SPACE OPERA AT THE AARDVARK
This was the best rock concert I have ever attended. The band is at its height. And why shouldn’t they be? After all, they have played together, off and on, for damn near (no, admit it, over) thirty years. I have been following them, also off and on, since 1968, which is the basis for my opinion, as uninformed as it otherwise might be.
The performers ‑Phil White, bass; Dave Bullock, lead vocalist and guitar; Scott Fraser, guitar and musical genius; Brett Wilson, drums‑ have never been better. The performance was tight, tight, tight. And, again, why wouldn’t it be?. These guys know each other. They have been playing together so long that they perform as they should, as four individuals, yes, but four individuals, who, for the moment, have morphed, and perform as if they were one. Ever listened to a good string quartet play together? It was like that. Instant communication.
I sat on the front row where I could watch, as well as hear, how the drums and the bass worked with the two guitars to present a seamless work of beauty. Mature and professional are two terms that pretty well sum up Space Opera at this stage in its career. In fact, I believe sincerely that this is the best they have ever been.
It is well known that the Byrds drew inspiration from Space Opera, and that they play some of the same songs. For example, Space Opera played “Eight Miles High” early on in the set. This song was written by Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn, and, of all people, David Crosby (appropriately enough). The Byrds popularized this song, but anyone who has heard both renditions knows that there is no question but that the Space Opera version is head and shoulders the superior one.
Space Opera, like the Byrds, the early Beatles, CSN,
If you will permit me a slight digression, the term “the 60s,”
really refers to the period beginning around 1964 and ending around 1974, at
least as far as I am concerned. I moved to
Coming to the
One of my favorite songs from the latest Space Opera release is
Blavatsky (as in Madame . . . , the theophosist, I
presume). The song features Dave on the blues harp. Dave is a very good harp
player and, perhaps because my brother
Space Opera did a version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” a Bob Dylan song (Highway 61 Revisted, if memory serves me well) that the Grateful Dead (“GD”) (Phil Lesh singing) also do. (The GD version, though good, doesn’t hold a candle to the Space Opera verion.) I would give my eye teeth for a tape of the Space Opera performance of that song alone. I found myself with eyes closed, feet tapping, body swaying, singing along, in a way that I had not done since attending a 10 Year’s After concert in 1970. Alan Klotz knows what I am talking about.
I am very out of touch with the contemporary music scene. The radio on my 1991 Honda, which I wash every other year, is only set to two stations KERA and WRR. There are a few other stations worth listening to at the left end of the dial that I do listen to occasionally. KTCU is one. KNTU (88.1) is another. Listen to KNTU if you like good jazz. It is only occasionally that I scan the other 666 stations out there, and when I do, I wonder who is listening to them and why. Perhaps if I was more persistent I would know what is new and worth listening to, but there is so much junk music (unnecessary noise in an already too noisy world) that I stick to what I know and like. What I know and like is just about all so-called classical music, and I doubt that I will finish completely mining that vein for some time to come, though it is now only about twice a year that I find anything really exciting that is new. In law school I discovered Bartok, later Shostakovich. Then it was anything and everything by Mahler. Several years ago it was the Bach’s solo cello suites. This year it was a string transcription of the Goldberg variations. Last year it was Space Opera’s second album.
The music of the sixties and early seventies is still worth listening to, but unlike say, a Beethoven String Quartet, there is a point in which most of it ceases to refresh. There is some music that never seems to wear out. In the case of the Grateful Dead, this is partly because there is so much of it. I have well over 200 hours (whose really counting) of their stuff. It is never tiring because Garcia can be counted on to play every song differently every time, and every version is a work of musical genius. Bob Dylan is another artist of whom I never tire, perhaps again because of the depth of his repertoire.
Space Opera does not have the advantage of having so much music to listen to that one can never be bored with it. What it does have is a tight collection of available music that is so good and so intricate that it wears very well. Listening to “Guitar Suite” (which the band played at the Aardvark concert) is like listening to a Bartok String Quartet, but with a decidedly better beat. Terrapin Station, another GD song, has some intricate guitar dialog that is somewhat reminiscent of Guitar Suite, though the pace is much slower; and you might wonder why I think they share a genre, but its only my opinion. In any case, I never get tired of Guitar Suite, and sometimes go for weeks at a time listening to the rifts in my head “over and over.”
“Country Max,” by contrast, is not in the same style. It was a good song in its day, but it does not wear as well as the others, and I was not particularly disappointed that they did not play it Saturday night.
I remember (I wonder if he does) Dave coming over to an apartment
that my first wife, Kay, and I shared in
Returning to my “can I have a copy of your out-takes” story, I
would point out that the Grateful Dead encouraged people to set up tapes of
each of their concerts, and those tapes are now freely circulated. I have a box
or two myself. A friend of mine in
(By the way, does anyone have a copy of the G.D. performance with
New Ryders in
I think that the Grateful Dead achieved such a huge following because people were circulating their music so freely. I always admired that. And it did not hurt them economically. Phil made some side-bar remarks during the concert that made me think about all this. Segue (a musical notation, here appropriate).
The band played a version of “Money (That’s What I Want)” that had a beat that is still with me. You will recall that the Beatles had a version of this on With/Meet the Beatles. Jenny Bradford, Berry Cordy, Jr. wrote the song. (The Grateful Dead have a song on Mars Hotel, which Bob Weir sings, called “Money Money.” There are certain similarities, but it is not the same song. Moreover, the G.D. version is misogynist enough to have drawn some heat, in addition to not being one of their better songs. “What I want” becomes “what she wants,” among other things. Having been divorced once, my own attitude is mixed.) The Space Opera version was better by far than the Beatles version, just as most of the songs they sing that were also done by the Byrds are better than the Byrds ever dreamed.
Is this song an endorsement of a materialist lifestyle? I read somewhere that John Lennon, later regretted the song. One assumes that Yucko Ono would not have approved. But hey, this is art, and latitude is permitted. It’s just a song. And yes, we do all want money, whether we admit it or not, some more than others. I suppose it has something to do with how much you already have, as well as your values. Like much else, there is an interplay going on. In any case, the song has a damn good beat, and, I repeat, the Space Opera version was better than what the Beatles did with it. Those first few chords . . .
To recur to my leit motiv, you can’t buy this version on CD, so what is a music lover to do? I just hope that someone in the Space Opera organization is taping these songs for posterity. (Cass, maybe?) I say this because there is something in me that recoils in horror at the idea that all of this great artistry could be as ephemeral as a one night (one very special, wonderful night) stand, lost to future generations, generations of people who ought, as part of their cultural heritage, to somehow ‑preferably in a way that is remunerative to the band‑ be able to hear what great music these artists were making that is not otherwise commercially available.
* * * *
Can someone tell me about a song Space Opera played that
sounded like it ought to be named “Live Until I Die”?
I have already confessed to being out of the popular music culture for over a
quarter of a century, so I wouldn’t know where this song came from. “Live and
Let Die” I know, but not this one. It was outstanding. I repeat, for emphasis,
it was outstanding. This was one of many songs where Bullock and Fraser start
seemingly jamming together, and for my money, when that happens,
the best of the best is at work. I sort of spaced-out on this one, and realized after the song was over that this night
was something very special. It was only later that I found out that this song
was not a rendition of some fabulously successful commercial release, as I had
thought; instead, Dave B. told me that it was a song he wrote on a train (isn’t
that where all good songs are written), and that it was on The Unwritten Works of Whistler, Chaucer,
“Mother Nature and Father Time” is a whimsical song that has grown on me. It made the second set. My reaction when I first heard it a year or two ago was that it was a little too innocent for someone as jaded as I; but, like I said, it grows on you, and we could all use a little more innocence and little less of the other stuff.
They played “
“Still Life,” “Whose Calling,” “Stolen Ground,” “Riddle,” “Outlines,” “Prelude No. 4,” “Telephone Artist,” These are all great songs. They could not play them all. They played some of them though. I missed the first 15 minutes or so of the first set, and was a little bit overwhelmed by the time the second set got underway. During intermission Karl (his name is misspelled to protect his identity –ha!) and I had retired to what he referred to as the double wide to catch up on old times. Boot talk; you know. I had not gone to the concert with any intention of writing about it later, so I took no notes, and am chastising myself at the moment for not making more of a point of paying more attention to exactly what I was hearing, instead of just simply enjoying myself. Alas, life is a series of choices. As a result of that and the intermission, I have only a foggy recollection of what all was played. My short term memory is much better today than it used to be, but still, I had not planned on recalling and commenting on each song I heard until days later. I am recalling, as I write, those songs which did strike my memory strongly enough, but I regret that I may not recall them all. Does anyone have a play list? Cass?
It was a great concert. I say it was the best, as far as I am
concerned. No, I was not at
Ah yes, but there is much more to be said for intimacy; and there is no question at all in my mind that I would trade any of the big rock concerts I have been to for a second listening to December 28, 2002 at the Aardvark. I saw a few old friends there (always good in small doses), some of whom even recognized me in my latest incarnation as the Pillsbury Doughboy with a goatee. Guess what is on my New Year’s resolution list? That and listening to more Space Opera.