Profundity eludes me, of late. Metaphysical musings and poetic pontifications do, too. Perhaps it’s due to the summer doldrums, of the heat and humidity flooding my synapses with so much sweat that the electrical and chemical charges that fire imagination can’t quite ignite. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that I flipped yet another page in the desk calendar of life and can’t help but think that, if the actuarial tables are correct, I don’t have many pages left to turn. To borrow a short stanza from the poet Denise Levertov:
facing my mirror—no longer young,
the news—always of death,
the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring
and howling, howling[.]
(Granted, in my case, the figurative canines have been replaced with literal cats that chirp, trill, and meow, and clamber across the bed while I sleep to attack my feet.)
Earlier this week, I stumbled upon a find I forgot I had: a CDR I imagine Diane or I procured in a trade or tree of Maria McKee’s concert at the TLA in 1996—the only time the Little Diva played Philly that we didn’t see her. As I’m sure I’ve written before, the tickets went on sale two weeks after we’d purchased tix to see Graham Parker on the same night at the Tin Angel. In retrospect, we should have ditched him for her; Diane would agree if only to shut me up on the subject, as it’s one of few life regrets I rehash on a regular basis. (Life Is Sweet, the album she was touring behind, didn’t hit the CD racks until the week after the concert, so we were, in a way, operating from ignorance; that it quickly became one of my all-time favorite albums makes our decision to forgo the show hurt all the more.) Back to the CDR: It’s captures a night of operatic rock—and is absolutely barking stars from start to finish.
It’s not a soundboard recording, I hasten to add. At times, the sound turns muffled—most likely from the fan who recorded it accidentally hitting the microphone he’d clipped to his winter coat. (It was a damp and chilly night in the Delaware Valley.) But that’s alright. It captures the magic.
Back then, in what some might call the “before times,” it was customary for some hardcore fans to smuggle a cassette, DAT or minidisc recorder into a venue in an attempt to record the concert, with the end result eventually making its way to fan communities. (It was verboten, by the way—one could get tossed to the street if caught.) Professionals played the game, too, often finding ways to procure pristine soundboard recordings. Those store-bought bootlegs were pricey, generally selling for $20 to $30 per disc ($44 to $65 in today’s cash) and, much as the homemade variety, were often duplicated and disseminated by fans.
I share that to say this: From the late 1980s through the mid-2000s, such unofficial recordings were a major part of our lives. (Fun fact: On one of our first outings in 1989, I took Diane to a record store in Delaware that stocked new-fangled CD bootlegs.) Within a few years, by which time we were married, we joined online fan communities where trading tapes was commonplace, and frequented indie stores—including the one in Delaware—that sold unofficial releases. ICE: The CD Newsletter, which featured an insightful column about illicit recordings, was requisite reading.
Today’s free-range social media is, too often for my tastes, dominated by the “purity police”; you know the ones—they seek to dictate how others enjoy themselves. I thought of that Thursday, when I pressed play on my YouTube video of Mikaela Davis’ “Spring Petals in the Snow,” which I recorded when she played Durham the week before. The YouTube algorithm, perhaps sensing my need, served up a succession of clips from my recent concert-going history: Davis’ “Other Lovers” from Carrboro, which I captured two years ago, plus her cool cover of the Dead’’s “Candyman” from the same night; and, then, magical turns by Cassandra Jenkins, Kassi Valazza, the Staves, and Molly Parden. Some folks decry such fan-recorded videos, of course, and assert that the concert experience should be devoid of cellphones and other distractions, that fans should “live in the moment”—and, too, that it’s everyone’s right at seated shows to stand, dance, and block the view of the people behind them. They annoy me, more than anything. They’re the moral majority of the music world.
I admit that the “human tripods,” aka those people who record all or the bulk of a show on their cellphones, seem to have lost the plot—but so what? It’s their plot to lose. Too, at the same time, I actually wish they’d been around to preserve those concerts that live large in my memory: 10,000 Maniacs at the Mann Music Center in 1992, for example, or Maria McKee at the TLA in ’93 and the Tin Angel in ’98, not to mention Nanci Griffith at the Chestnut in ’89 and Neil Young in Atlantic City earlier that same year. How cool would it be to relive—in audio or video form—the Ray Charles show I caught at Penn State in 1985? Or the Rosalie Sorrels home concert I attended in the wilds of Pennsylvania’s Centre County? The Kinks in ’83? Garland Jeffreys in ’01? Bruce Springsteen offers fans a legitimate path to own the shows they attend via the Nugs website (and I’ve purchased quite a few), but not every artist or band can afford the frontend costs.
That’s all neither here nor there, I suppose. Instead we have this: an official video of Mikaela Davis and band in performance at the Pour House in Charleston, S.C., on July 23—a sultry night from the looks of it. The 84-minute set is slightly different from what we experienced four nights earlier: “Mizmoon” is pushed up to the fifth song of the evening, while Nic Panken joins for a wondrous cover of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend.” (That should’ve been a staple all tour long!) The camera loses focus in a few spots, most notably during “Spring Petals,” and close-ups are generally non-existent—but it matters not. It’s one helluva show.
(Incidentally, the video is the latest in a long line of shows that the Charleston Pour House has on its YouTube channel. There’s a lot there to enjoy.)
The set:
- (Looking Through) Rose Colored Glasses
- Junk Love
- Wrong Way
- Little Bird
- 11:11
- Mizmoon
- Spring Petals in the Snow
- In My Groove
- Starlite Tonight
- Wildflower
- Only Over You
- Nuthin’s on the Radio
- Unknown Legend (Nic Panken)
- (That’s Not) Who I Wanna Be
The Old Grey Cat 