If you don’t mind jumping around a bit with me, all Quantum Leap style, I’d very much like to tell you how May is set up to be a biographical month of live music for me. Will you be my holographic best bud for the next 300 words?
May starts, in a very real sense, with Slint on the 1st. Slint is the seminal math-rock/post-rock band I was introduced to by Drill For Absentee, the mathy band on my old record label, long after they disbanded, and thus have never seen live. The chance to hear the original quartet performing “Good Morning, Captain” in person is all kinds of surreal.
Less than a week and a half later, my quartet will watch and listen to Walter Martin make his Philly kindie debut. Martin is a member of The Walkmen, a band born from Jonathan Fire Eater, one of my first favorite college radio bands many moons ago (more musical symmetry!) Funny enough, a couple of years back, before she started kindergarten, the Mouse and I saw The Walkmen live during a World Cafe Live Free at Noon concert on the same stage Martin will play on May 10th. The multi-instrumentalist became a papa recently and has made a delightfully whimsical rock record for families that comes out this month. You’ll hear a song from that album, We’re All Young Together, on the May episode of the OWTK podcast…stay tuned!
A few days later, HAIM, the sisterly girl group that the Bear and I have recently fallen a little bit in love with, come to the Tower Theater, a venue I, amazingly enough, have never stepped foot inside but will with my 10-year-old by my side.
Finally, the last Saturday of May will see the Mrs and I in D.C. for Conor Oberst with Dawes as his Bright Eyes backing band and as opener.
Save for some Crowded House and a little Skid Row, the latter being an omission I am 110% OK with, these four concerts represent four major musical periods of my life. There’s the obscure indie rock of my youth, the literate Americana of my adulthood, the kindie scene that has shaped my young family over the past decade, and the sensible modern girl pop that is very much a part of the present. Rarely do the stars align in such a way in any ascept of life, but this May will provide a musical through-line for my life in song, experienced in four distinct ways (alone, with my wife, as a family, with my oldest daughter) which also couldn’t be more fitting.
