Very sad news – The Fratellis have just cancelled the last 5 shows of their U.S. tour (Atlanta, NC, Washington DC, Boston & Hartford), due to bereavement. No other details were given, except that they were flying back to Scotland to be with their families. These shows were also to include The Airborne Toxic Event and Electric Touch as support.

I’ve just posted an embarrassingly long message on Airborne’s mySpace page so I won’t repeat myself here, but obviously the situation is out of their control, and I’ll agree with the other post on there, in that I will “continue to play their music loud” (and often!).

I’ll also wish them a great month-long “residency” in the U.K.!

Really getting excited here, to the point where I had to grab this great little feature on them. It’s crazy that I’ve only seen them live twice, and already I feel like I’ve known them forever and have missed them terribly since what’s only been three weeks since their NYC show…

There’s a full page ad in the Boston Phoenix this week that makes it look like they’re the headliners (god, how I wish, though my guess is that next time around they will be). WFNX (101.7 FM) will be giving away tickets this week. But don’t take a chance of being shut out. The Fratellis and Electric Touch have pretty large followings as well. Get your tickets now!

I’ve been meaning to put this up. It’s a wonderfully eloquent response to a ridiculous review posted by Pitchfork Media. I guess they’re rather highly regarded by the indie music community, though this particular reviewer comes across – to me anyway – as simply a pompous ass. It’s also pretty obvious that such a powerful bashing most likely indicates that he in fact does admire them, and is, oh I don’t know, maybe just a little bit jealous?

An Open Letter to Pitchfork Media from the Airborne Toxic Event

I just got back from a glorious and badly needed walk up to Bailey’s Hill, here in Nahant. Bailey’s Hill used to be a military site, complete with bunkers (still there) that was overhauled into a nice wooded hillside with trail that leads to the top with a kick-ass view of the Boston skyline and surrounding harbor. I have a rock up there called my “thinking rock” and well, after being laid off from my job of nearly two years this past Tuesday… yeah, I needed to think.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t been there for ages. When I first moved here four years ago, to escape the increasingly yuppified, ever-closing-in-like-a-vise confines of West Somerville, I used to wander around all the time. For a mile-long island, we have some nice places here. Like Bailey’s Hill. And East Point (another former military site, now partly owned by Northeastern University, partly another lovely park with amazing view), the wharf… But then I stopped working from home (another layoff – maybe it’s time to stop hooking up with these “promising internet companies”) and took a job in the city. And that was fine, but I stopped my idle Nahant wanderings, got caught up in that ridiculous rat race heading steadfastly towards god only knows what, and forgot why it was that I moved here in the first place.

Not quite sure what happens next, but these things tend to happen for a reason, and I do believe I’ve fully come out of that self-induced coma now.

Electric Touch, The Airborne Toxic Event, The Fratellis
at Roseland Ballroom, New York City, September 5, 2008

By 6:40 p.m. (20 minutes before the doors opened), there were already a few hundred people in line vying for choice “seats”. Obviously I’m quite out of the loop when it comes to Scottish indie bands. Most were Fratellis fans, of course, and I had no idea they had such a following. But of those I spoke to, it seems many knew of Airborne when they did some shows with the Fratellis a few months ago.

The Roseland Ballroom is what I think of as a “New York style club” – big, impersonal, cavernous, and with the requisite disco balls. One expects a venue like that to have abysmal sound quality, but it wasn’t so bad overall, save for some audio “snafus” at the start of ATE’s set.

First band up was the Electric Touch. Curiously from Texas (or so they said), but with British accents. They were really funny with their pretentious poses, though I’m fairly certain it wasn’t intentional. They were loud; I’ll give them that. During their set, a woman in front of me turned around and asked, “Is the next band better than this?” “Oh yes,” I replied. “Ohhhhh, yes.”

Airborne was next. Some people in the front cheered as they came out to set things up. Some were probably familiar with them from their last jaunt with the Fratellis. I’m sure there were others, like me, who had come primarily to see them.

At this point, a blow-by-blow description doesn’t seem to do justice to the near-religious experience of a live Airborne Toxic Event show. Their L.A. fans would know what I mean. Sensuous. Visceral. Majestic. Heart pounding. Soaring. Cascading. Life-affirming. Inspirational. Ethereal.

They did the songs from their debut album, plus “This Losing” – a lovely track (not on the album; hopefully on the next one!).

The hot and sweaty atmosphere (broken air conditioning) only served to raise the feverish energy even higher, prompting thoughts of Indian sweat lodges, Baptist revival meetings, whirling dervishes, and other such out-of-body experiences.

This was the first time I’ve heard the Fratellis, and they were really quite good. One way I assess the value of a band’s performance is by the reaction of the audience, and if there’s a real connection there. There certainly was, and I don’t think it was all due to hyperthermia. Sorry I can’t give a track listing or any specifics, but suffice it to say they sounded great, gave an energetic performance, and I’ll definitely check out their music so I can give a more intelligent review (hopefully) for the Boston show.

Darling, you’re in my blood. I don’t say that lightly. I don’t do anything lightly. Don’t mean to frighten you; would never want to do anything but love you.

For this soothing balm, this releasing ether, I thank you and your friends. Mental shackles fall off as I shake stringy hair off sweaty shoulders. They always say it’s good to sweat out the toxins. I feel younger, lighter, less sad, less cynical. Fewer regrets, fewer unfulfilled longings. Just a pounding heartbeat riding on sound waves, in suspended animation. A shared experience; we’re all sweating out those poisons together.

God, I sound so stupid! Those doubts rising again like bile in my throat. Release it; it’s ok. So the words aren’t quite as prosaic as I had hoped; brownish water out of long rusted pipes. But if I keep running it, maybe it will run clear in time.

How crazy is this? But this symptom of déjà vu – I’ve been here before. Back then, though, it was a respectful few years difference. At 21, according to the experts, I had not yet reached my prime (as he helpfully, delightfully, pointed out). He, at 18, was at his peak, according to those studies; it was all downhill from there. The thought amused me then, as love and infatuation doesn’t heed reports or surveys. But now? Now it’s years later, a wider span of time, more uncertainty, a dimming if not darkened room. Others have long since paired off like swans, not always so gracefully, but paired off all the same, and left behind a small handful of confused stragglers. Or so it seems.

Embrace the darkness; good advice. Own it and give it a voice, and in that way control it so it doesn’t control you. I do that all the time. I dress it up in lace and velvet and flowing scarves; take it out for drinks at a seaside pub and engage it in a stimulating game of chess.

Beautiful

(circa 1983)

No need to look over your shoulder,
beautiful one.
There’s nothing back there that deserves your attention.
No roads that you should have taken;
they all lead to dead ends (I checked them all out myself, just to be sure).

Do not fear for the future;
uncertainty slows you down.
The pavement fresh and new, slows to a halt under your feet.
You stop, and the silence surrounds you like a pack of hungry wolves.

Are you all alone? – as you shiver from the imagined cold.
No, there have been others who came the same way.
But to be sure, it’s not a main highway.
No mile markers or signs to tell you where you’re going or where you’ve been.
This world has no Innkeeper. A bed of leaves will have to suffice.
But the air is so much fresher, don’t you think?
And the scenery – so exhilarating.

I can see the road you’re traveling on, for I,
out of curiosity and no place else to go,
have skipped ahead (the absence of an anchor allows me this luxury).
And I am having such a lonely but wonderful time examining the rocks and trees,
putting bits of colored pebble into the pockets of my long, black walking coat,
tapping out the way for myself with my carved wooden cane -
walking accessories for the weary traveler who wanders long and far,
surveying the roads and composing maps.

You don’t know I’m here, do you?
Would you be upset?
Do you feel my eyes upon you as you take wrong turns and then correct yourself;
as you pause to break out in song, or to feel your body overwhelmed
with newfound knowledge.

This way is new to me too (and I get fearful at times).
I must have passed it by the first time around.
Too busy probing the main interstates.
You were smart – you slowed down,
and checked out the side roads.

I died on one of those interstates,
perhaps the one from small town to big city.
A pile of bones too depressed and disappointed to keep going.
Tossed out of a rumbling ’68 pick-up – excess baggage, you know.
Resting comfortably now against a Stuckey’s sign somewhere in Georgia
(up ahead on your right – only 3.8 more miles, exit 31).

But my friend, why do you grive?
Your eyes – dark and moist with a hint of glazed defeat.
I want so badly to run out from my hiding place
and tell you that I’m here and it’s ok;
that it’s a beautiful road and you’re a beautiful traveler.
“Here, let me show you my pebbles” -
and we’ll hold each other close,
and our separate energies will combine and increase as a single powerful force.
We’ll share our provisions – we’ll go much further that way.
I have an extra pair of boots for your feet, and you can use my cane,
and I sure can use your company…
my beautiful one.