To create and send these beautiful things out into the world is a brave and often unrewarded thing.
--Blake Schwarzenbach, forgetters show@Bottom of the Hill
San Francisco, CA. 27January2010.
I’m the kind of person who seems to get to things years too late. While I’ve felt an intense affinity for certain bands that’ve been with me through adolescence and into adulthood, chronicling and cradling me through the most pivotal times of my life (Jets to Brazil’s Perfecting Loneliness 2002, found at age 17), the times that I’ve felt deeply misanthropic (Jawbreaker’s 24-Hour Revenge Therapy 1994, ashamed of how late I came to Jawbreaker, age: won't tell you) or deeply delighted with the thrill of impending love(Jets, again Orange Rhyming Dictionary 1998, age 18), I haven’t nearly gone to enough shows to enjoy them in their reality. I’ve kept the bands I've loved in a bubble, intangible, on a pedestal—and for good reason.
You see, the frontmen I've followed throughout band break-ups, side projects, and reunion tours don’t know all the places they’ve been:
1. Rusty baby blue vans with broken speedometers, singing along with my closest friends, competing with each other and the stereo deck at full volume.
2. Concrete basement slabs in Philadelphia watching a recording rehearsal of a friend of a friend's band as they played an impromptu tribute.
3. A friend's apartment after the bar kicked us out as he played songs from my favorite album for us to drunkenly sing ourselves asleep to.
4. My high school's "coffee house" night when I tried to cover a ballad to serenade my sweetheart, but got so nervous that I dropped my pick and forgot the lyrics, singing the same verse twice. (It was okay. My friends cheered anyway.)
5. The open trunk of a navy Jetta in a mall parking lot with a boy I began to love more with each duet we sang.
6. Escorting me down the streets every day, all snuggled up in my ears crooning through tiny metal mesh speakers.
And while this might sound creepy, or like some sort of delusional projection, I've got an intimacy that the band isn’t aware of. So, bringing an idol up close and in front of my face at a show, having this strange one-sided intimacy with them is awkward in person, and ultimately saddening when they can’t connect to me the way that I've connected to them—like I said, they have no idea where they’ve been.
And while Blake Schwarzenbach might be trying to tell us something by naming his current project forgetters, in trying to urge us to let go of Blake from Jawbreaker or Blake from Jets to Brazil, we can’t forget because we’ve been with him. And this current incarnation is still Blake, still that writing style that we’ve all been fond of throughout the years. And I mean, listen to "One Summer Last Fall" on Jets' Four Cornered Night album, and Blake'll admit he's done the same and "lived through a record, one summer last fall" and that the songs as they're perceived aren't necessarily the reality of the individual who produces them. There's a disconnect there, despite the desperation of fans to hold on to a rich, meaningful connection we've manifested from an overwhelmingly visceral response to something so moving.
When I moved to Oakland from Pennsylvania this past summer, in some fantasy I’ve imagined since reading Kerouac’s On the Road, I’d never felt closer to Jawbreaker. More specifically, I’d never felt closer to the song “Condition: Oakland” especially now that I’m living here, having “just heard hot rods and gunshots and sirens”. Blake is known for admiring Kerouac, and quoting British Romantic poets on stage, has taught undergraduate English at Hunter College in New York, and is a fantastic poet. The songs “Sweet Avenue” and “Sea Anemone” have been around for major parts of my life. Needless to say, I feel an affinity for the literary nerd rock and wordplay and reflective, mellow piano of the bands he’s fronted.
So, one night while diddling around online, hoping to find some fantastic shows, I found that Blake's new band forgetters was playing at a tiny venue down the street from my grad program’s campus in just a few short days. The show wasn’t SOLD OUT and I was incredibly surprised. Maybe the Cult of Blake wasn’t privy to this appearance. There’s no way I wasn’t going.
The day of the show, I woke up and checked the venue’s site again. Google search: bottom of the hill. Click on calendar. Scroll down a little to Jan. 27th. SOLD OUT. Oh…my…god…NOOO.
It seemed like a rigid verdict. I’d resigned myself to giving up, kicking myself for not purchasing a ticket online. What was wrong with me, thinking I could just waltz up and get in?! Stupidstupidstupid. I caught my school's free shuttle from the dorms off of Webster Street to my school's campus in San Francisco feeling so ANNNGGAAARGHY. There’s gotta be a way, I thought. All day in the graduate Writers’ Studio I teetered between begrudging resignation and hopeful inspiration. Could I sneak in? Magically get a ticket somehow? Bat my eyelashes and use whatever feminine charm? Ugh. No. Probably not. SOLD OUT. I convinced a few friends to go to a bar down the road for a few beers before their respective classes started, and figured I could maybe drown my sorrows a little and try to forget about Blake being a five minute walk away. But when they scattered, I was the only one left. If I wasn't going to buck up and try to get into this show, I should just go home.
I walked back over to campus and gathered some groceries I’d purchased earlier in the day to catch the shuttle back to Oakland. As I walked to the shuttle, brown Safeway bag in hand and a red reusable cloth bag slung heavily over my shoulder, I checked the time on my ipod. 7:18. Shuttle leaves at 7:20. Cool. I made it.
But I didn’t. The lights to that coach bus were already off inside and the door was shut. I stood on the wet curb and watched it leave without me, two minutes too early. Before I started the mile hike up 16th street to the BART station, I dropped the groceries off at the studio and went back to the bar by myself. Fuck it, I thought. I drank a couple of beers, read some Bukowski and smoked at a picnic table on the patio out back. Distracted, all I could think was: Blake Schwarzenbach is three blocks away and I’m not even going to TRY?! Really? I HAVE to try at LEAST. There's GOT to be a way.
I finished my beer and left for the show with so much hopeful resolve, it hurt. If I couldn't get in tonight, my spirit might never recover. I walked the three blocks, found The Bottom of the Hill easily. No line. Yuuusss! There was a dude walking in. He was wearing a red checkered button down and looked like a tattoo artist I know back in Delaware. I walked in right behind him with a confidence that said I don’t need no stinkin’ tickets. I belong here. I gave my ID up to the sprightly, blonde pixie-haired woman on the stool, but the doorman ticket-taker stopped me. “Tickets?” he said. “I don’t have any. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” I meant pay money to get in, but I guess that could’ve sounded suggestive. More like, Is there anything I could suck? Totally meant it in all innocence, though. “We’re sold out.” He said. Ugh. I knew that. The guy I’d followed in saw me get turned away, leaned over the railing separating the INs from the OUTs and told me he’d phone a friend and see if he could get me in. Meanwhile, I had to wait outside.
I leaned against one of the black awning poles at the curb and smoked, hoping someone would pass by and offer the spare ticket of a friend who wasn’t coming or something. But who WOULDN’T come? The blonde who was checking IDs bounced out to take a couple of drags off of a clove cigarette, looked at me and said “You’ll get in, darlin’. Keep trying. I’m feeling good tonight.” seeming to imply that if she was feeling good ENOUGH, she might let me in. She sped back inside to check IDs as a small crowd made their way to the door. God, I hope she’s feeling good enough to let me in.
I waited. Watched couples go in. Watched groups of friends go in. Watched the ID checker come back out to drag on the clove she’d left burning in her wire bike basket. Watched a couple. A couple. A group. Watched a guy come out in a snazzy fedora and tack up signs on either side of the door that said “SOLD OUT” on fluorescent green paper. It might as well have said “You’re Fucked” on it. The dude I followed popped back out to smoke a cigarette with his phone in hand. “I’m trying,” he said. “Hey, you can’t go outside once you’ve been in,” ID woman said. “We have a back patio for that.” He threw his cigarette and ducked back inside. Another couple. IN. A group of kids with slant haircuts and lip piercings. IN. One lone dude here and there. IN. A girl wearing a blue Jawbreaker shirt with the Morton Salt Girl graphic on it and her boyfriend by her side. IN. I was still leaning on the pole of the awning, begging the stars pleasepleaseplease let me get in tonight.
The bands started setting up. I could hear the clanking of metal mic and drum stands, wires clattering to the ground, the checking of the drum heads. I could see the set up happening from a crack in the door that appeared every time someone who could get in did. This is such an awful tease.
A tall kid with blonde hair came outside, leaned against the brick façade of the venue, facing me. I tried to look in need, but not pitiful. I sighed a couple of times, but avoided soliciting directly. I had to send out a dejected look that said precisely what I was in need of without having to say anything. “Are you trying to get a ticket?” he said. I expected him to mock me like those green SOLD OUT flyers on either side of the entrance.
“Yeah.” I said. “I kept checking back, the show wasn’t sold out til this morning.”
“Well, hey, my friend has an extra one. One of our friends bailed. Just mention his last name.” He hesitated for a second, then threw his cigarette into the wet street. “Here, I gotcha.” He said as he followed behind me.
I walked up to the ticket taker with a boastful smile stretching across my face. My over-stimulated nerves made my teeth tingle with a painful elation, the electricity shot forcefully through my bones. I could feel my muscles tense and shudder like I was about to be bedded by a lover for the first time.
“Ticket?”
“Yeahyeah! This guy’s got me!”
“See? I toldja.” said the woman taking IDs.
“That’s my buddy over there! We’ve got a spare!” As he said that, his buddy who had his back to the ticket taker, but was still within earshot, turned around in his black sports jacket and pageboy cap, wearing sunglasses and questionably trimmed facial hair. He had black strips of hair extending from his mustache down to a goatee on his chin. He looked as ridiculous as the guy dubbed the “bad boy” from any 90's boy band.
“I’ve got an extra. Put her on mine.” He said.
“God thank you so much!” I said. I gave the ticket taker a smile and bounced on inside. I immediately hit the bar for a victory beer, and once I was all set, insides still quivering in nervous anticipation, I found the guy in the button down who’d been trying to get me in leaning against the wall adjacent to the stage. “I got in!” I said flashing a toothy grin and raising my eyebrows, eyes widening, and readied my free hand for a high five.
After a few minutes I wandered outside to the back patio, not sure what to do with myself now that I was here. I smoked a cigarette I didn’t want, because I’d smoked one after another while I was trying to appear purposeful waiting for that magical admission. I was nauseous, and made more so by the thick oily residue that clung to my hands, to my hair. I had to appear as though I belonged there, had to calm down to avoid looking like some crazy zealot, had to keep my racing heart at a beat that wasn’t visible. Everyone was talking to everyone else. Most people came in groups. I just came alone, so I looked around and let my eyes make small talk with all the show flyers stapled up the wall. Most were only stapled at the top, one at each corner, and the way they overlapped, hung so uniformly but billowing at the bottoms when a breeze came through, made me think of feathers on a large, punky bird. Forgetters posters for tonight’s show caught my eye. I wanted to steal one, but didn’t feel comfortable enough in this place to make a move like that, at least until later when I worked my way through the crowded patio to the wall of posters. I hid behind a tall potted plant that was about my height, turned to the two dudes sitting at a table I had to scoot past and said, "I'm camouflaged. You don't see me doing this right now," as I carefully lifted the poster from under its two staples. They just laughed and kept drinking their pints.
I went back inside and listened to the two opening bands play. Bam Bam!, a duo of two lovely ladies, one on drums in a billowy DIY tank top and the other singing and playing guitar in a blue and burnt sienna plaid button down shirt and jean shorts over torn tights. Her get-up was pretty typical for the Bay Area, for the city scene in general. Her dark pin-up hair was slung back in a ponytail, her bangs cut straight across her forehead. If quirkiness is the new "thing," what does it take to stand out against the homogenous crowd of scenesters anymore? Does one have to resort to a GWAR get-up or ICP Juggalo make-up? Or do I just have to be as plain and invisible as possible and wait it out?
The Street Eaters were up next, another duo, a dude on the guitar and another impressive chick on drums and singing. They had the energy and dynamic of The Forecast, the tinny high timbre of the girl’s voice backing the dude’s; some parts were melodic, others consisted of solidarity-inducing war cries. It was fantastic, but these two bands weren’t what I was there for, so I listened half-heartedly. After each of these two bands broke down, the crowd thinned, to the bar, to the patio, and after each wave rolled out, I edged up closer to the stage. And a “stage” in a venue as intimate as this is basically just a few foot high wood riser jutting out of the corner of the room. I could taste the raw passion filtering wetly through the bands’ clothes as each act upped the intensity.
The main event was upon me. This was it. I watched the sound people set up. I squinted at someone fiddling with the guitars, hooking the thick cables in to their bottoms and testing the strings. He looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure. He was dressed in a burgundy scarf hugging his neck and tucked into a brown leather bomber jacket. He was absurdly tall and had a free-wheelin’ mess of frizzled Bob Dylan hair. The squint-shut eyes, the prominent nose, the heavy thicket of eyebrows starting to gray, the lanky thinness of his frame, the trolling stance. Christ, that’s him! I thought. I could’ve easily missed him brushing past me in the crowd, buying a beer at the bar; I wouldn’t have recognized him. That’s Blake. Gravity jowled his face, pulled his cheeks closer to the ground. I forgot he’s 43 years old and still going. What a fucking champ! I thought.
Everyone crunched in close to see the man we'd all been waiting for. forgetters barreled raucously through the songs on their EP. They had the rough edge sound of Jawbreaker-esque raw scraping guitar, the minimalist garage sound that comes from one bass, one guitar, and one drum set. But because the EP was new, at least to me, I wasn't able to sing along like I could to every Jets to Brazil song or Jawbreaker's "Boxcar" or "Kiss the Bottle," and it broke my heart a little. I secretly hoped, like all the rest of us, that he would play some throwback that would cause us to slam our bodies against each other. I shouldn't have expected it, and I'm a little ashamed of myself that I did. This isn't Jawbreaker or Jets to Brazil, this is forgetters, remember? Forget the past; forgetters are the present. You know, the moment we're supposed to be living in.
"What's going on in Egypt?" one of us shouted.
"That's a great question." Blake said as his bassist just nodded her head in agreement. Given Blake's political awareness and involvement, that was a great question. He worked with Punk Voter before the 2004 Kerry/Bush election and had given antiwar speeches about the value of life when students at NYU led a walk-out in opposition to the Iraqi war, saying: "...if a missile can take out a person on the 10th floor of a building, doesn't that floor then fall through the nine below it and take down everything above it? Isn't each person an integral part of the overall architecture, a floor in the house of the world? American babies do not shine brighter than Iraqi or Palestinian babies; because the value of life is given a poor rate of exchange in the world market."
From that desperate scream of a question, forgetters went on through the album, through "The Night Accelerates," "Not Funny," "Vampire Lessons" and "1982: Interdiction".
I stared intently at the stage, at Blake, absorbing the performance, bouncing along in reserved spasms of foot and head. At one point between songs, he stopped and recited a passage from Hamlet, in which Hamlet's dead father describes being murdered by his own brother. Someone screamed out: "What about Shelley?"
"You know, every poem I recite is one less song." said Blake.
A Pabst-hammered kid in a black baseball cap started slurring the ending lyrics to "Too Small To Fail." "Suuuumone's guunnna luff me suuuumday! Suuuuumone's guuuunnnna luff me suuuuuuumdaaaaaay!" People around the kid got irritated, his friends were laughing and trying to hug him, pull him in close and keep him from bumping into the rest of us. One kid got irritated enough to threaten to kick his ass, he threw the tense-toned words over the heads of the people that separated him from the kid, but nothing came of it. I was glad for that. There's nothing worse than having some dickheads ruin the magic for everyone else because they feel like picking a fight to prove their machismatic superiority. Blake must've heard the kid slurring the lyrics, and to placate him played "Too Small to Fail."
"Okay we're going to play a song that's brand new." said Blake.
The bassist, Caroline, looked wary, her eyes widened behind her white frame glasses with surprise and maybe even a little fright, and said: "Yeah, like really new." As in we haven't played this yet, new. The stage lights cast a blue hue over the three on the stage, everything slowed like honey in an hourglass. The frequency of the guitar's noise sang now, lulled a melody. The chorus came: "You die by your own hand" Blake sang, with Caroline softly backing him, holding out the ooohhh in the "own" so her "hand" dropped just few seconds after his, echoing it. God, this gorgeous round, this moment, this one poignant phrase that I now felt like I couldn't live without, made my world richer by just having heard it.
That wasn't the last song they played, but I was still thinking about that chorus through whatever came next: "You die by your own hand." The show stopped there for me.
As they began breaking down, I noticed no designated crew came out to help them with all the equipment. He wasn’t whisked away behind a curtain (there was no real “behind a curtain” area here anyway) or rushing to get to the van, anticipating a deluge of fans. He was just there on stage, so incredibly accessible, dissembling all the tools of the trade with his band-mates. This is my chance. I thought.
I hesitated at the thought of bothering him while he was just trying to pack up, but I approached the stage anyway, and simply said his name. "Blake!" He gave me the "just a moment" finger. I waited.
He crouched down to the side of the stage to pay me attention, and I pulled Starting from San Francisco from my black City Lights tote. It was a book of poems by Ferlinghetti, a peer of Kerouac's, and a promise I'd made to myself to start fresh and act courageous in the face of self-discovery when I got out here to the west coast. I asked him to sign the title page.
He looked up at me. "But how are you going to get it out?" he asked, concerned for the book, probably hoping I wasn't going to do what I later did do and tear out the page with his signature. He hesitated, the book almost seeming too sacred to sully like that. I handed him a black bic pen from my bag.
"No, no. It's okay," I said, and he printed his first name on the lower right quadrant in all uppercase like a typewriter: BLAKE.
I wanted to say something witty and poignant and meaningful, something that could sum up everything I'd ever felt about his work in the most sincere way possible, but I couldn't. I never have had the foresight when it comes to things I know I should have said. "You have no idea where you've been." That should've been the thing to say, but when he signed the book and looked back up at me, all I could offer was "Thank you. For Jets to Brazil. For Jawbreaker. For everything."
And with that he pressed his two hands to his chest and said, "Thank you." Then extended his left hand and held mine for a brief second, gently one-shaking it. I smiled and lowered my head and got outside as soon as possible to decompress, to breathe out the tears and the frantic ohmygodohmygodohmygod buzzing through my head.
The guy in the button down shirt who'd tried to get me in was outside with the guy who was supposed to get me in. "Hey, here's the guy I was calling."
"I was trying, sweetheart. But I couldn't get you in."
"It's okay. I made it." I said.
"I bet you're on cloud nine right now. Look at you!" said button down shirt guy.
"Yeah." I said. "I feel pretty great right now." I grinned absurdly, Cheshire-like.
I felt shamefully ridiculous getting as high as I was from this. After all, isn’t Blake Schwarzenbach just another person in the world striving to create beautiful things? Why wasn’t this dude as ecstatic as I was? Why wasn’t anyone else trying to talk to Blake? Shake his hand? Thank him? I guess I forgot how cool it is to be disingenuous and unaffected even if you’re bursting out of your skin. You don’t want to risk looking like some Tiger Beat Bieber-ite.
It was 12:15. The last BART train across the bay was about to run in 5 minutes and I was nowhere near the station. I texted a friend in the Sunset and asked if I could crash on her couch, when she said that I could, I called a cab and paced from the poles I'd been leaning on so dejectedly earlier to the curb and back again, trying to let off the electricity racketing through my bones, this wild-eyed tooth-bearing exhilaration, accelerating me into the night.
It was too foggy to recognize my friend's building from the cab, the cab driver doubled back and I called her to let her know I was there. In the doorway stood my half-asleep friend with a smile on her face, greeting me with a yawn and blankets on the couch. The cold leather stuck to my hot skin and I wondered how I was ever going to fall asleep. I didn't want to fall asleep. I wanted this night, this feeling, to stretch on through every day for the rest of my life. I put my glasses on the ottoman near the couch, and closed my eyes, smiling myself to sleep.
Lately, I've been scouring the calendar pages of venues, trying to stay on top of the good shows so I’ll be prepared next time some idol of mine shows up. And I think I’ll keep the karma going, get an extra ticket for that lonely kid outside who’s just dying to get in, thanking their lucky stars that someone had a +1 so they can tell the idol they've been dying to hear, to touch, taste, smell and see: Thank you. You have no idea where you've been.
