Music Post 1: Dave at the Jazz Bar

(In which I am a music snob, the Grateful Dead are mentioned twice, and I don't try to convert anyone.)

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows how I feel about Dave Alvin (even my mother knows how I feel about Dave Alvin) (if you're wondering how I feel about Dave Alvin, I signal my affection here and here, though, oddly, I appear never to have written the definitive Not Quite Sure Dave Alvin post, which would be very sure indeed).

Some bands are meant to be seen in certain venues. While Wilco is great at an outdoor festival or in a club or auditorium, I can't imagine seeing Hole anywhere but a crowded hot club with Courtney leaning out over the mosh pit and threatening to self-destruct at any moment. I never did see the Grateful Dead at Red Rocks, but they were always best outside, and yes, I did see them in California on New Year's Eve, but it still wasn't as good as a summer afternoon in a field.

But Dave Alvin is meant to be seen in a divey California club, preferably the Paradise Lounge, though a divey club in Red State Capital City works fine too. He is certainly not meant to be seen at a jazz bar in a fancy hotel in City, in a corner of the room where he can reach up and touch the ceiling, which he does occasionally, grinning and rolling his eyes at his bandmates.

I can not believe that we are seeing Dave surrounded by this sea of middle-aged white people in khaki shorts. That there are women with handbags. Even a man in a suit. That people are eating hummus plates and sipping white wine at little round tables. That the show started, right on time--we were late of course--at 7:30, and it is still light outside.

Dave doesn't seem to believe it either.

Who are these people? Do they listen to X? Did they hear the new album on NPR and think the Jazz Bar at Hotel is a nice place to see music, so why don't we check it out, dear? They sit still, perched on their tasteful little chairs and bar stools, occasionally nodding their tasteful heads.

PEOPLE, this is DAVE ALVIN, rockabilly/punk/roots rock/guitar god of the universe. He is playing "Haley's Comet" and "Maureen Maureen" and YOU'RE STILL JUST SITTING THERE!

Luckily there is the woman in front who gets it, and the one who has gotten up and moved over to the side of the room to dance. And, most important, Dave, in his Daveness, kicks middle-aged white person ass. The Guilty Men, if you saw them having lunch in the restaurant at Hotel, you would think they were a bunch of tech geeks in town for a conference, but they are still one of the tightest little bands in show business. And Dave, he is still ugly (S says at first that he's gotten less ugly in his old age, but later agrees that he hasn't), but, as I tell S (we are upfront about these things), I would still leave him for Dave in a heartbeat. Dave's guitar sizzles, and Dave's voice goes straight into my soul, and Dave's songs are perfect (Dave does Jerry Garcia, really he does, and it works, but who would have thought it in 1981, when S and I were perhaps the only people on the planet who liked both X and the Grateful Dead).

We have been listening to Dave Alvin for almost 20 years, and the Blasters before that, and, of course, X, not to mention the Knitters and the Pleasure Barons, and don't forget he used to tour with the Skeletons before the Guilty Men. We've seen him play all over the place. The keyboardist he used to tease for being so young is now middle-aged like the rest of us. In the middle of "Trouble Bound," Dave goes into a monologue about we've changed and gotten older, but we've still got the devil in us. And he's right: it's a smoking show, and the good thing about Jazz Club is he's right in the corner of the room, so you can see and hear everything, and I could be in his arms in five seconds.

Maybe, ultimately, the venue doesn't matter.

(Believe it or not, I don't feel all messianic about Dave Alvin. I think everyone should go out and get The Seeger Sessions, and I'm sure you'd like Carla Bruni if you listened to her, but I don't really care how you feel about Dave. I'm not quite sure even why I love Dave so much. Except that he's got that growl of a voice that pierces your soul, and he writes songs like lyric poetry that capture character, emotion, and place, and he specializes in ordinary lives in all their meaningfulness, and he rocks like nobody's business. And if you listen to "Fourth of July" and "Wanda and Duane" and "Out of Control" and "King of California," maybe you'll get it, and your life will be better for it, and maybe you won't, and that's OK too.)

(And in case you were there, I was the middle-aged white chick in the tight shirt, hemmed jeans skirt, and only slightly battered black slides, rocking out like a maniac on the bar stool in the back of the room.)