Too old for concerts

I went to a concert on Wednesday, for the first time in, ooh ages and ages. The doors opened at 8, so I was in line at 7:30 (I valet parked, to save a few precious minutes, plus it was $10, and non-valet was $6).

For some odd reason, Susanne didn't want to come (she compares Eels music to "whining as if they lived in Siberia"). So I stood on my own in the line. The person behind me was also standing in the line on their own. (Eels music attracts the kind of person who has no friends, it seems. Or maybe the kind of person who has no friends and likes Eels music). I asked them what the time was, and they replied in an English accent, their name turned out to be Hugh, and Hugh had come from New York, just to go to this concert.

Anyway, we sat down together (3rd row, thanks to our early arrival) and someone else with no friends (who liked the Eels) sat next to him. She was a librarian (I think) from Pasadena, and was more attractive than me. So he mostly chatted with her (inasmuch as one can chat in the 3rd row).

It turned out not be especially similar to other concerts. I asked someone working their what time it started (I needed to get food, before it started. He told me that the movie started at 8:40, and the band would come on at 10. Ten! That's past my bedtime! I'm going to be woken up at 6:30 tomorrow morning (if I'm lucky)!

And a movie? First I'd heard about a movie.

Well, to step back a bit. Eels (the band) consists of E, and a selection of other people who seem to change fairly regularly. (E is called E not for pretentious reasons, but because he is called Mark Everett, and he had a lot of friends when he was young called Mark. So they called him Mark E, or just E for short.

Now E's father was something of a famous physicist - which you might not have known. And that's not surprising, 'cos E didn't know that either until his father had died, and someone told him. The BBC made a documentary called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives about Hugh Everett, but it's only ever been shown on BBC4, it's never been on in the US, and never been available to buy (as far as I can tell, and I've looked). Anyway, that was the the movie.

In the documentary, they tracked down people who had worked with Hugh Everett, and people who had been influenced by him. They told the story of Hugh's meeting with Niels Bohr, which didn't go so well, and put Hugh off academia for life. Everett tried to explain to Bohr why he was wrong about quantum mechanics. Bohr didn't like that. (The famous Schrodinger's cat was also an attempt to explain why Bohr was wrong. Although most people don't understand that.) E learned that there were physicists who called themselves Everettian physicists, and was genuinely surprised.

Anyway, back to the concert. After the movie, E came on a played a couple of songs solo, and then he introduced The Band, which consisted of Chet (or The Chet), who seemed to be able to play every instrument known to humanity. And several that weren't. Including the saw (which he played with a violin bow).



During the song Flyswatter, E played the piano, and Chet played the drums. Then E stopped playing the piano, and (without missing a beat) took over playing the drums, while Chet went to the piano. Then they swapped again (and again, without missing a drumbeat). That's what the first video shows on this page. (Changeovers are just after 3 minutes, and just after 5 minutes).

The biggest hit by Eels was Novocaine for the Soul, and E once said that no one told you that if you had a hit record, you were going to have to play it every day for the rest of your life. Try doing that without going completely fucking insane. So the question on everyone's lips (well, mine) was whether they'd play it. They did, but a rather unusual version. E played drums furiously, and sang, while Chet played lead slide guitar. Thanks to the power of the internet, there's a video here. (That was from the night before, and somewhere else, but you get the gist).

Another unusual feature of the night was that E has recently written a book, about his life. He said that if he read any of it, that would be pompous and pretentious. So he made Chet read two passages from it. One where he first arrived in LA, saw someone famous, gave them a tape that he'd made, and thought he'd made it. The second where he had returned from his sister's funeral, and his neighbour (who thought he's been on holiday) said she'd seen a female apparition walking into his house. Which I would have thought a cue for the song Friendly Ghost, but was actually a cue for Last Stop This Town which was also about his sister's death. (She committed suicide after a number of attempts, and the second album of Eels, Electro Shock Blues, is mostly about this. It's not the cheeriest record you've ever heard. But it is very good.)

Eels played a session on KCRW the day before, and the whole thing (40 minutes) was recorded (sound AND video).

I challenge anyone to listen to it all and say that Eels are not the world's finest band.

You can listen to it here:




You can watch the video here:


(Chet plays the saw during Bus Stop Boxer, which is at about 29 minutes.)