2020 is am interesting time to be alive. Western society, USA and the rest of the world have been seriously under stress for decades leading up to now, but now is a collision of multiple trajectories that we've all been cruising on for a long time.
I joked last time about the corona virus and covid-19; now the whole world is under temporary lock down to slow down the spread of the virus and hopefully not overtax our existing hospital system.
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Now, in Washington and Oregon. we've all been on semi quarantine for a week. Restaurants and bars shuttered until late April. My band's mini tour with Dan Jones and the Squids postponed, all events cancelled. Middle aged me is depressed that my victory lap tour was destined to be cancelled due to a killer virus. Bummer, dude!
I feel lucky I got to see a few great concerts in February before the shit down of society. John Cameron Mitchell at Revolution music hall was fantastic. I really dug his stories and his spot-on New York stage band, Tits of Clay. He came out in full Hedwig regalia along with his amazing back up singer, Amber Martin. I'm not sure of the guitarist's name, but he was really fantastic. I like the band Eyelids too that came up and did a couple of Lou Reed songs with JCM. "Waves of Fear," I could here the droning bass line while I was walking back from the bathroom and I knew in n instant what song it was. Fucking cathartic version, thanks guys. "I found a reason" by the Velvet Underground sounded blissful and had nice overlapping vocals, a beautiful sound.
Robin Hitchcock is of course one of my heroes and this time we got to see him at the old Church, a cool Portland venue that is in an ... old church. We ran into a few friends on the way in - we saw Chris Dorr, a pal from Eugene in the 90s and then as we were sitting down, we happened to be sitting next to my very good friend Guy Tyler, a fabulous musician I played with also in the late 90s in the band Velocirapture 2000, or V2K. We had a nice chat and then Robin came on and played "Astronomy Domine" on the piano and we all shut up and enjoyed his set. It felt just about as disjointed as the world is at this juncture. I've seen Robin before and he is often funny but this time the mood seemed slightly down. He played several cuts from Element of Light and Eye, both great collections of songs and his partner Emma Swift came up and sang with him for several songs. Sadly they covered some Beatles songs that seemed to drain the life out of the place but then he finished strong with some of his own best tunes fuck, I don't remember now, but it was meaningful and good. I love that guy but he ain't perfect and he ain't the best piano player in the world but his voice and eternal whimsical weirdo conversation is one of the God voices in my head.
Goddamn this virus has me a bit down as I am sure everyone else is feeling queasy and scared about our collective uncertain future. I called my mom and she is doing okay. All my siblings and offspring are all getting though all right but I worry for many other folks on the margins who might but out of work by this bar/restaurant shutdown - that's a fuckton of people, out of work and expected to still pay bills and survive. Thanks a lot capitalism. Not the perfect system but that's what we've got to work with.
I worked up this song Got No Feeling that used to be a Trouble Cuts jam that fell by the wayside. I've had it knocking around my head for a few weeks now and it jiust surmises my mood during this trying time of death, uncertainty and mistrust of the government, authority and all other kinds of bullshit that prevent us from being our pure, true selves. Got No Feeling.
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