{"id":408,"date":"2006-05-01T11:04:08","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T19:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/05\/01\/the-house-concert\/"},"modified":"2006-05-01T11:04:38","modified_gmt":"2006-05-01T19:04:38","slug":"the-house-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/05\/01\/the-house-concert\/","title":{"rendered":"The House Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hardest part of looking back is the mistakes are all your own
It’s harder to say that in those letters home<\/em><\/p>\n

"Letters Home"
Wendy Waldman<\/p>\n

I thought about going to Coachella.\u00c2\u00a0 But there was a dearth of e-mail and phone calls.\u00c2\u00a0 The buzz of the last two years was absent.\u00c2\u00a0 So, when Wendy Waldman told me her house concert was just about sold out, I made a commitment, not wanting to be left out.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, realizing a no-show at a $15 a head event would make a difference, that blowing off the gig would make me look like an ass, the deal was sealed.\u00c2\u00a0 No Coachella for me this year.\u00c2\u00a0 Since that took care of Saturday night and Sunday evening I had to be in town for my KLSX show.<\/p>\n

Have you ever been to Agoura Hills?\u00c2\u00a0 Sounds exotic, I know.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a ranch community out in the highlands, where stoners escape the fast lane and smoke dope.\u00c2\u00a0 But in reality, Agoura Hills is just another bedroom community, with a longer commute from downtown L.A., or wherever it is in town you drive to every day.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you want a part of the American dream, if you want to own your own home, if you want your own piece of land, you plunk your roots down in these far-flung enclaves.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t want to live worse than your parents.\u00c2\u00a0 You convince yourself that things are working out.\u00c2\u00a0 That your life is going in the right direction.<\/p>\n

Exposure to mainstream media would give you the illusion that we live in a land where Britney and Lindsey and even Bono rule.\u00c2\u00a0 That they’re all everybody thinks about.\u00c2\u00a0 That we all watch "Entertainment Tonight" hoping to catch a glimpse of Hollywood royalty.\u00c2\u00a0 But this is not true.\u00c2\u00a0 The Internet has not only made celebrities fodder for ridicule, it has allowed all the supposed marginal people to band together and not only express displeasure at what the dictators say they should believe, but form new scenes.\u00c2\u00a0 Reading the mainstream press you’d think that that’s all people are interested in, the mainstream.\u00c2\u00a0 But the mainstream means less than it ever did before.<\/p>\n

I’d like to tell you that the Bodie House was a giant spread.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind you envision when you think of the New World, i.e., California. But the Bodie House was closer to one of those cookie cutter edifices from "Knot’s Landing".\u00c2\u00a0 Not even in the category of "Desperate Housewives".\u00c2\u00a0 But the building doesn’t matter, but who lives inside.\u00c2\u00a0 Inside lives Renee.\u00c2\u00a0 Who is PASSIONATE about music.\u00c2\u00a0 She told the story of going to some conference in Texas where singer-songwriters plied their wares 24\/7.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t listen to wannabes for a fraction of that time, but Renee believes.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is probably why she was holding this show in her home.\u00c2\u00a0 It certainly wasn’t for the money.\u00c2\u00a0 That all went to the performers.<\/p>\n

My name was right there on the list.\u00c2\u00a0 Thank god I attended.<\/p>\n

And after laying down thirty bucks for Felice and myself, Renee’s husband whispered we should get seats, because the show was going to sell out.<\/p>\n

The performance space was their living room.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind of place that normally held a couch and a TV.\u00c2\u00a0 Row after row of fold-up chairs were laid out.\u00c2\u00a0 Eight wide.\u00c2\u00a0 With less legroom than you find on Southwest Airlines.\u00c2\u00a0 We claimed two seats in the second row and laid down our accoutrements.\u00c2\u00a0 In the real world I’d be worried about theft, but not in the Bodie House.<\/p>\n

And then we went into the kitchen\/dining room.\u00c2\u00a0 They said bringing refreshments was optional, but most people arrived with a dish.\u00c2\u00a0 I was confronted with enough desserts to keep a small child high on sugar for two years.\u00c2\u00a0 Much of which was still waiting to be consumed when we left almost four hours later.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era when water is five bucks a bottle and the food at shows is close to inedible, this was quite a head-turner.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, there was water and wine too.\u00c2\u00a0 In endless supply.<\/p>\n

And after relieving myself, having followed the computer-generated signs to the bathroom, the lights flashed and we took our seats.<\/p>\n

Now you’ve got to get this.\u00c2\u00a0 How far are we from the stage?\u00c2\u00a0 Five feet?<\/p>\n

Well, not a stage.\u00c2\u00a0 A performance space.\u00c2\u00a0 A small cleared area at the front of the room.<\/p>\n

Wendy squeezed by, and believe me, there wasn’t an inch to spare.\u00c2\u00a0 And her buddy Kenny Edwards slinked his six foot plus frame through too.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, while he sat on a chair and accompanied her, Wendy stood up at the mic and sang the above song, "Letters Home".\u00c2\u00a0 God, I’m getting a shit-eating grin just thinking about it.<\/p>\n

The first time I saw Wendy Waldman, at the Bitter End, back in 1974, after a song or two she said "There’s a guy in the second row who knows every word."\u00c2\u00a0 That was me.\u00c2\u00a0 I was worried about being exposed again, so I tried to keep my mouth from working, but I couldn’t.<\/p>\n

Wendy Waldman had a five album run on Warner Brothers in the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 Then she made one record for Epic and another for Cypress, distributed by A&M, in the eighties.\u00c2\u00a0 That was DECADES ago.\u00c2\u00a0 But I still play her music.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it touches me.\u00c2\u00a0 It reeks of honesty in a land where that word doesn’t figure.\u00c2\u00a0 Where Presidents lie, never mind people who run record companies.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no authenticity in a world where it’s truly impossible to fake it.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a major disconnect.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where people sign off, figuring they don’t fit in.\u00c2\u00a0 But, like I said, these people are now bonding together via the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe not in Coachella numbers, but there’s a scene.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s based ONLY on music.<\/p>\n

You know how you go to the show and they play none of the music you want to hear?\u00c2\u00a0 This was not that kind of gig.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only did Wendy play "Vaudeville Man" and "Mad Mad Me", she played stuff like "Back By Fall" and "Waiting For The Rain".\u00c2\u00a0 It was as if she visited me in my bedroom, when I couldn’t fall asleep, and played my favorite tracks, just for me.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t just for me.\u00c2\u00a0 It was for about a hundred people.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t look anything like those in the magazines.\u00c2\u00a0 They were my generation.\u00c2\u00a0 And we’re getting old.\u00c2\u00a0 The high school babes now have lines in their faces.\u00c2\u00a0 Looks are no longer where it’s at.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s solely who you are inside.\u00c2\u00a0 Who you are is all that counts.<\/p>\n

I was stunned just shy of an hour in when Wendy said she was gonna take a break and then come back for a SECOND SET!\u00c2\u00a0 In an era when you pay ten dollars plus for a shitty ninety minute movie I was going to get two hours of music for FIFTEEN BUCKS?<\/p>\n

And when the lights flashed again, and we sat down, we were regaled by not only Wendy and Kenny, but Dan Navarro, cousin to the famous Dave, but known by students of music as one half of Lowen & Navarro.\u00c2\u00a0 How sweetly he sang backup vocals on such numbers as the Wendy co-written "Save The Best For Last".<\/p>\n

But they weren’t saving the best for last.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole show was the best.<\/p>\n

VH1 would have you believe, or DID have one believing, when it used to be about music, in the last century, that music is about fame.\u00c2\u00a0 The light burns brightly briefly and then you pack your dreams in a trunk and become like everybody else, a working stiff.\u00c2\u00a0 This is true for some, but then there’s this category of person known as a "musician".\u00c2\u00a0 This person doesn’t play for money, or fame, but because they HAVE TO!<\/p>\n

Dan Navarro gave me a ride home from some club in West L.A. ten years back.\u00c2\u00a0 He was driving a Prelude past its prime.\u00c2\u00a0 This was AFTER Pat Benatar covered his and Eric Lowen’s "We Belong".\u00c2\u00a0 What was he living on NOW?\u00c2\u00a0 But if you saw him in this house in Agoura Hills he looked happier than Fat Bastard from Exxon who netted close to a billion dollars in salary.\u00c2\u00a0 Because life isn’t about money, but experiences.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not how you look, but how you FEEL!\u00c2\u00a0 And these musicians playing so close to me, despite being on the downhill side of life, they felt GREAT!\u00c2\u00a0 And although there might not be that much sand left in the top of their hourglasses, they’re making the most of what’s left.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re wiser from the experience.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got things to do, things to accomplish.<\/p>\n

Well, there was a similarity to the people playing on arena stages.\u00c2\u00a0 Sitting in the audience you had\u00c2\u00a0 a burning desire to be THEM!\u00c2\u00a0 But not because of the fame, but the TALENT!\u00c2\u00a0 And because they have a community.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era of loneliness, the musicians, the players, they’re there for each other.\u00c2\u00a0 They might not be rich in dollars, but in friendships, they’re BILLIONAIRES!<\/p>\n

When the show was over, Wendy told me it was happening.\u00c2\u00a0 Her old discs were moving.\u00c2\u00a0 There was more interest in her music than there’d been in eons.\u00c2\u00a0 All because of the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 She was more excited about music than EVER!<\/p>\n

When we walked out into the brisk West Valley air just shy of midnight Felice and I were laughing.\u00c2\u00a0 Not believing the experience we’d just had.\u00c2\u00a0 Wanting to tell everybody about it, but knowing they’d never really get it.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they had no frame of reference.\u00c2\u00a0 Music had grown so far beyond this.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s them versus us now.\u00c2\u00a0 It hasn’t been about togetherness for oh-so-long.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about visuals, not sensations.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s no sensation like having your heart warm up as you involuntarily start singing a song.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest of the world falls away.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just you, your best self, reveling in how fucking great it is to be alive.\u00c2\u00a0 In this world with so many delights.<\/p>\n

Concerts at the Bodie House<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hardest part of looking back is the mistakes are all your ownIt’s harder to say that in those letters home "Letters Home"Wendy Waldman I thought about going to Coachella.\u00c2\u00a0 But there was a dearth of e-mail and phone calls.\u00c2\u00a0 The buzz of the last two years was absent.\u00c2\u00a0 So, when Wendy Waldman told me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-6A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}