Professionalism
Bob Mould is even older than I am, which is to say he's in his late 40's, almost 50 in fact while I am still on the early side of that decade. He's been performing for 30 years now in various incarnations from screaming punk rocker, acoustic folk-rocker, dance DJ, pro wrestling producer and writer and borderline-arena-rock guitar hero (with Sugar, of course). He has long since reached the point in his career where he knows how to manipulate a crowd. He knows how to rev everyone up early on, sneak in some possibly-less-loved-by-his-fanbase stuff in the middle and go out on a high note with songs that his fans regard as true classics of the pop canon.
Several years ago Bob quit smoking, hit the gym and generally started taking better care of himself. It shows in both his appearance and his mastery of stagecraft. His voice has never sounded stronger; in a room the size of Joe's Pub (I would guess maybe 150 people were squeezed into this sold-out restaurant-sized establishment adjacent to the Public Theater down in Greenwich Village, "where it all happens" as Shep used to say) he could probably belt out his repertoire without the aid of a microphone. Why he insists on using autotune on his vocal recordings is a mystery; it may be part of his passive-aggressive relationship with the "strictly rock" portion of his fanbase. He knows he needs them to pay the rent but resents them for limiting his musical experimentation so he sneaks in annoying little touches on the record just to piss them off and then delivers far superior renditions of the same songs in a live setting that makes everyone wonder why the hell he just doesn't record the songs live and put it out, but I think I just answered that one didn't I? But I digress. Again.
Bob Mould is touring to support "Life and Times", a new record that quality-wise is on par with his last several efforts, that is to say a few really good songs (including a flat-out home run called "I'm Sorry Baby But You Can't Stand In My Light Anymore" which he calls "the best song I've written in 20 years" and he damn well may be right), a few real clunkers ("Argos" sounds like Weird Al Yankovic channeling Borat's gay character parodying Sugar)(oh shit, I'm starting to sound like old-school Dennis Miller) and some pretty good filler that is nice to listen to and evaporates out of your head five minutes after the disc ends. He's also commemorating the 20th anniversary of arguably the best thing he ever did, "Workbook", a record I loved when I heard it back in college which was, uh, well, 20 years ago.
Bob wrote the setlist for this tour like the true pro he is playing most of Workbook in the first half of the set, playing the three best "Life and Times" tracks in the middle (and to all of my fellow Bob-heads out there, don't you wish he would do ISBBYCSIMLA segued right into "Hardly Getting Over It" like he used to do with "Explode and Make Up"?) and rode out on a high with crowd-pleasers from Sugar and Husker Du, finishing off the main set with "Celebrated Summer", the "Won't Get Fooled Again" of a Bob show though no performance of that song will ever measure up to one I saw in November 2001 when Bob did a solo acoustic show at a bar in the East Village as a benefit for a local firehouse who had lost many men at the WTC, when he got to the "And then the sun disintegrates/Between a wall of clouds/I summer where I winter at, and no one is allowed there/Do you remember when the first snowfall fell/When summer barely had a snowball's chance in Hell?" portion there wasn't a dry eye in the house. I remember the cab ride to the ferry after the show, thinking about the then recently-deceased Kaos who handed me a cassette of Zen Arcade all those years ago (back when home taping was killing music) as my intro to the Huskers and then passing the still-smouldering pile that was the WTC with that verse echoing in my head. Every time I hear that song I'm there again, not in a bad way because remembering is a good thing. Makes you grateful for what you still have and for the friendships you had back along the road.
Damn, another digression. Back to our regularly scheduled program.
Bob presented the songs a little differently this time. The show was half acoustic, half electric and he was accompanied by Jason Narducy on bass and backing vocals. Jason's playing added a new layer to Bob's non-band live presentation, his harmonies were beautiful and the bass playing spot on. He and Bob did a guitar duo on a couple songs, notably "Poison Years" with Bob on acoustic and Jason playing wonderfully distorted electric and then "Sinners and Their Repentances" where Jason created a sonic layer that kinda-sorta covered the cello part from the recording and some electric guitar. He created that using some device I'd never seen before that from my vantage looked vaguely like an electric shaver with bright blue lights on it. The one gimmick that bugged me was toward the end of a solid rendition of "Brasilia" Bob flipped a switch on his new acoustic (which has a thin, metallic sound that makes me miss the old 12 string that never stayed in tune) and it switched to an electric sound mid-strum. No sir, I didn't like it. These rock stars and their newfangled gadgets. Bah.
Bob wears glasses these days. Any long-time Bob-concert-goer knows this is not a good thing because you miss those intense glares or those eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head moments when you just know, you just fucking KNOW he's gone right back to wherever he was when he wrote the song. Then again, I'm not sure that he does that anymore. See, the title of this here post is "professionalism", and the reason for that is while this was a great sounding show, perfectly executed there wasn't that moment that makes a show truly great where you're locked in with the performer in a singular experience of expression and emotion. Bob used to deliver that almost every time, and now while the shows sound great, he seems to be having fun (yes fans, there was smiling on stage again. SMILING! Could anyone have imagined that in say, 1994?) I'm not sure he's capable of delivering the emotional intensity like he used to. Or maybe it's me.
In any event, I did catch an echo of a moment. During "Makes No Sense At All" with Bob and Jason happily bopping their way through the song I closed my eyes and in my 3 drink buzz I felt a bead of sweat roll down my spine and for a second, just a second I was a younger man in a much, much crappier venue drinking Rolling Rock instead of a middle aged middle management big middled codger in a yuppie supper club desperately trying to hang on to some semblance of youth by the three strands of hair I have left on my head. Moments like that are still worth the price of admission.
Bob's back in October with a full band. I think I'll buy a ticket.
Several years ago Bob quit smoking, hit the gym and generally started taking better care of himself. It shows in both his appearance and his mastery of stagecraft. His voice has never sounded stronger; in a room the size of Joe's Pub (I would guess maybe 150 people were squeezed into this sold-out restaurant-sized establishment adjacent to the Public Theater down in Greenwich Village, "where it all happens" as Shep used to say) he could probably belt out his repertoire without the aid of a microphone. Why he insists on using autotune on his vocal recordings is a mystery; it may be part of his passive-aggressive relationship with the "strictly rock" portion of his fanbase. He knows he needs them to pay the rent but resents them for limiting his musical experimentation so he sneaks in annoying little touches on the record just to piss them off and then delivers far superior renditions of the same songs in a live setting that makes everyone wonder why the hell he just doesn't record the songs live and put it out, but I think I just answered that one didn't I? But I digress. Again.
Bob Mould is touring to support "Life and Times", a new record that quality-wise is on par with his last several efforts, that is to say a few really good songs (including a flat-out home run called "I'm Sorry Baby But You Can't Stand In My Light Anymore" which he calls "the best song I've written in 20 years" and he damn well may be right), a few real clunkers ("Argos" sounds like Weird Al Yankovic channeling Borat's gay character parodying Sugar)(oh shit, I'm starting to sound like old-school Dennis Miller) and some pretty good filler that is nice to listen to and evaporates out of your head five minutes after the disc ends. He's also commemorating the 20th anniversary of arguably the best thing he ever did, "Workbook", a record I loved when I heard it back in college which was, uh, well, 20 years ago.
Bob wrote the setlist for this tour like the true pro he is playing most of Workbook in the first half of the set, playing the three best "Life and Times" tracks in the middle (and to all of my fellow Bob-heads out there, don't you wish he would do ISBBYCSIMLA segued right into "Hardly Getting Over It" like he used to do with "Explode and Make Up"?) and rode out on a high with crowd-pleasers from Sugar and Husker Du, finishing off the main set with "Celebrated Summer", the "Won't Get Fooled Again" of a Bob show though no performance of that song will ever measure up to one I saw in November 2001 when Bob did a solo acoustic show at a bar in the East Village as a benefit for a local firehouse who had lost many men at the WTC, when he got to the "And then the sun disintegrates/Between a wall of clouds/I summer where I winter at, and no one is allowed there/Do you remember when the first snowfall fell/When summer barely had a snowball's chance in Hell?" portion there wasn't a dry eye in the house. I remember the cab ride to the ferry after the show, thinking about the then recently-deceased Kaos who handed me a cassette of Zen Arcade all those years ago (back when home taping was killing music) as my intro to the Huskers and then passing the still-smouldering pile that was the WTC with that verse echoing in my head. Every time I hear that song I'm there again, not in a bad way because remembering is a good thing. Makes you grateful for what you still have and for the friendships you had back along the road.
Damn, another digression. Back to our regularly scheduled program.
Bob presented the songs a little differently this time. The show was half acoustic, half electric and he was accompanied by Jason Narducy on bass and backing vocals. Jason's playing added a new layer to Bob's non-band live presentation, his harmonies were beautiful and the bass playing spot on. He and Bob did a guitar duo on a couple songs, notably "Poison Years" with Bob on acoustic and Jason playing wonderfully distorted electric and then "Sinners and Their Repentances" where Jason created a sonic layer that kinda-sorta covered the cello part from the recording and some electric guitar. He created that using some device I'd never seen before that from my vantage looked vaguely like an electric shaver with bright blue lights on it. The one gimmick that bugged me was toward the end of a solid rendition of "Brasilia" Bob flipped a switch on his new acoustic (which has a thin, metallic sound that makes me miss the old 12 string that never stayed in tune) and it switched to an electric sound mid-strum. No sir, I didn't like it. These rock stars and their newfangled gadgets. Bah.
Bob wears glasses these days. Any long-time Bob-concert-goer knows this is not a good thing because you miss those intense glares or those eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head moments when you just know, you just fucking KNOW he's gone right back to wherever he was when he wrote the song. Then again, I'm not sure that he does that anymore. See, the title of this here post is "professionalism", and the reason for that is while this was a great sounding show, perfectly executed there wasn't that moment that makes a show truly great where you're locked in with the performer in a singular experience of expression and emotion. Bob used to deliver that almost every time, and now while the shows sound great, he seems to be having fun (yes fans, there was smiling on stage again. SMILING! Could anyone have imagined that in say, 1994?) I'm not sure he's capable of delivering the emotional intensity like he used to. Or maybe it's me.
In any event, I did catch an echo of a moment. During "Makes No Sense At All" with Bob and Jason happily bopping their way through the song I closed my eyes and in my 3 drink buzz I felt a bead of sweat roll down my spine and for a second, just a second I was a younger man in a much, much crappier venue drinking Rolling Rock instead of a middle aged middle management big middled codger in a yuppie supper club desperately trying to hang on to some semblance of youth by the three strands of hair I have left on my head. Moments like that are still worth the price of admission.
Bob's back in October with a full band. I think I'll buy a ticket.
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