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I don’t want to go hear your band.

If you’re a good enough friend of mine, you might be able to drag me out, but I’m gonna dread the experience.

And I’ve felt guilty about this.  No, not that I’m going to disappoint you, why should I care?  You’re just a tireless self-promoter trying to get ahead.  But I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, if I’m different, if I just don’t get it.

I get e-mail from people who tell me they love live music.  They’re out every night hearing new bands.  Nothing sounds worse to me. Never mind all that schlepping.  The lyrics are unintelligible because the band’s turned up its amps to crowd out not only every empty space in the venue, but every nook and cranny in your brain.  In beating you over the head for attention your main desire is to leave. But somehow this is a no-no, indicating that you don’t love music, that you’re not open to anything new.

I can count the number of times I went to hear an unsigned act and loved it on one hand.  Actually, a couple of fingers.  Most dramatically, Jackson Browne at the Fillmore East, opening for Laura Nyro just before Christmas 1970.  Took a year plus for his debut album to come out, but I bought it immediately, based on that one gig.  He was just that good.

And most people aren’t.

Then there are those bands who you only get if you’ve already gotten them.  What I mean by this is it’s hard to like a band live if you haven’t heard the record.  Which is why we always bought the new album to go to the show, we wanted to be familiar with the new tunes, we wanted to hear the new tunes.  Now nobody wants to hear the new tunes.  Bands play them live as an advertisement, and most people go to the bathroom as they unfold.  In other words, music is best when it’s got context, when you know what you’re getting, when you can match this performance with the record and not only make the connection, but make up the difference.  If you can catch the lyrics of an electrified band live, you’re better than me.  Never mind the distortion, they mix the vocals down low anyway, they sound just like another instrument.

Then, assuming I do want to go, there are different experiences.  One is pure exhilaration, the band is so good, your head is exploding. Another is…the music sets you free, your brain caroms from memory to memory, it’s all about the mood.  Sometimes you get a combination of the two.  One of the worst is having to stand during the second.  Sure, if the band is peaking, if the singer is screaming, if I’m overcome with emotion, I want to stand.  But how come I can’t sit down if the music is slow and dreamy, never mind dreary.  Do I have to watch television standing up?  Then why do I have to stand at the gig?  The venues of yore had seats.  You could respect the music.  Now, promoters sell "festival seating" as a payback to fans.  Huh?  I’ve got to bump into sweaty people, be jostled around just to end up in the back where I can barely see?  It’s all about the money.  They say the fire marshal won’t let more people in.  Bullshit. Promoters are lying, cheating scumbags.  Then again, the agents and acts make them this way.  And the public is the worse for it.

But live music is king.  You’ve got to go.

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I read fiction for truth, for the insight into human nature.  You’d think non-fiction would be better, but you’d be wrong.  Seems you’ve got to fake it to be real.  Otherwise, the most honesty on TV wouldn’t be in cartoons.  But "The Simpsons" and "South Park" tell the truth. And isn’t it funny that both have already lasted longer than "American Idol" ever will?

Anyway, all of the foregoing is a long introduction to a passage I read in Nick Hornby’s "Juliet, Naked".  Tucker Crowe, the reclusive rock star. ventures out to a club to hear a band with his buddy.  And he says:

"He had feared the onset of gloom."

Yes, that darkness of being at a club and having the desire to be anywhere but there.

"The trouble with going to see bands is that there wasn’t much else to do but think, if you weren’t being swept away on a wave of visceral or intellectual excitement; and Tucker could tell that The Chris Jones Band would never be able to make people forget who they were and how they’d ended up that way, despite their sweaty endeavors."

Whew, THINKING in a mindless endeavor.

Yes, that’s what music has become, mindless.  We had no doubt there was thought behind the Beatles, certainly Bob Dylan was an intellectual giant, but today it’s all about the bucks…if you can get someone to pay for it, no one can criticize it.  Music doesn’t say anything.  Unless, of course, it’s unlistenable, made by writers as opposed to musicians, English majors as opposed to college dropouts.

"Mediocre loud music penned you into yourself, made you pace up and down your own mind until you were pretty sure you could see how you might end up going out of it."

Eureka!  This is exactly why I won’t go hear your band live!

I used to feel guilty about it, as stated above, but now that I know Nick Hornby, whose bona fides have been testified to by every diehard rock fan in the world since "High Fidelity", feels exactly like I do.