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ch-scene - Ryan Adams Raleigh 6/8/05 non-review

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  • From: jgmclean0 AT yahoo.com
  • To: ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Ryan Adams Raleigh 6/8/05 non-review
  • Date: 9 Jun 2005 10:09:12 -0700

Not a review, just a few observations:

- A sign on the door stated "2 sets, show starts promptly at 8PM".
The band came out at 8:20 and played a bit less than 3 hours without a
break. The first hour and a half was nearly exclusively songs from the
new Cold Roses disc; the songs are mostly good-to-great but the
overly-similar arrangements and much of the crowd's unfamiliarity with
the new material, combined with bad sound (see below), muddy lighting
(somebody get a follow spot up there) and long pauses between songs
(see below also) made for a rather grim early response from the
hometown crowd. The mood finally lightened when Adams moved to a block
of songs from Heartbreaker that featured more dynamic and varied
arrangements, including an absolutely stunning, goosebump-inducing
version of "Oh My Sweet Carolina" that raised a spontaneous roar as the
last note faded out.

- Not to put too fine a point on it, but Adams is absolutely barking
nuts, taking long minutes between songs with stream-of-consciousness
babble: movie quotes, riffs on other acts including Billy Corgan,
Wilco, and (especially) Robbie Fulks, (who, according to the guy in the
row behind me, disparged Adams at a recent gig here -- ah, the
alt.country drama), and general twitchiness. Most of the band is
clearly scared to death of him, their yukking it up at times recalling
Elvis-entourage syncophancy; only the drummer was willing to cut the
nonsense short by counting in tunes while Adams fidgeted, chain-smoked,
and swilled from several different bottles.

- He's also a genius. I've never seen anybody, Springsteen included,
who so is so instinctively spot-on with phrasing, dynamics, and timing.
This was especially evident late in the set when Adams left the band
behind and played piano or solo acoustic guitar/harmonica. Playing
around with '70s concert conventions, he went from delicate
Jackson-Browney piano/vocal work to crawling-on-the floor, stomping the
neck of the guitar feedback heroics, without a trace of irony or
distance on either end. The transitions from off-the-wall mumbling and
stumbling to laser-sharp playing and singing were startling; at one
point Adams seemed to interrupt *himself* in mid-sentence when his
hands, unbidden, started playing a song.

- Criminitley, the sound was awful. In an acoustically-perfect
orchestral hall, no less. Even the world's-loudest-band Dead -- who
Adams seems to be emulating lately -- understood the difference between
clean-power decibels and overdriving everything to distortion. I don't
know how much was the sound-man's fault and how much stems from Adams'
retro-penchant (all guitars were miked from tube amps, several live
mics were placed to the PA and Adams constantly fiddled with his amp
settings); the sound was just OK (aside from some annoying amp buzz)
when dynamics were on the quiet side but routinely devolved into
earsplitting mush whenever both guitars (plus pedal steel) kicked in.
I know, if it's too loud you're too old, and loud is fine, but there's
just no excuse for this kind of crap sound. When some wag in the
balcony Skynyrded "Turn it up!" early on, a half dozen people sitting
around me spontaneously called out "NO!". (I had a similar complaint
about Lucinda Williams at the Ashville concert hall last year -- maybe
such halls are just too reverberative for rock, I dunno).

- Of course, the big news here, for die-hard triangle music fans or
Adams back-catalog devotees, was the brief, unexpected reuinion with
Caitlyn Cary (his old Whiskeytown and compatriot and foil). The band
vacated the stage and the two lurched their way through a short set of
Whiskeytown tunes -- to say these were rough duets is an
understatement, they were more like tentative rehearsals as the pair
were often in search of lyrics and a common key -- but the thrill of
the moment stayed intact. For a guy who's often criticized as an
egomaniacal jerk, he showed amazing *generosity* towards Cary, letting
her pace the songs, feeding her forgotton lines between verses and
pulling her back onstage for final bows as the ridiculous 11PM Raleigh
concert curfew kicked in.

- I wouldn't call this the best show I've ever seen, but I'm glad not
to have missed it as the high points were amazing and the rest was
bearable. I also can't shake the sad feeling that this guy is not
likely to be around or intact in a few years (and I wonder if he knows
it too, given the rate at which he's pushing out music right now).

JGM





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