Fine Time

New Order, with Public Image Ltd. and The Sugarcubes
05 July 1989: Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

My senior year of high school we had a foreign exchange student from Germany. I was pretty smitten with her, even asking her out a few times, but she shut me down quickly (and repeatedly). As the school year wore on, I met and fell hard for another girl who would set me on the path that helped shape me into the person I am today, leaving indelible fingerprints all over my creative outlets and musical tastes. Something was in the air our senior year, because my best friend John had also found love, falling harder than I’d ever seen him fall before – for our German exchange student, Julie.

Somewhere between Monsters of Rock and Lollapalooza, in the music festival no-man’s land that was the summer of 1989, New Order toured with Public Image Ltd. and the Sugarcubes. Firmly in my wheelhouse (both then and now, I have to admit), this was the must-attend show of the year. But by that summer before college, my girlfriend had moved on – figuratively and literally – dumping me and heading to San Francisco. So not only did I have to borrow the $15 from John in order to buy my ticket, I was third wheeling it to the show with him and Julie.

I only saw three shows at Blossom before moving to Florida in August of 1990. The New Order/PiL/Sugarcubes show was bookended by the Beach Boys with Roy Orbison and John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (of Eddie and the Cruisers fame) in the summer of 1988, and Jimmy Buffett in the summer of 1990. Being relatively broke high school and college students during that era, it was exclusively lawn seating for me and my friends. I remember wandering the grounds and getting into all kinds of trouble during the Beach Boys show, and I remember very little about the Jimmy Buffett show (read into that what you will).

For the New Order concert, my memory puts John, Julie, and me right in the center of the lawn with a view straight into the pavilion and stage. I remember being pretty well anchored to our staked out plot of lawn for the duration of the show – even for the Sugarcubes’ set, despite never having been a huge fan of theirs.

The PiL performance was by far the most dynamic of the day. Johnny Lydon is nothing if not an entertainer. They were supporting 9, their most commercial album and one I thoroughly enjoy. The headliners were touring behind Technique, an album I have on vinyl, cassette, and CD. Publicly, New Order played to type by remaining completely impassive behind their instruments. Privately, the band was falling apart. This show took place about a month after Bernard Sumner announced to his bandmates that he no longer wanted to continue as New Order and was forming another band with Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr.

I’ve heard recordings of New Order’s set from this night, and the music itself was fairly solid, but lyrics were mangled or forgotten throughout the set (making one wonder if it was internal band strife or *ahem* recreational activities that resulted in the lyrical casualties). It was a visually sterile show, more impressive for getting to hear this music I love played at incredibly loud decibels than for any sort of stage presence by the performers.

More remarkable than anything else about the night, though, is the fact that virtually everyone from my future close college circle of friends and lovers attended that show, and then some. Some combination (or maybe all) of the people John and I would find our freshman year at Bowling Green just a few months later were there.

The alternative music culture of the late ’80s was an amplified version of the feeling I had of gaining entré into an exclusive club after wearing my first concert t-shirt (David Lee Roth) to school the day after the show. Musical tastes were visible in the costumes we wore day-in and day-out: dyed black hair, black eyeliner, thrift store chic. We might have found each other anyway, but because she was wearing a black PiL concert t-shirt I was prompted to strike up a conversation with Erin at college orientation a month or so after the show. I’m pretty sure Jeff was at that concert, and maybe Jen was, too.

Just as extraordinary, and like so many other shows in our shared history (David Bowie at the Richfield Coliseum springs immediately to mind), Tracy was in the house this same night. Although I wouldn’t meet her for another six-and-a-half years, while I was on the lawn, my future wife was in the mosh pit down front getting gobbed on by Johnny Lydon himself.

PiL is rumored to release a vinyl EP and full length album of new material this year, and a partial reunion of New Order has been teasing live shows overseas since late last year. The frenzy around the latter should only increase with their scheduled performance at the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics. I’m not sure if I’d go to see New Order or PiL, though, if they ended up touring the U.S. (I didn’t go out of my way to see a reconstituted PiL a couple of years ago when the closest they came to Northeast Ohio was a 2010 show in Pittsburgh.) I just have too much history mixed up in these groups, and it’s probably best if I just leave those memories unaltered.

Iron Man Covers Project #8

They Say It’s Like Religion

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
17 April 2012: Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland, Ohio

While never fanatical, I have always appreciated Bruce Springsteen’s music. Friends have steadfastly maintained that attending a Springsteen concert on a night when he’s playing with the E Street Band and they are all “on” is something akin to religion. After witnessing what took place in Cleveland on a Tuesday night, I’m of the mind that everyone should attend a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert once in their life just to experience what rock and roll is about on a primal level.

The first tour for the E Street Band without saxophonist Clarence Clemons is noteworthy for the void left by The Big Man, but also for the way both the band and fans clearly have rallied around Jake Clemons who has stepped in to fill his late uncle’s very big shoes. With the house lights up, there was little fanfare – but absolutely no mistaking what was happening – when the recently dubbed “Little Big Man” stepped forward for his Cleveland sax solo debut during the set-opening “Badlands”.

Born to Run was always huge, and Born In the U.S.A. broke Springsteen on a megastar level while I was a teenager. Although I enjoy 2002’s The Rising and this year’s Wrecking Ball, with a catalog so rich and so deep I wasn’t expecting to know a lot of the songs heading into the show. That proved to be a fairly accurate prediction, but it didn’t keep me from both marveling at the faithful and finding myself caught up in the throng.

Nearly a third of the setlist was frontloaded with Wrecking Ball cuts, including the powerful one-two punch of “We Take Care of Our Own” and the title track. These selections stood out in the live setting, alongside “Shackled and Drawn” and “Jack of All Trades”, as powerful social commentary on the state of the Union.

The thing about Springsteen is that he mixes it up from show to show – a rarity in this day and age, often playing songs that are specifically tailored to the audience. For the Northeast Ohio crowd, he brought out 1995’s “Youngstown” off of The Ghost of Tom Joad that finished with a dizzying Nils Lofgren guitar solo. Written for the movie of the same name that was set in Cleveland, “Light of Day” made its tour debut as a show stopping, rollicking high point that mixed bits of “Land of 1,000 Dances” and “You Can’t Sit Down”.

As impressive as Lofgren’s spinning guitar work was, it paled next to Max Weinberg’s efforts behind the drum kit. Relentless with the backbeat, he is the musical backbone of the band. It’s staggering to put into perspective these men – Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, Lofgren, Garry Tallent, Roy Bittan, and Weinberg – are all in their 60s and put on a clinic on how to deliver a relentless three-hour rock and roll show with no breaks and indomitable energy.

(Springsteen’s wife and E Street Band vocalist Patti Scialfa was absent this night, as she was “home making sure the kids stay outta the drug stash.”)

Springsteen moved freely from the main stage to an island stage behind the pit near the center of the arena floor, and it seemed something unpredictable happened each time he ventured out there. He plucked a young fan out of the crowd to sing along with him on The Rising’s “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day”, and then carried her to the main stage to rock out with the band. On another trip out during the Apollo medley, he chugged a couple of beers handed to him by random fans and returned to the main stage by crowd surfing through the pit.

Late set appearances by “Because the Night” and “The Rising” were welcome additions. Loosely considered the “main set closer” (there was no substantial break in the show to necessarily indicate where the show ended and an encore began), “Light of Day” segued into a small set to finish the night, containing mind-blowing versions of “Born to Run”, “Dancing in the Dark” – the night’s only appearance by a Born in the U.S.A. track – and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”.

As expected, the obligatory but no less sincere tribute to Clemons took place during the last song when Springsteen was at the mid-floor stage and sang the line about The Big Man joining the band. The acknowledgment of Clemons’ absence was clearly cathartic for the faithful, a proper good-bye.

Along with being a dominant presence in the E Street Band, Clemons’ talent has been featured on dozens of other artists’ work through the years, including playing sax on three tracks from the Michael Stanley Band’s 1980 album, Heartland. I was fortunate enough to interview Clemons in December 2006 for my presentation at the Pop Conference in April of the following year. My paper explored the impact an artist’s hometown civic image plays in their attempt at national stardom, focusing on the Michael Stanley Band and late 1970s Cleveland. There was one phrase that Clemons used over and over in our short 20 minute phone conversation when describing why Springsteen succeeded and why Michael Stanley didn’t: “You can’t out-Bruce Bruce!”

I now understand what Clemons meant.

(All photos by Adam Besenyodi.)

C2E2: The Sketches - Agent Coulson by Gabriel Hardman

C2E2: The Sketches - ROM by Skottie Young

C2E2: The Sketches - Skinner Sweet by Sean Murphy

C2E2: What It's All About

C2E2 2012 was the best con experience I’ve had. Period. It was a perfect mix of comics and pop culture goodness, and good friends.

We’d originally planned to stay at the Omni because I have a bunch of free nights saved up from all the travel I do for work, but at the last minute (as in, the day before the con!) we decided to opt for convenience over saving a buck and were able to sneak into the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. And it was the best decision we could’ve made. Being situated at the hotel attached to the convention center is brilliant, especially when travelling with a kid and when you’re bringing along some hardcovers for your favorite creators to sign. The ability to quickly run back to the room to drop off a weighty omnibus or have some quiet mid-day downtime is invaluable.

As I left Tracy and Jack at the car while I went to check in, Jack told me to get the highest floor I could so he would be able to see the city. At the front desk, I explained the kiddo’s request and he was rewarded when the clerk moved us from our 17th floor reservation to a room situated on the hotel's top-most floor: the 33rd. The city and lake views we were afforded were breathtaking: Lake Michigan, the museum campus, Soldier Field, the Chicago skyline lit up at night. Gorgeous!

I loved being on the con floor with Tracy and Jack, exploring vendor booths, discovering new artists and creators, bumping into friends and acquaintances we hadn’t seen in years and meeting up with folks we’ve only known online up to this point. The ReedPOP group does a great job putting on these shows (they’re the same folks responsible for our Star Wars Celebration V experience a couple years ago), and the venue was great. Nice wide aisles, big artists’ alley, and the one panel I attended was well organized and in a comfortable space.

Equally amazing were the after-hours: Dinner and drinks with good friends. My Chicago comics friends are the most genuine people. No pretention, just hanging out and catching up over good food, even better beer, enjoying great conversation and the love of comics that brought us together.

High-points abound, but most were intangibles. Things like sharing some beer with George, meeting and getting lost in a conversation about movies and music with Rich, running into Joe Quesada on the con floor and giving him a copy of Deus ex Comica and snapping a picture together, attending the wildly entertaining John Barrowman Q&A panel with Tracy (which was equally wildly inappropriate for Jack – thank goodness for iPad distractions), breakfast with Rick and Noelle and Alan, dinner with the Kramer’s and Seewald’s, seeing how excited Tracy was after meeting John Barrowman and telling us how she made him laugh, getting to spend some substantial time catching up with Zack, and hanging with Pat.

That’s not to say there weren’t some cool tangible takeaways from the con. I had Joe Quesada sign my “One More Day” issues and my badge, Jason Aaron signed my Ghost Rider omnibus, and Bill Sienkiewicz scribbled his signature on a couple of my original “Demon Bear Saga” issues of New Mutants. I was able to snag the last copy of Black Heart Billy that Rick Remender brought with him to the show, and pick up a couple of music-related comics (the Bandthology one-shot from my friends at King Bone Press, and the Pretentious Record Store Guy three-issue mini from Carlos Gabriel Ruiz). Zombies were ubiquitous (read: overexposed) at the show, but the only time I gave in was when Jack and I stumbled on illustrator Mike Roll’s table and couldn’t pass up Apooka (“The World’s Most Adorable Zombie”).

Luck put Mark Morales’ table next to Gabriel Hardman’s, and when I was talking with Gabriel about a commission, Jack was understandably transfixed by Mark’s work. When Jack asked Mark how much a sketch was, Mark told him it would be free for him. After some amusing negotiations between my 10-year-old and this amazing inker, they settled on a Punisher sketch. Ripped off in virtually no time at all, Jack was completely blown away by the piece and I was impressed with Mark’s generosity. I believe he knows he’s got a couple of fans for life with that gesture.

Plenty of people and events have been left off this list (Jon, Bobgar, Cam, Lawrence, the list goes on), but only because there were far too many cool people I was fortunate enough to hang with this weekend. (Not to mention all the people I missed. Yes, I mean you, Ryan.) I hope they all know how much I appreciate their friendship and camaraderie. Growing up, I had only one friend who shared my love of comics. Today, I’m fortunate to not only remain good friends with him, but to also have a wife and son and whole host of other friends who share in this remarkable geek culture.

(All photos by Adam and Tracy Besenyodi.)