I know a place where no cars go

Best of 120 Minutes: The following story is 100%, absolutely true. Not in my typical “even my non-fiction is 25% fiction” sense of the term true. This actually happened.

It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that when I’m in a bar I often find myself playing the bar trivia machine. This is especially true at Davey’s Uptown, as I tend to get there a decent amount of time before the show so I relax by dropping a few bucks in the machine. When I get high score (and I always do) I enter the name “Dr Wang”. This wasn’t the original name. I used to use “EC Cool” until I was told “EC Cool isn’t” and then, for a reason that is still unclear to me, it was decided that “Dr Wang” was infinitely funnier. Hence, if you ever glance at the bar trivia machine and see Dr Wang emblazoned on it you know that I’ve been there.

So, one night at Davey’s I get there early, play a couple of games, and get bored with it and move to a seat next to the machine to finish my beer before the show starts. Two girls sit next to me and start playing the game. They start playing and notice my high score. One goes, and I swear I’m not making this up, “Ok, we’re playing this until we beat Dr. Wang.” I nearly spit out my beer from laughter. They keep playing, reading the questions out loud and moving much too slowly to even challenge my score. Then comes the greatest conversation I’ve ever had in a bar.

Girl # 1: “Who sang “I never said nothing?””
Girl # 2: “I have no idea.”
EC: “It’s Liz Phair.”
Girl # 1: “Are you Dr. Wang?”

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to top that. Anyway, here is Liz Phair back when she was amazing singing “Never Said.” I might not like where her career has ended up but man, she was the coolest thing ever when I was in college.

Anyway, I went and saw Arcade Fire over the weekend and I’ll have to say the show was absolutely amazing. First of all, I need to comment on the crowd. The show was at Starlight and I’d say that it was about three quarters full. There were slightly more people for Jack Johnson but it was a bigger crowd than for either Lyle Lovett or Alison Krauss. To be honest, I was amazed that there were that many people in this town who knew who Arcade Fire were. My faith in humanity was rekindled for a little while. At least until I realized that Garth Brooks was playing the Sprint Center. Plus, this crowd stood for the entire show including the entire opening set by LCD Soundsystem. I haven’t seen that in a long time.

Arcade Fire themselves were just insane. I tried to describe their music to a friend over the weekend and used the term “orchestral rock”. I’m not entirely sure what that means but it seems to work as there are violins and pipe organs and a brass section appearing at various points in their songs. The songs are pure emotion as well. There is very little that gets me bouncing up and down but these songs do every time I hear them. I honestly want to see anyone listen to “Rebellion (Lies)” and not feel like they’ve just downed twenty shots of Red Bull.

What was even cooler is that they had an awesome light/video show as well. I almost never talk about the backgrounds that bands use because most of my favorites can’t afford lights. But Arcade Fire used a whole bunch of video projection screens, sometimes to small circular screens on stage and other times to the backdrop itself. They were often in washed out colors and vaguely out of focus and it just made for some amazing effects. That and during Crown of Love they just had this simple, ghostly image of a young girl walking holding a book that was just stunning. It doesn’t sound like much and I can’t really describe it but it took your breath away. All in all, just one incredible night with perfect weather to boot.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Ben Folds Five “Ben Folds Five”
2) Various Artists (mainly Jay Farrar) “Soundtrack to The Slaughter Rule”
3) Social Distortion “Social Distortion”
4) The Neville Brothers “Live on Planet Earth”
5) The Clash “London Calling”