Show Review

It was only when I had given up completely and called it a night that my muse finally came to me. Once again my dreams had brought me to the promenade by that beach – you know the one, in the coastal town that they forgot to burn down. And there, next to me, was Lester Bangs. “Hello darkness, my old friend” he quipped, noticing my sullen expression.

“Knock it off,” I grumbled, “where the hell have you been?!”

“Next to you, all along,” he said with a smirk. And with that, he pointed to the horizon. There, spread across the sky, was every review I had ever written. And for each review, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. Finally, I looked up at last night’s mess, all scratches and scribbles, and noticed that there was only one set of footprints.

“There, you see! You were next to me for all of the easy ones” I exclaimed, pointing to reviews of Wilco, The Flaming Lips, and Guided By Voices. “But last night, when I was trying to write about The Arcade Fire show at the Theater of Living Arts, you disappeared. Last night is when I needed you the most!”

“Okay, what is it you’re trying to say about them?”

“Well, the thing is, I’ve been trying to draw a comparison between the Arcade Fire and Dead Poets Society I said sheepishly. “Pretty corny, huh,” I added, wincing.

“Yeah, pretty corny” he replied, looking away from my eyes, embarrassed.

And that’s when I snapped. “Now hold on. Hold on just one minute, brother. We’ve been in agreement on just about every band of the last 15 years.” And with that, I pointed to all of the reviews scattered across the sky. “Look at them. Look at all the young hipsters, The Strokes, The Interpols, with their…their stiff reverence for past glories. Or the old cats, the Guided by Voices, The Wilcos, with all of their wistful teenage symphonies to God, they could actually convince you that youth is wasted on the young. And those are the good ones! I’m telling you, these guys write teenage rock songs not for God, and certainly not for rock critics, but for teenagers, and they are joyously beautiful and powerful as all fuck. If you could have seen them take the stage and open with “Wake Up,” I’m telling you, it was like a bunch of kids standing on their chairs after some crazy teacher introduced them to R.E.M. and The Pixies, and U2, and The Talking Heads. Only the teacher had them rip every piously critical page out of their Rolling Stones and Spins and Magnets, and the framed picture of John Lennon over the black board reminded them never to hear music second-hand, so they got up on their chairs and just belted out these magical songs like irony never happened.

And they sustained that feeling for an entire set. From the opening strains of “Wake Up,” with all eight band members bellowing into their mics like a Hallelujah choir, to the new-wave-as-charismatic-religion of “No Cars Go” (“HEY! Us Kids Know!”). From the urgent-as-a-Bloody-Sunday “Rebellion (Lies),” to the final redemption of “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).” They played like Catchers at the bottom of a cliff. They played like kids in a cave, wearing warpaint and chanting and dancing. They played like they believed rock and roll really could still save your soul.”

“I know,” Lester beamed, as he tossed every word I had just spoken into the sky.

That is when I noticed, next to my lonely set of footprints, four small peg-holes in the sand. And turning, I saw that next to me, on the promenade, Lester was standing on top of a chair, reaching down to me, whisper-exploding those words:

“Oh, captains, my captains.”