What a magical evening.<\/p>\n
I come back from buying a bottle of water and who’s sitting in my seat?\u00c2\u00a0 VAN DYKE PARKS!<\/p>\n
Does Felice know Van Dyke?<\/p>\n
No, but he then tells a story of eating dinner with Mo Ostin and her dad at Chasen’s…\u00c2\u00a0 Van Dyke’s revealing history, his tenure at Carnegie Tech, working for Mo at Warner Brothers making secretarial wages but only having to report to one guy.\u00c2\u00a0 Van Dyke was doing the score for "Two Jakes" and Mo thought Felice’s dad could provide some insight.<\/p>\n
But Van Dyke Parks was only a sideman this evening.\u00c2\u00a0 Playing piano and accordion.<\/p>\n
Actually, he got a solo…\u00c2\u00a0 He played "Orange Crate Art".\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody got a solo…\u00c2\u00a0 Joe Henry and Loudon’s daughter Lucy too.\u00c2\u00a0 It was that kind of evening…\u00c2\u00a0 Something from the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 THE 1870’s!\u00c2\u00a0 Like we’d all rallied around the barn on a Saturday night and the local talent was going to give a show.\u00c2\u00a0 Back before the era of not only iPods, but ELECTRICITY!<\/p>\n
But the performers provided their own heat, their own energy, you could have added their power to the grid.\u00c2\u00a0 It emanated from deep inside, who they were as opposed to what the music industry had tacked on to them.<\/p>\n
I’d heard "Dead Skunk".\u00c2\u00a0 Novelty track.<\/p>\n
I’d read about Loudon Wainwright…\u00c2\u00a0 But how many albums could one person buy?<\/p>\n
Then, as a result of the miracle of the Internet, I download his new album, "Recovery" and find out he’s a genius, often working in miniature, nailing the human experience.<\/p>\n
The movies are a mother to me<\/span> The extravaganzas projected at multiplexes are not movies.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re business concoctions, carefully cast and scripted to rain coin all over the world. Making a movie isn’t about making a statement, but making money.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not how good your film is, but its gross.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas films used to be an escape, but not pure fantasy, rather they made you feel part of the human race, experiencing the stories of others.\u00c2\u00a0 The lights would go down, you might be in the theatre alone, but suddenly you were wrapped in a whole environment, peopled with characters who were now your best friends.<\/p>\n I’ve never heard a song about this experience.\u00c2\u00a0 The movies may have changed, but life hasn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 We all feel so alone, we need to connect.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why social networking is the rage.\u00c2\u00a0 But prior to the Internet, we used to feel a member of the group via music, before MTV whored it out and it became just like the movies, vapid.<\/p>\n Loudon played all my favorites, everything I needed to hear.\u00c2\u00a0 "Be Careful There’s A Baby In The House", "Motel Blues", "Muse Blues" and "Say That You Love Me"…\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t help but stand and applaud when "Say That You Love Me" was done.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the essence of being a music fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Music isn’t for winners, it’s not sports.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is for losers.\u00c2\u00a0 The socially awkward.\u00c2\u00a0 The dreamers.\u00c2\u00a0 The music soothes them, makes them powerful.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes them take risks, like telling the object of their affection that they love them.\u00c2\u00a0 But that doesn’t always work.\u00c2\u00a0 And when you’re rejected, you come home and play your records some more.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting consoled by your favorite acts, gaining insight from what they’ve got to say.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is more than slap your booty into mine!\u00c2\u00a0 We’re going to the club and have a good time!\u00c2\u00a0 Oftentimes the most dedicated music fan CAN’T EVEN GET INTO THE CLUB!<\/p>\n Not that Loudon is a loser.\u00c2\u00a0 But his music represents all 360 degrees of life.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you don’t have losses, you’re delusional, you’re not telling the truth.<\/p>\n There was a raucous version of "Man Who Couldn’t Cry", with all six players raving up.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe not quite the Who, then again, Loudon name-checked Townshend in his song about smashing his guitar, buying a replacement and then having this new instrument instantly stolen.\u00c2\u00a0 Karma, he said.<\/p>\n But the highlight was "In C".<\/p>\n Don’t look for it in iTunes, don’t comb Loudon’s catalog, it’s never been released.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s a gem.<\/p>\n So by now it’s clear to hear I know<\/span> Loudon apologized.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not really, he’s always got that mischievous look in his eye and inflection.\u00c2\u00a0 And said he felt embarrassed sitting at the keys, where living legend Van Dyke Parks had been residing.\u00c2\u00a0 And you thought this was going to be a humorous number, child’s play, banging on the keys uttering little more than nonsense.<\/p>\n But it was the heaviest song of the night.\u00c2\u00a0 Loudon started to sing truth.\u00c2\u00a0 About broken families.\u00c2\u00a0 Ones he’d been a member of.<\/p>\n Lucy Wainwright Roche might have been on stage with him, but Loudon’s relationship with Rufus has been notoriously strained.\u00c2\u00a0 You start off fresh-scrubbed, you enter the game and suddenly you’ve been married and divorced multiple times.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the Republican VP nominee has a pregnant teenage daughter.\u00c2\u00a0 Life never goes as planned.\u00c2\u00a0 You just try to cope.<\/p>\n And the great unknown’s a hurricane<\/span> Do you get married?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you have kids?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s so scary.\u00c2\u00a0 And after escaping injury in the gauntlet of life, suddenly you hit a brick wall, you encounter another crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t end until you do.<\/p>\n Playing music is not something you do on a journey to somewhere else.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not a stepping stone to a clothing line, to endorsements.\u00c2\u00a0 Playing music is something innate, that you must do, as necessary as drinking water, as breathing.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why the greats, the true believers, never give up. Forget the Stones, yesteryear’s stars.\u00c2\u00a0 What about those who never really broke through?\u00c2\u00a0 Shouldn’t they be giving up and going to law school?<\/p>\n Some do, but most don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 And some who do come back.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they’re just not happy.\u00c2\u00a0 If they must be starving artists, so be it.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, if you’re not willing to starve, you’re not an artist.\u00c2\u00a0 You worship money more than creation, your priorities are not commensurate with the artistic temperament.<\/p>\n Loudon Wainwright III has hung in there.\u00c2\u00a0 He never broke through.\u00c2\u00a0 Got lucky a few times, with "Dead Skunk", "MASH" and "Knocked Up", but he’s not a household word.<\/p>\n Which is probably why Largo at the Coronet was not full.<\/p>\n This stunned me.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought it would be a tight ticket.<\/p>\n To me it was, we got there early, having heard it was open seating.<\/p>\n I needed to be close.\u00c2\u00a0 I needed to be there.\u00c2\u00a0 For this one time only show.\u00c2\u00a0 Just after the new record came out.\u00c2\u00a0 When he’d play all its new\/old tunes, with a full band.<\/p>\n It’s not about hiring a limo to drink wine with your buddies as haggard oldsters play renditions of their decrepit hits.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not the live music experience.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s entertainment at best.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas live music, when done right, is life itself.<\/p>\n In the 1970’s, my heart palpitated when I saw my favorite act was coming to town.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes they’d only produced one album.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 I needed to go.\u00c2\u00a0 Often alone.\u00c2\u00a0 Why try to convince someone who won’t appreciate it?<\/p>\n And I’d sit there, as the music washed over me, telling myself there was no place I’d rather be.<\/p>\n There’s no place that I’d rather be than seeing Loudon Wainwright at Largo last night.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m hoping this Internet era will allow his magic, his might, to spread far and wide.\u00c2\u00a0 That people will go to see him for thirty bucks and know that you can avoid that whole TicketMaster game and have even a better time, a life-fulfilling experience.<\/p>\n Now if you go on YouTube, you can find a clip of "In C".\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what Loudon told me the name of the song was, even though here it’s listed as "Another Song In C".<\/p>\n And if you listen through, and you should, because you’re human and if you can’t identify with this experience already, take notes, because soon you will, you’ll hear the following lines: Art comes out of pain.\u00c2\u00a0 Of change.\u00c2\u00a0 Of the dilemma of having more questions than answers.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve got it all down, you don’t need art.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you wonder sometimes how you got here, what you’re doing here, if the pain you’re feeling has ever been felt by anyone before, you’re a candidate for art.<\/p>\n We’ve come far from Woodstock.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to get back to Joni Mitchell’s garden.\u00c2\u00a0 We now have the power.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve wrested it from the old men, who never learned to type, who aren’t computer literate.<\/p>\n The clock has been reset.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t learn to dance, don’t hire the ghostwriter, look deep down into your heart and let your truth out.\u00c2\u00a0 You are not alone. If you speak honestly, others will resonate.<\/p>\n
There’s nothing like a good movie<\/span>
To mother me back to sanity<\/span>
When I have gone insane<\/span><\/p>\n
I don’t play a lot of piano<\/span>
But sometimes a fella has to sit<\/span>
Just to sing about the heavy shit<\/span><\/p>\n
With howling winds and floods and driving rain<\/span>
You might make it through, but you don’t know<\/span>
If right behind it there’s a tornado<\/span><\/p>\n
And if families didn’t break apart<\/span>
I suppose there’d be no need for art<\/span><\/p>\n\n