Standing At The Top Of The World

It has been so long since I've been to a show that I've enjoyed for something other than the sheer experience of it. I saw the gypsies, and they were loud and colorful and brightly took up the field of my vision. I saw the jazz show, and it was that well-worn experience of a room of people bobbing their heads real cool like. Both good, both notable events that I am glad I attended. But I felt no need to stay for either. I could have been for thrity minutes and still left happy. Once I saw the glint of instruments and the way the lights reflected off of manic bassists and madly grinning drummers, I was good.

What's nice, though, what entirely made my evening and then some, was getting to see an artist I love but had forgotten about, and thus an artist whose every song brought waves of fond recognition and an intense desire for an encore. A couple years back, getting into Damien Jurado sort of made the soundtrack to my summer. A couple of the boys I was close to were deeply passionate about the man, so there was no shortage of discs pushed into my waiting hands and from there into the cd burner, and from there into the car stereo. I really liked those songs. And I knew a lot of them, putting them on mix cds and then empathizing furiously with a few others. His voice has this real pleasant timbre, where it's easy to sing along to, and it's earnest and sometimes he raises it just a little and so it's like he really means it, you know? His songs are so well put together I could just die in little author-worshipping puddles all over the living room floor. His record label (Secretly Canadian) does describe him as Raymond Carveresque (oh he of the sparsely gorgeous middle class short stories), but for the life of me I am almost certain that I had already figured that out all by myself and was describing him as such before I even read their blurb. Take with grains of salt.

So I had seen him a couple of times (at least) already. Once before I was twenty-one, sneaking into the Blackbird with Patches and standing only slightly thralled, slightly worried but exhilarated to be in the smoky venue (you should all know by now, most venues are smoky for me). We had talked to Damien beforehand, Patches asking him to play a song, me shaking his hand. How it pretty much went in those days, me tag tag tagging behind my friend's more perversely gregarious nature. The other time I saw him was at Berbatis, the same venue as last night, and he was just him on a chair with a guitar. Patches has a tendency to turn on his most favored artists after he sees them live and they let him down by being just constructs of flesh and bone and mortality, but I live by breathing in and out the presence of the bands I love. I remember that the show was quiet, and the songs were close to what they are on the album, if not considerably slower. I remember being pretty glad when he added a little beat by rapping his knuckles against the body of the guitar. In other words, not what one would paint as impressive. Just a good little show with a guy I like to listen to.

Which is why last night was only like the best thing ever, a salve of goodness that reminded me about all the things I really do love about my favorite bands and about filing in to dark places, getting my hand stamped, and standing in one place for hours at a time . Damien was mustering a full band behind him, the guys from Delorean backing on drums and stuff, which meant these songs from "I Break Chairs" totally got played, and as much as I was loving the sweetness of the milder songs and we were all lines crosslegged on the floor in front, I had to get up for those songs, because the snares and beats were constant and good, and Mr.Jurado was doing what a good live artist does, and letting himself go above and beyond the constraints of the record they produced, stepping back from the mike and strumming furiously, or yelping out his lyrics louder and faster. I eat that sort of thing up, man. I was so happy. Every song just about was one I knew and liked deeply but had totally skipped my mind, and so every time they'd start in on an intro it was like a present wrapped in goodness, to me, from them.

And then I coerced the Voodoo guy out of a doughnut, even tho' they were closed and baking for the next day. Good man! Because the smell of sweet fried dough was wafting through the crowd, and we kept tapping each other and making little signs that were like, hey, we thought they were closed, but don't you smell the doughnuts too?