2002 Concert Year in Review
Since it's inception in December 2003, one of the yearly staples of this LiveJournal has been a concert year in review. I retroactively did 2005, which was the only year I missed in that time span. However, my comprehensive lists of concerts attended go back to 1998, more or less, with some one-off items before that. Clearly, I need to get at least 1998 through 2002 out of my lists and into my journal! If my plans hold up, I'll do that over the next several Saturdays.
2004 was the first year that I consistently tracked the date along with the band and the venue, so my comprehensive list for 2002 only has a few dates on it, mostly from shows I was able to look up on line. I probably have a few more ticket stubs in my collection that could provide more clarity, but since that collection is at the "stuffed in a zip lock bag" stage as opposed to the "neatly curated and sorted" stage, I have not done that here.
Without any further ado, here is the full list. There are 23 different gigs here with 32 total bands, all between April 18 and October 31. There are no concerts in the first three months of the year because I was at boot. After my injury, I was back in North Dakota until mid-May. I have no idea why I didn't get to any bands after Halloween that year. I also have no idea why I didn't go to Studio-A-Rama this year.
Fred Eaglesmith - Fargo, ND - R 4/18
Great Big Sea with Ashleigh Flynn - Fine Line Music Club, Minneapolis - F 4/19
The Beta Band - The Quest Club, Minneapolis - S 4/20
Rockapella - Red River High School, Grand Forks, ND
Dry County & Transmission - some bar in Chicago
Robert Lockwood, Jr. - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Indigo Girls with K's Choice - Tower City Amphitheater
Carlos Jones & the PLUS Band - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Robert Ocasio's Jazz Project - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Nightcoach - Thursday in the Park, Wade Oval
Crooked Mile - Barking Spider
Anne E. DeChant - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Freekbass - Peabody's
The Waifs / Pierce Pettis - Cain Park Evans Amphitheater
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Gund Arena - W 8/14
Gaelic Storm - Beachland Ballroom
Martin Sexton w/Chris Trapper - Beachland Ballroom
Freekbass - Peabody's
Rusted Root w/Mike Doughty- Adelbert Gym
Mustard Plug w/Digger - Peabody's
Speakeasy - The Spot
Red Elvises w/Cowslingers - Beachland Ballroom
They Might Be Giants w/The Trachtenberg Family Slide Show - Odeon - R 10/31
By Venue
Wade Oval - 5 - They set up an outdoor stage in Wade Oval for the Thursday in the Park series. I lived a short walk from there in Little Italy. If I had to guess, these were on the five Thursdays in August, which lines up with it being summer when I saw Indigo Girls.
Beachland Ballroom - 3
Peabody's - 2 - At this point, I believe Peabody's had moved out of the Flats to the CSU Campus.
Road Trips
My parents and I drove to Fargo on a Thursday night to see Fred Eaglesmith. I think this was the first time I saw Fred. Then on Friday I drove down to the Twin Cities to stay with some high school friends. I saw Great Big Sea at the Fine Line on Friday night followed by The Beta Band on Saturday night at the Qwest Club. I went to Great Big Sea because I was obsessed with their live album. I went to The Beta Band solely because of their appearance on the High Fidelity soundtrack. Establishing a long tradition, none of my Twin Cities friends wanted to go to either show with me, so I went by myself.
My big brother Phil was in a really good Chicago-based country band called Dry County. I visited Phil and saw him play with them in some bar in Chicago. I don't know if this when I was moving from North Dakota back to Cleveland for the start of my new job, but the location on the list and general timing make that a possibility.
Albums Purchased
This year apparently marked the start of my seeing Freekbass damn near every time they came to Cleveland, so I'm sure I bought at least one or maybe both of their albums shows that year. Beyond that, not much I can remember. I didn't have a lot of money.
Bands I don't Remember At All 20 Years Later
There are a lot of bands on here in the category of "I remember that I saw them, but I don't remember the show." As far as flat out didn't remember them at all, the name Ashleigh Flynn means nothing to me. I remember seeing Chris Trapper with the Push Stars a few years later, but I had no idea I'd seen him solo. I don't remember seeing Digger, who I actually like, so that's awkward. On the plus side, I at least am familiar with all the headliners, even I don't recall the all the shows.
Best Opener
Years ago, someone, possibly Chuck Klosterman, wrote a piece where he said one main difference between baseball and music is that nobody can plausibly argue that some random AA baseball team from the 1970s was the best team of all time, but someone might be able to construct an argument that some comparatively unknown band was the best band at some aspect of being a band. There are some problems with this argument, but in that spirit, the guitar player for Transmission was one of the absolute best guitarists I've ever seen perform, and I remember him to this day even though [a] almost nobody was at the show [b] I have never heard of this band in any context since that show [c] I could not name one song that he played. I mean, the most likely explanation is that I was still young and hadn't seen a lot of guitarists, but he shredded. Better than Al di Meola, Slash and the whole host of other guitarists I've seen since? Well, probably not. But the thought occurs to me.
The Trachtenberg Family Slide Show was kind of crazy. It was a husband and wife team along with a daughter who was probably kindergarten aged. The gimmick was that they went to estate sales and bought old slides and then wrote songs about them, which were performed while the slides were projected on the screen. I vividly remember their song "Mountain Trip to Japan". Oh yeah, and it was Halloween night so everybody was in costume. It was nuts and fun.
Of the other openers, I played Pierce Pettis for years on my radio show on the strength of this one gig with The Waifs, but honestly this far out I can't recall if he was opening for The Waifs or vice versa. Mike Doughty was pretty good - it was very early in his solo career after the death of Soul Coughing, and I've seen him another 8 times since then. K's Choice was pretty good too.
Show of the Year:
I remember the details of so few of these shows that it's hard to call out honorable mentions, let alone top 3. I did see a lot of these bands again (Martin Sexton, Mustard Plug, Fred Eaglesmith, Great Big Sea, Freekbass, Rockapella) so they must have been pretty good.
However, as I look at this list, the unquestionable show of the year was Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Gund Arena on Wednesday, August 14 on The Rising Tour. I took my sister. It was everything you want from a stadium show. Even sitting in the second row from the top (and having the guy in the top row spill a beer on me) didn't dampen my enjoyment. With my very first paycheck from my new job in May I had bought the Live 1975-85 box set, and later that summer I picked up The Rising and I was ready for that show, no doubt. This might have been the summer I coined my (extremely misguided) rule that every American male should have a Springsteen album, which looks stupid in retrospect, but hey, I was 24 years old and I didn't know shit. Didn't hurt my enjoyment of that gig though.
Worst Show
If a bad show is one that has a negative gap between expectations and reality, the They Might Be Giants show on Halloween night at the Odeon is one of the worst shows I've been to ever. The sold out crowd was in costume and the band... just didn't care. It was so bad. I didn't go see them again for five years, and had to be dragged to that show.
Other Fun Stories
I've got three stories here.
First story: I went with my parents to see Rockapella in Grand Forks at a show. As I recall it, Red River High School had a class where they did all the work to put on a show as part of the class, and Rockapella was the band invited. The show was in the school gym, or something like that. Anyway, they come out and say something to the effect of "we've never been to North Dakota, but we've all seen the movie Fargo." Grand Forks has a very strong rivalry with Fargo, and those scenes that were filmed in North Dakota were actually north of Grand Forks. The end result is that Rockapella is loudly and vociferously booed by the crowd of Grand Forks residents. It is VERY clear that they do not normally get booed. Given their kid-friendly music, it's possible that they've never been booed before! They stumble and then say "ok, so you don't like Fargo, how about we sing some music?" The crowd cheers and the moment is over.
Second story: When I asked my friend John if he wanted to see the Indigo Girls, it turns out that he already had tickets. I ended up getting free tickets from the station in the second row and took a female friend I was infatuated with for far too long. John was rather far back in comparison, and paid a lot for his. Oh well.
Third story: I moved back to Cleveland just too late to apply for my own radio show for the summer, so I subbed what some might call an excessive amount (lived walking distance from the station + job that didn't care if I rolled in at 10am = lots of late night subbing) which landed me a great Sunday 4pm slow in the fall semester. Almost immediately, a girl named Andrea starts calling my show every Sunday. As we talk over the weeks, it turns out that she's a first year law student at CWRU who just moved to Cleveland. After a few weeks of long chats during my show, I invite her down to the station for a tour, which she accepts really quickly. It turns out that she is very attractive, played multiple college sports, has great taste in music, etc. I've been playing a lot of the Red Elvises on my show in anticipation of the upcoming gig (I'd seen them once in 2000 after catching them in Six String Samurai), and Andrea hints very heavily that she'd like to go with me.
I pick her up, we go to the show, it's fun, we head back. Or at least I think it's fun. Me being me, I completely missed the subtext that hey, maybe this is a date and didn't pay her as much attention as I probably would have if I'd figured out that subtext. Andrea is apparently a little upset by that. Oops. She stops calling my radio show, and the moment is lost. I was handed a gift wrapped chance to date a very attractive law student with good taste in music, and I completely and totally blew it. Nobody who knew me back in 2002 (or 2003, or 2004) is surprised by this.
Andrea has a very easy to remember and unique last name, so a quick google shows that today she's been an attorney in Silicon Valley since 2005. I'm sure there's some alternate universe version of me where I don't screw it up and end up working in tech in California, but in this one that was the closest thing I had to a date from 2002 to 2004. I like where I've ended up now, so it's just funny, not a regret (I hadn't thought of her in years until I was prepping this post), but this anecdote really accurately describe my general cluelessness with women back then.
As a coda to that story, at that Red Elvises gig I bought a "Red Elvises: Better than Sex" bowling shirt from the merch table, which I later gave to my fraternity brother Jon. He and the girl he was dating at the time (Julie? Maybe?) and I saw Six String Samurai at the Cinematheque in 1999. It was only the second film I ever saw there. I bet he still has the bowling shirt.
2004 was the first year that I consistently tracked the date along with the band and the venue, so my comprehensive list for 2002 only has a few dates on it, mostly from shows I was able to look up on line. I probably have a few more ticket stubs in my collection that could provide more clarity, but since that collection is at the "stuffed in a zip lock bag" stage as opposed to the "neatly curated and sorted" stage, I have not done that here.
Without any further ado, here is the full list. There are 23 different gigs here with 32 total bands, all between April 18 and October 31. There are no concerts in the first three months of the year because I was at boot. After my injury, I was back in North Dakota until mid-May. I have no idea why I didn't get to any bands after Halloween that year. I also have no idea why I didn't go to Studio-A-Rama this year.
Fred Eaglesmith - Fargo, ND - R 4/18
Great Big Sea with Ashleigh Flynn - Fine Line Music Club, Minneapolis - F 4/19
The Beta Band - The Quest Club, Minneapolis - S 4/20
Rockapella - Red River High School, Grand Forks, ND
Dry County & Transmission - some bar in Chicago
Robert Lockwood, Jr. - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Indigo Girls with K's Choice - Tower City Amphitheater
Carlos Jones & the PLUS Band - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Robert Ocasio's Jazz Project - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Nightcoach - Thursday in the Park, Wade Oval
Crooked Mile - Barking Spider
Anne E. DeChant - Thursdays in the Park, Wade Oval
Freekbass - Peabody's
The Waifs / Pierce Pettis - Cain Park Evans Amphitheater
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Gund Arena - W 8/14
Gaelic Storm - Beachland Ballroom
Martin Sexton w/Chris Trapper - Beachland Ballroom
Freekbass - Peabody's
Rusted Root w/Mike Doughty- Adelbert Gym
Mustard Plug w/Digger - Peabody's
Speakeasy - The Spot
Red Elvises w/Cowslingers - Beachland Ballroom
They Might Be Giants w/The Trachtenberg Family Slide Show - Odeon - R 10/31
By Venue
Wade Oval - 5 - They set up an outdoor stage in Wade Oval for the Thursday in the Park series. I lived a short walk from there in Little Italy. If I had to guess, these were on the five Thursdays in August, which lines up with it being summer when I saw Indigo Girls.
Beachland Ballroom - 3
Peabody's - 2 - At this point, I believe Peabody's had moved out of the Flats to the CSU Campus.
Road Trips
My parents and I drove to Fargo on a Thursday night to see Fred Eaglesmith. I think this was the first time I saw Fred. Then on Friday I drove down to the Twin Cities to stay with some high school friends. I saw Great Big Sea at the Fine Line on Friday night followed by The Beta Band on Saturday night at the Qwest Club. I went to Great Big Sea because I was obsessed with their live album. I went to The Beta Band solely because of their appearance on the High Fidelity soundtrack. Establishing a long tradition, none of my Twin Cities friends wanted to go to either show with me, so I went by myself.
My big brother Phil was in a really good Chicago-based country band called Dry County. I visited Phil and saw him play with them in some bar in Chicago. I don't know if this when I was moving from North Dakota back to Cleveland for the start of my new job, but the location on the list and general timing make that a possibility.
Albums Purchased
This year apparently marked the start of my seeing Freekbass damn near every time they came to Cleveland, so I'm sure I bought at least one or maybe both of their albums shows that year. Beyond that, not much I can remember. I didn't have a lot of money.
Bands I don't Remember At All 20 Years Later
There are a lot of bands on here in the category of "I remember that I saw them, but I don't remember the show." As far as flat out didn't remember them at all, the name Ashleigh Flynn means nothing to me. I remember seeing Chris Trapper with the Push Stars a few years later, but I had no idea I'd seen him solo. I don't remember seeing Digger, who I actually like, so that's awkward. On the plus side, I at least am familiar with all the headliners, even I don't recall the all the shows.
Best Opener
Years ago, someone, possibly Chuck Klosterman, wrote a piece where he said one main difference between baseball and music is that nobody can plausibly argue that some random AA baseball team from the 1970s was the best team of all time, but someone might be able to construct an argument that some comparatively unknown band was the best band at some aspect of being a band. There are some problems with this argument, but in that spirit, the guitar player for Transmission was one of the absolute best guitarists I've ever seen perform, and I remember him to this day even though [a] almost nobody was at the show [b] I have never heard of this band in any context since that show [c] I could not name one song that he played. I mean, the most likely explanation is that I was still young and hadn't seen a lot of guitarists, but he shredded. Better than Al di Meola, Slash and the whole host of other guitarists I've seen since? Well, probably not. But the thought occurs to me.
The Trachtenberg Family Slide Show was kind of crazy. It was a husband and wife team along with a daughter who was probably kindergarten aged. The gimmick was that they went to estate sales and bought old slides and then wrote songs about them, which were performed while the slides were projected on the screen. I vividly remember their song "Mountain Trip to Japan". Oh yeah, and it was Halloween night so everybody was in costume. It was nuts and fun.
Of the other openers, I played Pierce Pettis for years on my radio show on the strength of this one gig with The Waifs, but honestly this far out I can't recall if he was opening for The Waifs or vice versa. Mike Doughty was pretty good - it was very early in his solo career after the death of Soul Coughing, and I've seen him another 8 times since then. K's Choice was pretty good too.
Show of the Year:
I remember the details of so few of these shows that it's hard to call out honorable mentions, let alone top 3. I did see a lot of these bands again (Martin Sexton, Mustard Plug, Fred Eaglesmith, Great Big Sea, Freekbass, Rockapella) so they must have been pretty good.
However, as I look at this list, the unquestionable show of the year was Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Gund Arena on Wednesday, August 14 on The Rising Tour. I took my sister. It was everything you want from a stadium show. Even sitting in the second row from the top (and having the guy in the top row spill a beer on me) didn't dampen my enjoyment. With my very first paycheck from my new job in May I had bought the Live 1975-85 box set, and later that summer I picked up The Rising and I was ready for that show, no doubt. This might have been the summer I coined my (extremely misguided) rule that every American male should have a Springsteen album, which looks stupid in retrospect, but hey, I was 24 years old and I didn't know shit. Didn't hurt my enjoyment of that gig though.
Worst Show
If a bad show is one that has a negative gap between expectations and reality, the They Might Be Giants show on Halloween night at the Odeon is one of the worst shows I've been to ever. The sold out crowd was in costume and the band... just didn't care. It was so bad. I didn't go see them again for five years, and had to be dragged to that show.
Other Fun Stories
I've got three stories here.
First story: I went with my parents to see Rockapella in Grand Forks at a show. As I recall it, Red River High School had a class where they did all the work to put on a show as part of the class, and Rockapella was the band invited. The show was in the school gym, or something like that. Anyway, they come out and say something to the effect of "we've never been to North Dakota, but we've all seen the movie Fargo." Grand Forks has a very strong rivalry with Fargo, and those scenes that were filmed in North Dakota were actually north of Grand Forks. The end result is that Rockapella is loudly and vociferously booed by the crowd of Grand Forks residents. It is VERY clear that they do not normally get booed. Given their kid-friendly music, it's possible that they've never been booed before! They stumble and then say "ok, so you don't like Fargo, how about we sing some music?" The crowd cheers and the moment is over.
Second story: When I asked my friend John if he wanted to see the Indigo Girls, it turns out that he already had tickets. I ended up getting free tickets from the station in the second row and took a female friend I was infatuated with for far too long. John was rather far back in comparison, and paid a lot for his. Oh well.
Third story: I moved back to Cleveland just too late to apply for my own radio show for the summer, so I subbed what some might call an excessive amount (lived walking distance from the station + job that didn't care if I rolled in at 10am = lots of late night subbing) which landed me a great Sunday 4pm slow in the fall semester. Almost immediately, a girl named Andrea starts calling my show every Sunday. As we talk over the weeks, it turns out that she's a first year law student at CWRU who just moved to Cleveland. After a few weeks of long chats during my show, I invite her down to the station for a tour, which she accepts really quickly. It turns out that she is very attractive, played multiple college sports, has great taste in music, etc. I've been playing a lot of the Red Elvises on my show in anticipation of the upcoming gig (I'd seen them once in 2000 after catching them in Six String Samurai), and Andrea hints very heavily that she'd like to go with me.
I pick her up, we go to the show, it's fun, we head back. Or at least I think it's fun. Me being me, I completely missed the subtext that hey, maybe this is a date and didn't pay her as much attention as I probably would have if I'd figured out that subtext. Andrea is apparently a little upset by that. Oops. She stops calling my radio show, and the moment is lost. I was handed a gift wrapped chance to date a very attractive law student with good taste in music, and I completely and totally blew it. Nobody who knew me back in 2002 (or 2003, or 2004) is surprised by this.
Andrea has a very easy to remember and unique last name, so a quick google shows that today she's been an attorney in Silicon Valley since 2005. I'm sure there's some alternate universe version of me where I don't screw it up and end up working in tech in California, but in this one that was the closest thing I had to a date from 2002 to 2004. I like where I've ended up now, so it's just funny, not a regret (I hadn't thought of her in years until I was prepping this post), but this anecdote really accurately describe my general cluelessness with women back then.
As a coda to that story, at that Red Elvises gig I bought a "Red Elvises: Better than Sex" bowling shirt from the merch table, which I later gave to my fraternity brother Jon. He and the girl he was dating at the time (Julie? Maybe?) and I saw Six String Samurai at the Cinematheque in 1999. It was only the second film I ever saw there. I bet he still has the bowling shirt.