Tag Archives: The Hearts Club

longarmslocker 11:07 pm on April 16, 2018
Tags: Acoustic, , , , , Lou Barlow, Magnets Coil, , Mixtape, MOTO Richmond, , Sebadoh, The 90s, The Hearts Club, Vespas   

Lou Barlow Plays Among The Vespas

How do you write down your thoughts on something that you didn’t realize you had been waiting to witness for almost twenty-five years? I’m still not sure, but I will attempt to do just that. First though, a bit of history.

At some point in the mid-90s, I was introduced to the music of Sebadoh by way of a mix tape from my friend Jenne. The song was ‘Rebound’, and while I was not really a fan of ‘lo-fi’ recordings, lead singer and songwriter Lou Barlow’s lyrics hit me like a bullet. I remember soon after hearing that first mix tape, a trip to Sam Goody at our local mall where I went with the express purpose of buying a CD EP that had acoustic versions of ‘Rebound’ and ‘Magnet’s Coil’, although I did not voice this out loud to my friends (at least I don’t think I did). Sam Goody had only one copy (in hindsight it’s remarkable they even had one copy) and one of my friends claimed it before I got there. That friend made sure that all of the acoustic tracks from that EP were included on the next mix I got from them.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, I saw Sebadoh three times in concert. Each time was very memorable (especially a 2004 show at The Khybr in Philadelphia). Each show, while memorable, never included ‘Magnet’s Coil’ in the set. I wasn’t disappointed, because those shows still rocked, but I kept hoping with each successive show that ‘maybe this time’ would be the night when I would hear a live take of ‘Magnet’s Coil.’

Fast-forward to March 2018 when Patrick posted on Facebook that he had just acquired tickets to see a solo acoustic show by Lou Barlow in Philadelphia. I had no idea Lou was touring so, after reading Patrick’s post, I saw that Lou had a Facebook page and there was a list of tour dates. Two nights after the April 9 Philly show, Lou was going to play in Richmond! I had never heard of the listed venue, but even without knowing anything else about the show, I immediately bought a ticket.

About the venue: This show was booked at ‘MOTO RICHMOND’ which is in fact a scooter store, so the backdrop for the performer was a line of Vespas along with many motorcycle/scooter accessories and lights. I can’t say enough about how great the staff were. They made sure I had a chair, although I was more than prepared to stand for the entire show. When I walked into the performance area, it wasn’t very crowded. Thankfully a few minutes before show time when I looked behind me, the room had filled to probably seventy people.

Mic? Check. Guitars? Check. Vespas???

As pre-show music blared from the PA system, Lou nonchalantly walked out dragging a suitcase of merchandise. He stowed that behind a counter at the front of the venue, then he began to set up his three guitars. By ‘set up’ I mean he took them out of their cases and leaned them against a hardback chair in a way that if someone had sneezed, they would have fallen.

‘Doesn’t he have ‘people’ to handle the merch? Doesn’t he have stands for his guitars?’ I asked myself in humorous amazement.

Just past 8:00pm Lou sat down on a stool and asked everyone else to sit down. ‘I would stand up, but you’re still not going to be able to see me unless everyone sits down.’ Since this place was a store and not built for live music, the performance area was all on one level so having everyone seated was the only way for anyone not up in the front to see the show.

After tuning his guitar, Lou surprised us by opening with ‘Cold As Ice’ by Foreigner. He followed that with a verse and a chorus of Bryan Adams’ ‘Run To You’ before he messed up, stopped abruptly and announced, ‘Okay, now I’ll play some of my songs.’

Then he started playing the intro to ‘Magnet’s Coil,’ an intro to a song I have listened to thousands of times over the last twenty-plus years.

From that point forward, the rest of the evening is a wonderful, nostalgic blur. I remember snippets of moments, and I remember telling myself ‘Don’t lose it, keep it together!’ As each song washed over me, I was filled with memories of friends that I haven’t seen in too long, hours spent talking and playing cards while these songs played in the background. Memories came fast and sharp: The night I quoted a verse from ‘Rebound’ at a Waffle House during a discussion about dating; the morning where a friend left the lyrics to ‘Magnet’s Coil’ written in ink on four sheets of folded paper in my mailbox, and the time a friend gifted me three mix CDs of Sebadoh music. As I remembered all of this and tried to take in the actual show, it all became the aforementioned wonderful, nostalgic blur as the forty-something year old me melted away to reveal the twenty-something year old me. And I was okay with that.

Here is a partial setlist from the website setlist.fm with a few additions based on my blurry memory:

April 11; MOTO Richmond

Cold As Ice

Run To You

Magnet’s Coil

Imagination Blind

Rebound

Not a Friend

Repeat

Love Intervene

Skull

Too Pure

Wave

Natural One

Ballad of Daykitty

Back to your Heart

Vampire

Brand New Love

This show had everything I could’ve asked for: An attentive audience (minus the intoxicated guy who kept asking Lou to play songs he didn’t write), Lou telling many stories about songs (especially a detailed explanation on how ‘Ballad of Daykitty’ was written) and, as the partial setlist shows, the songs that I wanted to hear, that I didn’t realize I had been waiting to hear, the songs that I needed to hear. The only thing that could’ve improved the evening was to have seen it with those friends who made me a Sebadoh fan in the first place. While that didn’t happen, I did see this show with a friend, Christi, who attended even though she had not heard a note of Sebadoh music until the ride to the show (she did know Dinosaur Jr. though and I had completely forgotten to mention that Lou was the bassist in that band when talking to her about the show). By the time the evening was over and we were walking back to the car, Christi announced that she ‘would definitely see Lou again if he returned.’ So, like my friends made me a fan in the 90s, I’ll take credit for making Christi a fan.

In closing, a quick sincere thank you to Jenne, Jesi, Patrick, Tony and Kurt for exposing me to the music of Lou Barlow and Sebadoh, and for being among those who ‘get’ why this guy is so great. You were thought of fondly on this night. Thanks to Kati for taking a friend’s advice and coming to the show literally minutes before Lou started. And special thanks to Christi for being there to share a show that I think I can safely say neither one of us will ever forget.

Thank you for reading (indulging) my attempt to describe an evening that left some sobbing, and left me truly speechless. But again, perhaps Lou sums it up best:

‘If there’s a right thing to say

I’m sure I missed it by a mile.’

–‘Too Pure

–Barry

longarmslocker 12:53 pm on February 11, 2018
Tags: Relationships, Singledom, The Hearts Club   

For The Most Part

For the most part, I can say that I am happy with my life. But, there’s that qualifier, ‘For the most part…’ I know I have many friends who, if I needed to call on at 3am to help with any sort of situation, those friends would be there to help and/or rescue me. I know that is no small thing, and I am lucky in that respect. Thinking back, I don’t really know if my dad had friends like that whom he could call on in a pinch. He had dozens of coworkers he shared time with, but it wasn’t until he met his second wife that he found a friend, a true confidant and someone he knew he could trust implicitly. As tumultuous as my relationship was with my dad during those last five years of his life, I was happy he found someone.

Last month, my dear friend Steve Schneider posted this on his Facebook page:

‘Some of the finest, most attractive people I know are not only single, but quite despondent and disillusioned over it. And they have a right to be. I just don’t get this world sometimes.’

After reading it, I wrote the following reply in less than a minute:

I’m not despondent, but I am now resigned and accepting of the fact that coupledom probably won’t happen for me. Do I wish it were in the cards? Yes, but I also would rather be single than be in a relationship that was toxic or unrewarding. Disillusioned? Yeah, that fits most days.

And don’t tell me ‘There’s someone for everyone.’ That’s not true, as much as I would like to believe it.

I thought that was the end of it, but soon after I hit ‘Post’ I kept thinking of other things to say on the topic. I have never been one to wish that my life were different. Times may get tough and there may be some hard days, but more often than not, I am very happy with my life. I work from home, which I like, and I do my best to go out to shows and movies, if for no other reason than to avoid becoming a hermit. So, I really hope this doesn’t read like I am whining or complaining about the current state of things, because I am not. It’s more or less a recent observation that I have come to see very clearly.

I used to be so optimistic when it came to relationships and dating. All through my twenties if a relationship crashed and burned, I would take stock, but I always thought, eventually I would find ‘the person I’m supposed to be with.’ I know now that whole mentality is a myth.

At one point, a long time ago, I thought I had hit the jackpot. She was smart, gorgeous, kind, and upon seeing her for the first time she literally stopped me in my tracks, to the point where my internal dialogue while I made small talk was ‘Don’t be an idiot. Don’t fuck this up….don’t be an idiot.’ We lived in different cities, but my confidence in the belief that she was ‘The One’ had me ready to move to where she was, give up television and red meat. If that’s what it took, I was willing to do that.

That chapter never happened. She decided, when I finally asked her directly, that we were best as ‘never lovers, ever friends’ (although she didn’t quote that lyric directly, that’s how I processed it, because music lyrics are my filter for dealing with real life). The end of that fantasy, and that’s all it ever really was, a fantasy, was when my optimism disappeared. I no longer sought out relationships, telling myself, ‘If it happens, it happens,’ but truthfully having no enthusiasm for opening myself up like that again for fear of getting hurt. The real pain of that relationship not working out shaped every future decision I made.

I crafted that reply to Steve’s post on Facebook almost as a defense. No I am not nor have I ever been despondent about the current state of my social life, but yes, disillusioned fits, and that emotion is tied primarily to not having someone in my life that I can tell anything and everything to, from the big hopes and dreams to the little daily minutia that we deal with every day. I’ve never had that relationship where I see someone every day and know I can trust them to ‘have my back’ when necessary. That’s what I feel like I am missing, and while I like my life, I do get incredibly lonely.

I had a medical scare last fall, and it was while I was processing the myriad of possible outcomes, all the while keeping up a brave public face, that I found myself ready to scream. I was brutally honest about things with my core group of friends that I have known for almost 30 years, but that was all done on the phone or text. It was necessary and appreciated, and I do love my friends, but when I would try to sleep at night, it was during those hours where I literally ached for someone.

I know that if things on this front are going to change, I have to be the one to change them. I say that also knowing that my time is pretty much accounted for between a 40-hour work week and being a caretaker for my mom. That’s the priority now. I understand and accept that. I am used to the routine and, more often that not I don’t mind it.

The likelihood of me being single for the remainder of my life is probably very high, and, as I have said before in other posts on this blog, most of the time, that’s a proposition that I am perfectly content with. But on those rare nights when I feel alone, the emptiness of singledom hits hard, and it hurts.

Why am I writing this? I’m not sure. I just know that my visceral reaction and immediate response to what I read on Steve’s page broke a dam that led to me writing out nine pages in hurried longhand as I tried to process why exactly I feel the way I do.

One Christmas, when that core group of high school friends would gather every year to exchange gifts, drink and play board games until dawn, the then new girlfriend of one of my best friends opened the gift I bought her. She opened it and was astonished that I had gotten ‘the right gift’ after only having her as the newest member of our ‘group’ for a few months.

‘You are going to be someone’s perfect boyfriend one day,’ she said as she hugged me.

‘I know,’ I said matter of factly.

One day.

–Barry

longarmslocker 10:39 pm on September 6, 2017
Tags: alcohol, Germantown, Material Culture Antique Store, Philadelphia, Reunion, The Hearts Club, Wedding   

Old Friends

I have been lucky to have had a group of friends that I have kept in touch with for over 25 years. At some point in the mid-1990s, the group was named ‘The Hearts Club’ because a rotating group of us would meet at my house in Midlothian to play Hearts. That group always included Patrick, Kurt, Tony and myself. Sometimes Jenne and Becca would join in. I remember one all night Hearts contest where, instead of the usual ‘penny/nickel pot’,  we bet ‘care packages’ instead (since Kurt, Jenne, Becca and Tony were in their freshman year of college; I think I still owe Becca about a dozen or so care packages from that evening!). 
When Patrick announced in the spring that he was getting married, I was thrilled – happy for him and his bride Cecelia, but equally happy at the prospect of seeing friends I had not seen for far too long. It seemed the last few times members of ‘The Hearts Club’ had gathered, it was for a funeral, so I could not wait to be able to gather, drink and laugh.

 

The bride was beautiful. The groom was handsome. The preacher quoted Jackie Wilson (!) and compared the groom to an ‘erotic leaping gazelle.’ The transportation was free. The bar was open (!), the food outstanding…but most of all, being able to catch up with the people that I count as my dearest friends, who have come to my rescue on more than one occasion, and with whom I have spent many an hour lost in conversation over thousands of cups of diner coffee, that was what made this weekend one that will be remembered for a very long time.

 

Here are some pictures. To Tony, Jesi, Josh and Justin, who were not able to attend: You were missed and thought of throughout the evening.

The Happy Couple: Cecelia & Patrick

 

Mother of the groom, Pauline, and Patrick

Kurt and Patrick

The author

Matty K. and John P. A seating snafu combined them into one ‘person’: Matt Powers

Having a free night with little to do, Obama showed up, pictured here with Kurt and Valeria

Ethan, 44, Kerry, Sean and myself

All smiles: Matty, Becca and me

The Gang: Front (L to R): Valeria, Becca, Jenne, Kerry; Back (L to R): Sean, Me, Kurt, Patrick, John, Matty, Ethan

 

All of those pictures were taken at the reception, which took place at the very cool and funky antique store Material Culture. As the clock struck 11pm, the entire group, all at varying levels of inebriation, boarded a trolley back to the hotel and then within thirty minutes, the After Party began in Becca and Matty’s hotel room. The pictures below were taken there. Please note all were (at least somewhat) Intoxicated. Including the photographer.  

Kerry, in, as Ethan described, ‘full sleepover mode.’

Patrick and Jenne, holding a blurry bag of chips

I think at this point, Patrick had no idea where he was or what he was saying.

On three, everyone LEAN!!!

It was a wonderful, memorable weekend. Here’s hoping it’s not too long before we all gather again, to smile, drink and laugh. 
Love always,  Barry