Went to Nick Lowe show at the Tractor the other night. Not sure if it was as good as a "Rollers Show" on a Saturday night for Lowe and his buddies back in the 1970s but perfect in its way for my first rock show since before the pandemic.
Long hiatus, too long, but I've always been a little ambivalent about live music. I attended lots of shows in my 20s and 30s, witnessed many great ones, but overall have to admit the ratio of good shows to meh or even bad ones for me was always disappointing. And the bigger the venue the worse the ratio. I think I can count on one hand the number of good shows I've seen in an arena size venue (Springsteen, Prince, Neil Young, P-Funk, Roy Orbison, Everly Brothers)? Even less in a stadium; and all pre-Jumbotrons at that. And I never warmed much to outdoor music performances until I accepted them as a different beast altogether; a concert in a park on a sunny afternoon, the music more incidental, part of the background. Combine all that with an aging body, standing around for hours taking an increasing toll, and once I hit my 40s my live music attendance became far more picky. A small handful of shows in clubs or theaters in any given year was good for me.
And then Covid hit. Never liked crowds either, or standing in line much, although a sweaty crowd in a hot club, the band into it and feeling the energy, was always a welcome exception. But the pandemic, with all its weird people reactions, YOLO, "masks are for sheep," and anti-vaxxer idiocy just blew my live music hesitations up into a No Way am I risking rubbing up against some superspreader moron to see some live music. Not necessary. I'll listen to my records; thank you very much.
Now once vaccinated, and my super old parents survived a bout of Covid, I began to lighten up a little about crowds. I resumed attending some crowded sporting events; still found crowds a little creepy but I survived. And now Nick Lowe, nonetheless, is my first indoor live music event back in my preferred live music small club setting since January 2020; The Delines, and the Mekons a short time before that, as I recall. And I survived, again, and as has always been the case with good live music I feel a new positive energy for going to shows. That, right, will last at least until I attend a show that turns out meh or lousy.
That won't be Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, at any rate. LS are a crack outfit that perform in wrestling masks. One or two members go back to the Raybeats and NY Rocker days in the early 1980s but this particular configuration came together in Nashville in 1988. Superb musicians, playing driving surf music and classic pop instrumentals, they aren't Rockpile but they're the next best thing or here and there maybe even better. They can do post-Everly Brothers country rock, Rockpile's (Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremmer, and Terry William's) wheelhouse, but get most excited doing pop novelty stuff, New Wave, and Bubblegum pop. They encored Saturday's show with Shocking Blue's "Venus."
Nick is obviously proud of the band and they him; and they play together like a loose mutual admiration society. Watching Lowe hold court like this it occurred to me what a pivotal role as an affable ambassador to the wider pop world Lowe must have played for all the oddballs and eccentrics at Stiff Records in the '70s punk/new wave England. He produced the first five Elvis Costello records (all 'A' albums, says me). He produced The Pretenders first hit single, a cover of the Kink's "Stop Your Sobbing." Also brilliant. And a whole bunch of other good punk rock or pub-rock-meets-new-wave records by The Damned and Graham Parker and Dr. Feelgood and Carlene Carter and Wreckless Eric and John Hiatt, etc.
I was actually surprised to be reminded that Rockpile play on Lowe's first two solo albums, Pure Pop for Now People (1978; known as Jesus of Cool in UK) Labour of Lust (1979), because of how much those albums departed from the country rock model of previous Dave Edmunds and Brinsley Schwarz records that Lowe played on. Obviously, in retrospect, Nick with those two eponymous solo albums was trying to score with the New Wavers. But three Top 40 hits in the UK, one in the US ("Cruel to be Kind"), weren't enough commercial success, apparently, and after those he went back to production and eventually his true roots pop preoccupations, never abandoning the corny humor. Still, as far as peak 1978 to 1982 New Wave albums go, posterity might celebrate Nick's first two solo shots more than we did back then. They'd both rank high on any peak New Wave album list I could come up with, that is for sure; Talking Heads, Cars, Devo, B-52s, XTC, Parallel Lines, This Year's Model, Dare? Pure Pop and Labour of Lust were uptempo, jangly, and hooky classics.
When I listened to Lowe's album from last year, Indoor Safari, his voice sounded diminished. Not surprising, as he's 75, for crissakes! But mediocre material on the album, "Trombone," for instance, comes to life in person with Los Straitjackets. And live, in person, Nick's old voice adds a fragile emotional power when he slows things down. I teared up as he milked every last drop of sentiment out of versions of "What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding" and, to end the show, an acoustic version all alone, to finally drive everybody out he jokes, of "Alison" or "My Aim is True."
Nick's tall, thin, rakish in a shock of white hair and Clark Kent glasses. A charmer, he primes the crowd with stories about the wild going's on at the show the night before and wry cryptic references to the chaos outside. I associate a particular condition, an infatuation, say, with 20th century pop music, with a scene in the 1995 film 12 Monkeys. Bruce Willis, a crazed refugee from a future dystopia, drools over Fats Domino's 1956 version of "Blueberry Hill" playing on a car radio. A fetish for the 20th c pop music jukebox. Lowe is a product of this condition, as am I, and in Nick's specific case he loves everything rock & roll between 1954 and 1965 and distills it into ageless pure pop for, well, honestly, yesterday's people, or surviving 20th c pop music loving people, but hopefully, somewhere, some Now People too.
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