I’ll turn 34 in a few weeks. So dragging my old, lazy, hairy-back and hairy-eared body to concerts isn’t something I routinely do. Sure, in my youth I headbanged to the best of them – landing in the front row for Slayer and Sepultura, moshing as part of a seething mass of humanity to Rage Against the Machine, taking in System of a Down, Tool, Slipknot, the Deftones, Metallica, Pantera, Sabbath, Danzig, Suicidal Tendencies, Soundgarden – the list is almost endless. However, concerts are for either the really young or, as I learned tonight, the really drunk. Sadly, I’m neither.
But one band I don’t miss is Local H. When they come to town, I’m there. Why? My wife would say I have a mancrush on Scott Lucas. That’s probably not far from the truth. How much of a mancrush? Well, let just say if he asked me to massage his taint, I’d probably do it. Before you judge, hear me out. That’s not sexual – there’s no kibbles and bits being touched nor any anal play. Just that bald space in between, and taint massaging among compadres.
Throw in that the show cost a measly $5 and that it was just down the road at the Rock in Maplewood, and it was pretty much the thing wet dreams are made of. So I strapped on my white tennis shoes (hey, I’m an old dude, what do you expect), jeans and a t-shirt and made the 5 minute trek to the Rock.
We arrived to a half-full parking lot, walked in and mosied on over to the back of the bar just as one of the opening acts – All the Way Rider I believe was their name – was doing a quick sound check. Sound check complete, and they opened with what wasn’t a half bad tune. A shade of complex rock music without being too corporate. Wasn’t bad. The songs started to sound a lot alike later in thet set, but I wouldn’t be averse to hearing them again.
After that was Left Heart Brain. Color me impressed. Drummers that good should be in rock bands selling out arenas, not playing dive bars in my hometown. Insane drumwork. Apparently, what I gather is that Chicago’s Left Heart Brain features former members of the Minneapolis group Filling Avoid. Which would explain the crowd they garnered. Quite a following, and for good reason. That bearded drummer could play, man.
So after Left Heart Brain, it was time for the Big Show – Local H. We meandered up to the front. Now, I’m no musical genius, but there’s no way a band as good as Local H should have less people standing in the crowd than the opening act. But I think that’s what happened. From my vantage point near the bar at the back, Left Brain Heart was playing to a pretty solid crowd. As soon as they exited, so did the crowd. Which was good for me, since I ended up in the second row stage left, directly in front of drummer, and bird watcher, Brian St. Clair.
Which gave me a great view as some obviously inebriated fellow walks past me, pushes on to the railing, stands there for about 5 seconds, throws his drink at Brian’s drumkit, and leaves.
The idea behind Local H’s 6 Angry Records Tour is that they throw the names of all their records into a hat. Then a member of the audience selects from the hat and they play that album – in order – from the first song to the last. So after setting up, Scott Lucas takes the stage and asks for an audience member to do the deed. He selects someone, who pulls out Jagged Little Pill. Solid humor right there. A second audience member is selected and 12 Angry Months pops out.
I was hoping for something else (I’ve been listening to nothing but 12AM and 68 Angry Minutes lately), but was still pretty pumped to hear a bunch of songs I’ve never heard live. So the H kicks into The One With Kid – which is rockin’ live – and the meager crowd gets a tad excited. Notice I say a tad. These aren’t the good old days, when mosh pits and crowd surfing were the norm – if you weren’t running into or over folks, you weren’t having a good time – and I quickly learned why. Before long two overexcited (and drunk) fans were being escorted out. One only seemed to be bouncing up and down and stumbled into another dude, hardly grounds for dismissal.
After that it was on to Michelle, which you guessed it, rocks live. The folks from Left Brain Heart joined in on the screams at the end of the song, something they proceeded to do throughout the night. The band rolled through BMW Man and then on to White Belt Boys, a song I trashed in my album review. Um, let’s just say that live it’s incredible. The tribal drumming at the end (again assisted by Left Brain Heart) is something I can get into. Rockin’ stuff.
Next up, they plowed through the Summer of Boats and Taxi-Cabs (two of my favorite songs from 12AM), with Brian absolutely destroying the manic drumming near the end of Taxi-Cabs. 24-Hour Breakup Session followed, the first (and only?) single off of 12AM – yup, you guessed it, excellent live. Jesus Christ! Did You See the Size of That Sperm Whale followed and the crooning Simple Pleas took ballads to new heights.
We were about halfway into the show and I was really digging it. The band sounded tight. I’ve seen a lot of bands live and it’s very rare that they can make songs on an album sound better live than recorded. You get bad vocals, dirty guitar work, whatever. But the H brought it on the first nine, and to use a golf analogy, were well under par making the turn home.
And that’s when they chunked a 9 iron into the water. They broke into Machine Shed Wrestling, only the drumming just didn’t seem right. A minute in, Scott stopped it. Walked back to his amps, then came back to announce they were starting over with Machine Shed Wrestling. He looked at Brian, who seemed to say he couldn’t hear out of his monitor. Scott glared back, saying “That’s an excuse – look at the setlist.”
And it was off to Machine Shed for the second try. This time they nailed it, but that didn’t ease the tension. After the song, Scott again walked back to his stack, while Brian rolled into Blur. Which prompted Scott to flip his drummer the finger.
I felt bad for the guy. Here they were – in a fucking stripmall next to a Pizza Hut – playing to a sparse crowd on a Tuesday night. Playing their asses off, too, so that a few hardcore fans like me could enjoy them. It’s the same old rock cliche – a band that hadn’t sniffed the commercial success of 13 years ago still plugging away in rundown bars in decaying towns. And for what? So some drunk guys drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon 32 ouncers in front me (more on that later) could take their minds off their shitty lives with a few cold ones, beer clanking and high fives?
Maybe that’s why I love the H. They aren’t in it for the money. They aren’t in it for the fame. They make music because it’s what they’ve always done. And because they love it. And because they are fucking incredible at it. And because, in some small measure, they give fans like me and drunk guys like the Pabsters a couple of hours of pure bliss every couple of years when they roll through.
With that, we were off onto the highs and lows of the epic Hand to Mouth, a wonderfully crafted, orchestral romp and the end of the 12 Angry Months portion of the festivities.
From there, it was on to the classics, starting with All the Kids Are Right, a song, ironically enough, about how kids turn away from a band after they have a bad show. Scott introduced it with “Here’s a song about tonight’s show.”
Kids segued quickly into Fritz’s Corner, quite possibly my favorite H song. I used to crank this slab of aggression on my long commutes home and rock out. And holy shit was it angry live. Sounded great, headbanging began and the H was back in the groove that had started the show.
Ironic song number 2 was next, High Fivin’ Mother Fucker. Which, upon hearing the opening feedback, the Pabsters in front of me, well, started high fiving’. So let me set the scene – these four larger guys, all drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon from 32 ounce cans, the tall ones, throughout the show were doing all sorts of entertaining drunk antics. Like routinely thrusting their cans as high as they could and crashing them together. Or fist pumping along to the song. Or lots of headbanging. Some slow hand waving. And even some head slapping. And let’s not forget the time one of the four went back to the bar for some shots, came back with three, passed them to his drunken compatriots, and then, very slowly, realized he hadn’t taken one for himself. Classic drunken hijinks.
So I had a good chuckle when High Fivin’ came on and they high fived, just like the antagonist of said song. Only, these guys weren’t the High Fivin’ Motherfucker. They weren’t bothering anyone else. Just having some good, clean drunken fun amongst friends.
From here, my memory is a little fuzzy on the order songs were played. Yeah, I’m old, deal with it. I think up next was California Songs, which had the Pabst boys chanting “Fuck New York. Fuck New York. Fuck New York.” From there, we flowed into Hands on the Bible. Which apparently the drunk redhead who had been in front of me was screaming for all night, only to have Scott play it while she was away, to which he said “Is she gone? Alright, now we’ll play it.” About halfway through, she reappeared, which had Scott saying “No!” into the mic during a verse. Another reason I love the H – they aren’t afraid to rip their fans if they’re acting like tools.
From there, the H rolled into Bound for the Floor, a staple of their live shows and their most popular song. Good tune, but I was disappointed. Usually the middle of Bound contains a snippet of another song – Toxic, or 25 or 6 to 4 or lately Rainbow in the Dark – but there was no such appearance tonight. Just Bound straight through. Which had me thinking we were done.
Thinking wrongly, though, as Brian immediately rolled into the killer drumline for Manifest Destiny Part II, a long foray into drumming and guitar madness at hyperspeed. I loved every second of it, and before I knew it, the show was over, with Scott walking off stage right to man the merch booth and Brian going the opposite direction stage left and backstage. Take that for what it’s worth, needless to say there was no post coital hug among bandmates after the show.
As the lights popped on and the sparse crowd headed for the merch booth, the bar or the exits at nearly 12:30, I was left wondering – is this my last Local H concert? I’d always kind of thought that the end of the road was near for Local H – nearly 4 years in between PJ Soles and 12 Angry Months, Scott’s growing list of side projects, a dwindling fanbase – despite a killer new record – and a once strong army on their message board that was slowly fading to two or three routine posters.
Is it the end of an era? For a band that I fell in love with late in their run (I didn’t really become a big-time fan until PJ Soles, despite seeing them a couple times in the As Good As Dead era), I certainly hope not. They’re still putting out incredible music. They’re still putting on live shows to rival any band out there. They’re still doing things no other band will do, like picking a setlist out of a hat. That means you have to know intimately every one of the 70+ songs in your catalog and be able to play them well in front of a live audience. No other band will put themselves through that when it’s a lot easier to play the hits or live staples.
I hope it’s not the end. But if it is, I’d like to stand up and thank Scott and Brian for putting out exceptional music that I truly connected with, performing live shows that exhilarate their fans, and making music that I’ll listen to until I can’t hear anymore. Which, given my advancing age, may be sooner than I’d like to admit.