag has run its course, and I am aware of a segment of time in which I was not directly conscious of my surroundings. I remember feeling a rhythmless, ordered caco/eu-phony…that being the Sunn O))) concert. There was a fire alarm, and the horn strobes that accompany said alarm, and the cherry-antiseptic smell of the fog, the copious fog, the billowing transcendental fog fog fog. There were robed figures, and a hoary faceless creature speakingchantingsermonizing from the fog’s thick pulpit. There was a bound burlap sackcloth creature, all antlers and sticks and was?that?blood? beside the bulbous hideobeautiful claw that clutched the microphone that shook and spit and wailed things heard not since before man and like-as-not after, and there was a curious harmony to the visions and scents and currents of rumble and buzz and rattle felt throughout the skin, a curious harmony not heard but felt in vibrations and less-than-semitone beat tones, a sub-bass choir, a primordial memory of things felt when creation had not quite come about, memories of a holy violence without beginning or clear delineation, memories universal.
As for the Decemberists, well, a different story altogether. The Hazards of Love being the first set, we (Neil and Rachel Calvin, the best of company) saw from near perfect vantage, first balcony and near to center-on. MSSR Meloy and company played masterfully throughout, particular highpoints being the eighth track on the album (The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid), the sixth (“The Queen’s Approach”), the tenth (“The Rake’s Song”), and the sixteenth and seventeenth (“The Wanting Comes In Waves (Reprise)” and “The Hazards of Love 4″, respectively. I am reminded of the modern invention of separating musical performance from movement and audience involvement- during the Hazards portion of the performance, there was certainly a social expectation to remain seated and for the most part still. I’m curious as to the birth of this notion- music is enjoyed only the more for responding physically to it, be it in the form of dancing or any other response. I’m not upset by any means, it seems the music was written for the concert hall-theatre setting as opposed to rock clubs, just a sidenote, I guess. The second half of the show, however, became far too exciting for myself and many others to remain still. “Billy Liar” incited a joyous mad singing dash down the balcony stairs past befuddled Classic Center personnel (NB: the young professionals on staff were visibly displeased, however, the older wiser lady nearest the smoking entrance smiled beatifically at the sight of us nigh-prancing to the music, truly, which is the youthful mind?) to the house-left aisles, wherein a dance party ensued. We all knew the words, we’d all sang them before, we’d all danced the same child’s dance of a culture somehow ignorant of dancepureblissful music+motion despite all of our “sophistications” THOUGH I DO DIGRESS, as soon the jackbooted guard stationed there soon bullied us back to a more dignified concertgoing manner. Not before the esteemed Mr. Meloy directed the entire crowd into a three part choir singing the bumpbumpbahdeedahs at the close of “Billy Liar”. We were treated to a grand reenactment of the birth of Colin’s worst-ever song, “Dracula’s Daughter”, and the subsequent birth of R.E.M. upon The Laird Hisself’s single majestic tear falling upon Peter Buck several years before the aforementioned song ever came about.
Afterwards there was a spot of drinking and a sprightly walk home, yes sprightly, yours truly, with all his mass, felt absolutely sprightly after the show, grinning broadbeam grins and feeling as refined asyouplease for having had the night’s entertainment.
As to the importance of aural stimulation? If you don’t know by now, you never will.
