Inner-Hippie Update:
The faithful reader will recall that I'm on a quest to channel my inner hippie. To this end, I let the boy drag me to a Ziggy Marley/Spearhead concert last night at Mr. Small's Theater. It was a fine show.
Mr Small's is an old church, converted to a concert venue. Rumor has it owned by member of Rusted Root, a local-band-made-good. Rumor also holds that I went to high school with the percussionist. More on this after a thorough investigation.
At any rate, I arrived in Millvale with my two hippie guides and parked on a side street. Millvale is as Pittsburgh as a neighborhood can get. Industrial and residential at the same time, with a maze of narrow one-way streets, it lurks just off the infamous Route 28. You just turn off at the exit, go under an overpass, and you've gone back thirty years. As I stood on a streetcorner, a spectral streetcar dinged by, heading down to Forbes Field where the Pirates we scheduled to meet the fierce Ferguson Jenkins and his Chicago Cubs. I almost hopped aboard. I'd heard about this kid Stargell and wanted to get a look at him.
Instead, I followed my hippie spiritual guides up the stairs of this erstwhile House of God.
We stood in the "Under 21" line.
I could tell right away that something was terribly wrong. Millvale's finest were frisking the hippies before letting them in the door. When my turn came, the officer was entirely too polite and friendly. I was unnerved.
"What kind of concert is this?" I wondered.
Once inside, I slipped into the crowd, losing my guard and passing among "the Peepul". I saw folks older than I, and younger than the boy. They were milling about, jockeying for position. One youngish looking gentleman with dreads and tie-dye came through the entrance. Just as he cleared the frisking station, I saw a yellow-shirt bouncer rush at him through the crowd and leap into the air.
"Now that's more like it," sez I.
"Doooooooood!", bellowed the "SECURITY" emblazoned missile. Youngish hipster turned in surprise just as the tackle occurred. After some rolling around on the floor and a lot of back-slapping, I realized that these two folks, muscular clean cut bouncer and dreadlocked hippie, were glad to see eachother.
Curiouser and curiouser. I grabbed a pew near the bar.
"So lemme get this straight," I hear from the well-dressed middle aged man standing at the bar. "It's 5 dollars for a large beer, but the small ones are free?"
"No," replied a the yellow-shirt behind the bar. "The beer is free. The little cups are free, but the big cups cost you five bux."
"I'll take two large then," and he flipped a ten onto the bar. Now I'm no mathematical genius, but...
But then the music started. It was Spearhead.
In my studies of "Jam Band" music, I've never been able to detect a common thread. Some jam bands have mandolins and some have trumpets. Some have both, some have neither. Some of the music is made up of juxtaposition of time-honored three chord progressions and rap. Sometimes it's complex jazz progressions on strange instruments. Sometimes extended improvisational space journeys, other times as scripted as a symphony. I couldn't figure out what it all had in common.
Turns out jam band music is for dancing. The common thread here is that it's nearly impossible not to dance to this form of music. Undulating like a dead head in the parking lot, hopping like a Masai lion hunter, jerking and pointing like an eighties white guy, it doesn't matter. You're supposed to dance.
As a service to the community at large, and in accordance with several state laws bearing my name, I do not dance. My resolve was sorely tempted, however, and I confess here that I did on several occasions tap my foot. But in the whole, I remained as motionless as possible. Instead I danced by proxy through the people around me.
Spearhead is more of the classic three chord progression type, with fine singing and occasional rap draped over it. It was a very kinetic experience. Early on, you could hear a beautiful Fender Rhodes piano sound introducing the frameworks of each song, at once carrying you back to Stevie Wonder and forward to a 21st century sensibility. Later on, the lead guitar player stepped forward on a few occasions.
Ziggy Marley is Bob Marley's son. This is obvious just by looking at him. His voice is very similar too, and in when I had seen him in the past, it was also obvious from his show. He covered a lot of dad's music, ably, and with the support of an extended family and its reggae tradition. Last night, though, Ziggy was his own man. His band was much different this time. It was smaller (only 7 members), and multiracial. There was even a genuine lead guitar player. He covered only two or three of his dad's tunes. The others were very much Ziggy and not so much Bob, which was fine with me.
Halfway through the show, I heard a voice say "Stubby". It was just a part of the din, but my ears dragged it out and dusted it off and checked it out. Yes, somebody had definitely said, "Stubby", so I looked and there was a guy standing right in front of me, looking me straight in the eye.
"Yes, I'm Stubby, who are you?"
He didn't say anything. I looked deeper into his eyes, and suddenly saw a seventeen year old kid, all grown up.
"Lou?"
This was a guy from my high school. I hadn't seen him in over a decade.
"What's it been, twenty years?" I miscalculated.
"You know, in those twenty years, I've thought of you. And what I thought is that you're a really good guy", he responded. I was tempted to remind him who I was; the skinny kid who always tried way way way too hard. But I let it go.
Lou was the coolest guy in my high school. Good looking enough to attract all the really hot high school chicks, rebellious enough to piss off the more fastidious and uptight teachers, charming enough to get away with it. Everybody I knew liked Lou. It was hard not to.
Lou was a great drummer. A natural. He could play anything well, and he sang well too. Herr Pollack, the music teacher always berated him for wasting his talent. But as far as I could tell, Lou embraced his talent. It was the easy confidence of somebody who genuinely likes himself that made him a natural, and what made him so cool, or so I thought at the time.
Secretly, my inner pathetic geek wondered if anybody was watching. Lou was talking to me! I acted as cool as I could, which wasn't much. We talked for a while, caught up a little before the music started again. Lou bought me a grape soda from the bar.
Thanks, Lou.
Lou drifted away after Ziggy took the stage. I obsessed over his compliment for some time after that. What did he mean? He must have been thinking I was somebody else. But Lou had known me well enough to recognize me more than twenty years after graduation. What was he thinking when he said that? I just couldn't tell.
Then a thought struck me. Maybe I really was a good guy even back then. I consider myself a reasonably good guy today, but back then I was a bundle of anxiety and geekishness. Maybe even under all that awkwardness, Lou could see the good in even me. Maybe there are creatures out there on the planet who can see through all the crap and find a way to like the person underneath it all.
That's what cool is, I realized. Lou had the ability to see the "good guy" inside people. Even back in high school, especially back in high school, Lou had the talent to like people. Which is why people liked him back.
So what have we learned? Where did the hippie spirit animal lead me and what arrangements did he make to help me learn something about my hippie-self? And why the hell did Lou suddenly pop out of nowhere?
I don't know. At about this point, Ziggy started a new jam and I had to use all my concentration just to prevent another dancing incident.
