The Hard Quartet and the Church of Middle Age
Plus call the police, Steppenwolf is catching strays!
Sunday, I saw the Hard Quartet! I went alone. I felt no shame. 90% of the audience was there by themselves. You would see no evidence of a so-called “Epidemic of Male Loneliness” on Sunday night at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, Massachusetts. You would have seen a wave of (EXTREMELY but not PROBLEMATICALLY) middle aged white men testing the limits of their neck strength bobbing their heads to the only 1-year old tunes being played by a collected 9,000 years of rock n’ roll experience. This was a room of gearheads and guys who wish they were gearheads. This was a concert of respect and appreciation and I’ll say it: good neighborly politeness. I waded in a sea of Ned Flanders. The only more respectful audience are Juggalos and I mean that from the bottom of my wretched heart.
I’ve long bemoaned that the Paradise Rock Club is one of my least favorite venues but I have come around. A venue this shitty and real is never going to be built again. Never again will a rock club be designed with 15 foot wide columns dispersed haphazardly. You’ll never see a club where the back wall is a masking taped off airplane aisle for barbacks to run ice back and forth where if you stand in it for more than 3 seconds, someone hits you hit an ice bucket and tells you to move. You can go in and out and that’s something. I don’t smoke but I did buy a t-shirt and I hate holding things so twice now, I’ve run back to my car between sets and thrown a t-shirt in the passenger seat. I can’t believe people don’t want to go to shows with me. I’m so cool.
I did not buy a Hard Quartet t-shirt because I don’t think those guys give a shit about t-shirts. I’m sure that they do but I don’t know. Their shirts kinda stunk. Sharp Pins however had a cool shirt and I bought one in an aspirational size. Look at me! I’m White Oprah! Last week Sharp Pins got a Best New Music from Pitchfork which was huge cause Sunday, the start of the next week, I saw Sharp Pins open for the Hard Quartet! Their album Radio DDR is awesome and if you were wondering if three kids who all look like a different 18 year old version of the bird comedian Chris Flemming are still listening to shit like Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Byrds, yes. These kids are. I think they even played a Byrds song. They ruled. I made a decision not to listen to the album before the show (what a little scientist I is) and was completely blown away. Sharp Pins!
The Hard Quartet are Stephen Malkmus from Pavement, Matt Sweeney from Chavez, Emmett Kelly from The Cairo Gang, and Jim White from the Dirty 3. They look like the Lone Gunmen from the X-Files. These were the four coolest guys in Boston on Sunday and not a one of them cared. They’ve put out one (in my opinion) excellent record and then one other song and they played’em all. Well btw. They are excellent musicians. Even if the songs don’t grab you, watching excellence feels good. Malkmus, Sweeney, and Kelly swap off who has to play bass on every song so all night, the three of them just weave around each other to play bass on different songs. I can’t play one instrument well and these guys are already up to 2!
I will admit, it was very cool to see Stephen Malkmus. When I was 9 years old, Pavement released Slanted and Enchanted and everything changed for me. Just kidding. I can’t even keep that bit of fantasy alive for more two seconds. That album sounds like absolute junk to a 9 year old. I know. I’ve played Slanted and Enchanted in the car on the drive to school many times. Kids hate Pavement. In 1992, kids just wanted to jump jump and blame it on the rain and open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur. Music shouldn’t be homework. Pavement is homework music.
For kids. For dads, shit is incredible. It’s Pavement. He’s a legend. Legends are cool. On Saturdays my son takes drum lessons and last week, one of the other teachers was so excited cause he was going to see Pete Best at a club in New Hampshire. Let me walk back my excitement about legends. Pete Best is a legend but if someone surprised me with tickets to see Pete Best, I can think of better uses of my time than to see the not-quite-a-beatle in his late 100s. Seeing Stephen Malkmus get excited about a new project with a new combination of talents is cool. Eyes forward on the future, time marches on. I’m sure Pavement could tour every year and put out a shadow of it’s former self album every year for forever but if a guy wants to get his weird cool indie rock buddies together in their 50s like a bunch of Dads playing Creedence covers in a garage, that’s cool.
To a point. I hate doing stuff on Sunday nights. Come on, fellas. 10:15 I called it. 2 hours and 15 mins of rocking and rolling is all I could muster. I drove home continuing my quest to find a third Steppenwolf song that I’ll be able to remember for the next and first time someone says “What do you like better? Born to Be Wild or Magic Carpet Ride?” and then I can be like “Oh I actually like this third song that no one has ever heard of. It’s important to me that you know that I know that you know that I know more about Steppenwolf.”
Alas there are no better Steppenwolf songs than “Magic Carpet Ride.” If there were, I’m sure we would have found them.