The first weekend of the month found me in Chicago for the conference championship indoor track meet, the last time in my life that I'd represent my school in a race (this was my first year of grad school and during that year I had one season of indoor track eligibility to use but had used up my four years of cross country and outdoor track during undergrad). A week after being in Chicago, I took a trip to LA (for the first time) to see two concerts by my favorite band Ozma (for the first time) in Hollywood. Those were my favorite concerts I'd ever been to and that trip ranked among the best experiences of my life. The trip to LA was followed by a stay with my family in Columbus during my spring break.
Later that month, I saw Andrew Bird for the first time in a concert at my school. It didn't occur to me until recently that seeing Andrew Bird for the first time was also among the exciting things I did in March 2006 and that there was a strange significance to this.
Circumstances conspired in a weird and wonderful way such that December 2019 found me almost reliving that momentous month of March 2006. To recap, in March 2006 I went to Chicago, a week later I went on an amazing trip to LA to see two Ozma concerts that were my favorite shows I'd ever attended, after LA I went to Columbus to visit my family, and I saw an Andrew Bird concert. And in December 2019? I went to Chicago to see an Andrew Bird concert, a week later I went on an amazing trip to LA to see two Ozma concerts that are now my favorite shows I've ever attended, and after LA I went to Columbus to see my family.
Another very important thing happened in March 2006, which is that during that visit to Columbus, I met Cara in person. Quite a month, and not a bad one to sort of relive.
The Andrew Bird concert I attended in Chicago on the 12th of last month was one that was just steeped with emotion and meaning for me. I've seen Andrew Bird a lot of times over the years, more than any other non-local artist except for Okkervil River, but this one was extra special. Bird has created a tradition of playing "Gezelligheid" concerts each December at the 4th Presbyterian Church in his hometown of Chicago. Gezelligheid (says Wikipedia) "is a Dutch word which, depending on context, can be translated as 'conviviality', 'coziness', 'fun'. It is often used to describe a social and relaxed situation. It can also indicate belonging, time spent with loved ones, catching up with an old friend or just the general togetherness that gives people a warm feeling." Going to one of the Chicago shows this year was something I decided I had to do as soon as the shows were announced. There were two times in the past when I had tickets for one of Bird's Gezelligheid shows and ended up not going. The first time was in 2013. Cara had been diagnosed with lung cancer in August. Andrew Bird was her favorite musician, and I wanted her to be able to have this really great experience so I bought tickets for us to see the show. She was really excited about it. Then her health took a serious downturn in late November and she ended up being in no condition to make the trip so we had to cancel our plans. Unfortunately Bird did not do Gezelligheid shows in 2014; Cara's health was good enough that year in December that we could have gone and I'm sure we would have.
Bird has also, in addition to the Chicago shows, done Gezelligheid shows in certain other cities in certain years. In 2017 there were shows in Nashville and I bought a pair of tickets. Then my would-have-been date for the concert abruptly broke up with me, so again I ended up not going. It's funny, that was so painful at the time, but now I can look back on it and laugh. Yeah, I still have scars from the experience, and yeah, I still miss her daughter although with nothing like the intensity I once did, but recent events in my life have really driven home to me how we were not actually such an ideal match for each other as it seemed at the time.
Cara, of course, was very much on my mind during the Chicago trip and especially during the concert.
I had been to Chicago many times before for various reasons but never for a solo trip. It was actually really fun exploring the city by myself, visiting familiar spots from previous trips and checking out a number of new ones including some really cool restaurants and bars. And the Andrew Bird concert? It was just breathtaking.
The morning of the show I headed out on foot into the city from my hotel, which by a happy coincidence (as I booked it via Hotwire and only knew the approximate location until after booking) was right next door to the 4th Presbyterian Church. I noticed the church was open to the public during the day and I wandered inside and was immediately awestruck.
It's a beautiful building, and I thrilled at seeing the setup for Bird's show including the familiar spinning horn speakers. I also took advantage of the opportunity to scope out the seating and realized that in the balcony section for which I had a ticket, some of the seats would have obstructed views, so as the seating was first come first served within the section for which one had a ticket, I decided I'd better arrive at the venue early that evening.
It was a beautiful day and I had a great time wandering the city, highlighted especially be my going ice skating for the first time in probably around fifteen years, and by a visit to the Chicago Cultural Center (originally the first Chicago Public Library building), which I decided to enter on a whim thinking that it looked interesting and then discovered was one of the most spectacular buildings in terms of interior architecture and decor that I've ever visited, including two stained glass rotundas.
After an early dinner, I arrived outside the church at 6 pm, an hour before doors opened and two hours before show time, to find I was about tenth in line. Arriving early was a wise choice. The line became quite long over the course of the next hour. I was able to secure first choice of seats in the balcony section, and found myself with a perfect view of the stage.
(There were signs prohibiting picture taking so no pictures from during the show. The guy next to me blatantly disregarded the signs. Come on, dude.)
Madison Cunningham, a young SoCal-based singer-songwriter, opened the night with a very nice solo set. Andrew Bird came next. And his performance was magical.
In some ways I was transported back to that very first time I had seen him play, in 2006. I specifically remember at that show being in awe of Bird's wizardry with looping pedals to overlay violin and other melodies. Over the years since, Bird's shows have transitioned more into full band performances and the looping wizardry has taken a backseat. And I do love those full band shows as well. But there's something even more magical about Andrew Bird performing solo.
And the church setting, of course, added to the magic. Much better than a small room crowded with college students, many of them talking.
I also remember that in the early years of me seeing Bird live, he would play a xylophone on some of the songs, and I always found it charming how there seemed to be this sharp contrast between the methodical and intently focused way he would strike the bars of the xylophone to produce simple melodies and the seemingly effortless way he would play stunningly beautiful and far more complex violin parts. Recent Bird shows I've seen have not included the xylophone. Here it was back, and just like I remembered from before, and I smiled as I recalled those memories.
It was just a delightful show. A very intimate atmosphere, and indeed, a cozy one. Different from any concert I've attended before, and in a wonderful way. The set included five songs from Bird's brilliant latest release My Finest Work Yet, which I saw performed in its entirety at a great concert in September, but all the songs as well as a number of other great selections spanning most of Bird's career were presented as new (to me) arrangements that took full advantage of the intimate setting and stripped down instrumentation. Madison Cunningham joined Bird to play guitar and sing on most of the songs he played, but there was still plenty of looping wizardry, and her voice was a wonderful counterpart - especially on a beautiful rendition of "Left Handed Kisses," the album version of which features Fiona Apple in a duet with Bird.
Song after song I was just in awe at the beautiful performance I was witnessing. I also found myself thinking, over and over, Cara would love this so much. She really, really would have. And it's very sad that she never got to go to one of these Gezelligheid shows, but I'm so glad I finally got to go myself, and I'm also so glad that Andrew Bird's music continues to help me stay connected with Cara.
The next day I took full advantage of my remaining time in Chicago. Among other things, I (for the first time) rode the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, partly inspired by its mention in Sufjan Stevens' song "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!"
I also, for my last stop before heading home, went for another trip down memory lane in Chinatown and ate at Lao Sze Chuan restaurant, which I was introduced to by a Chinese colleague when in town for a conference in 2009, and which I also went to with Cara and our friends Jordan and Ruth in 2013.
Chicago was great. Andrew Bird was amazing. In a typical month for me, the Chicago trip definitely would have been the highlight.
But then the next week I went to Los Angeles. And let me tell you, the trip to Los Angeles... it was just something else. It was an astonishingly sublime experience, one of the best of my entire life. I seriously get emotional just thinking about it. It may have been the best trip I've taken since my honeymoon, and I really mean that.
As I had done in March 2006, I flew out to Los Angeles by myself with tickets for two Ozma concerts on consecutive nights. That trip in 2006 was the first time I had ever done something like that by myself. It was an amazing experience. Life-changing, even. I had become obsessed with Ozma the previous year and was very sad that they had broken up and I would apparently never get to see them live, so when they announced they were getting back together I decided I had to go to the reunion shows despite them being on the other side of the country. It was oh so worth the trip. And at the time, Cara and I had started to become online friends, we'd started to connect over music, and she had gotten into Ozma because of me. So I was also looking forward to meeting her in person and telling her about seeing Ozma live.
After we met in person, in an already planned get together just days after my return from LA, it wasn't long before we were IMing for hours almost every day. The final race of my collegiate running career having happened a week before that LA trip, and my meeting Cara in person happening in the week after... it could perhaps be said that that marked the point in time when the most primary focus of my life switched from running to Cara.
In August of that year, still "just friends," the two of us took our first trip together, to Washington DC, to see Ozma (opening for the Rentals, another band we liked, but Ozma were our reason for making the trip). So Ozma's music is inextricably tied to my friendship and relationship with Cara and to that period of time in my life when she and I met and became the closest of friends with each other.
When Ozma announced last year that they would be playing a twentieth anniversary show for their first and most iconic album Rock and Roll Part Three, the album that I have undoubtedly listened to more than any other album in my life, it was a very easy decision - once more, I had to make that trip to LA.
In 2006, I took a very minimalist approach to my trip. I flew into LA on the day of the first show, took the Metro to Hollywood, checked into my very basic hotel for a two-night stay, and got around entirely on foot (walking as well as running) before taking the Metro back to the airport the morning after the second show. This time around I decided to make the most of the vacation and stayed for four nights. I also rented a car, although I do admire my past self's sole reliance on public transit and my own legs for transportation. (And I did, to my credit, do even more walking on this more recent trip!) I got to do a lot more in the LA area this time, including some amazing waffles...
a fun mountain bike ride near Santa Monica and walk out to the pier...
and a great time hanging out with my cousin Chelsea and seeing her wonderful bluegrass band the Salty Suites the day after that of the second Ozma show.
I also enjoyed revisiting familiar sights in the Hollywood area from my previous trip there on the last day of this visit, including spectacular views at Runyon Canyon.
Really, just about everything on the trip was wonderful, but the main focus of the trip was the Ozma concerts (they added the Thursday 12/19 show after the Friday 12/20 show quickly sold out), and the Ozma concerts.... Oh. My. God. The Ozma concerts!
The Andrew Bird concert really hit me emotionally but I was fully expecting it to and its emotional impact was about what I predicted. The Ozma concerts, I knew they'd be a big deal for me, but I didn't really realize ahead of time just how big a deal. You know how when you're a kid you get so, so excited the day before Christmas? Well, it was fitting that these shows were so close to Christmas, because I started to feel that same way in the day leading up to the first show.
I saw Ozma three times in 2006 - the two in Hollywood in March, and the one in DC with Cara in August. Then Cara and I saw them once more, in July 2007 in Columbus (we were actually supposed to see them on back-to-back nights in Cleveland and Columbus but the Cleveland show was cancelled when their van broke down). That was the last time I'd seen them. It had been more than twelve years. A band that was so integral to that very impactful time in my life, and then, although never ceasing to be one of my favorite bands, over the years kind of faded out of my day-to-day existence. So much has happened to me in between 2007 and now. Cara moved to Cleveland, we moved in together, we got engaged, we got married, she got diagnosed with lung cancer, we had numerous amazing adventures through it all, and then she died, and all sorts of interesting things have happened since then, and through it all, Ozma's music remained at the foundation of my and Cara's relationship, even if in a way that I no longer thought about nearly as often. Somewhere along the way Okkervil River surpassed Ozma as my favorite band. And Okkervil River are probably the most important band in my life overall. But Ozma will always be the most important band to my meeting, getting to know, becoming best friends with, and falling in love with Cara. And whereas I've seen Okkervil River numerous times throughout all those years, all of the things that have happened in that long, long time since I'd last seen Ozma meant that the emotional impact of seeing Ozma in concert was an order of magnitude greater than the already great emotional impact of my long ago previous Ozma concert experiences.
As these concerts were for the twentieth anniversary of Rock and Roll Part Three, they featured performances of that entire album, along with a second set featuring a sort of greatest hits selection from other albums. So I'm going to take a minute or a few to just gush over what a great album Rock and Roll Part Three is.
There are certain albums - most notably Ozma's R&RP3, Okkervil River's Down the River of Golden Dreams, and Typhoon's White Lighter - that I have such a strong emotional connection to that there's no way I could ever attempt an even remotely objective evaluation of them (not that there's any such thing as an objective evaluation of a work of art, but I think you get what I mean), and there's probably no way anyone who didn't have a strong emotional tie to those albums could love them as much as I do, but I still think that Ozma accomplished an undeniably remarkable thing with R&RP3. The members of the band were teenagers when they made the album. Teenagers! How many classic albums were made by teenagers? And when I listen to the album I marvel at how well it works as an album, not just a collection of songs. How well sequenced it is, how well the songs flow from one to the next, the way that certain themes pop up at multiple points in the album in an almost symphonic way.
The album kicks off with "Domino Effect" and a catchy melody first played on keyboard which is then joined by electric guitar on the same melody, a signature Ozma sound, followed by a breakdown section, and then the lyrics "Chances last a finite time/in the warm July night time/Every care that keeps you from your feet/is a care that carries your defeat." Those simple words spoke to me back in 2006 and still speak to me today. Life is finite. We only get so many chances to make the most of it. So if you have the opportunity, go to California to see a concert by one of your favorite bands. You'll be glad you did. And take a chance on asking out that girl/guy you like.
Every care that keeps you from your feet is a care that carries your defeat.
"Domino Effect" ends with repeating bass notes seguing directly into second track "Apple Trees." I wrote this in 2006:
When I heard the lyrics "An apple pie, the number pi, I studied you in math class, and did all my work but never got your digits" in "Apple Trees" I was pretty much hooked.Ozma, especially on their first album, very much made "geek rock," a term also applied to Weezer, who heavily influenced Ozma and helped them break out by taking them on tour. Listening to this album at times you could almost think you were listening to Weezer. I love Weezer's first two albums but I think Ozma took what Weezer were doing and made it even better. (Ozma, unlike Weezer, also had the good sense to not keep releasing album after album after album after having run out of good songs.) I'm very much a geek, so this aspect of their music very much appealed to me. I also have a thing for puns and wordplay, so, yeah.
The next two tracks "Shootingstars" and "Natalie Portman" dial up the emotional intensity. And "Natalie Portman" is the best example of how, while it is remarkable that an album this good was made by teenagers, it's also an album that requires having been made by teenagers to be this good. The very heartfelt song about having a crush on Natalie Portman (pretty relatable to me when I first heard it) would be intensely creepy if it had been written by a fully adult man (looking your way, Rivers Cuomo, for some of the songs you've written over the years...) but is endearing and funny and moving all at once having been written by a high schooler. (I do wonder whether Daniel Brummel of Ozma feels funny singing the song now that he's in his late thirties.)
"The Ups and Downs" and "If I Only Had a Heart," a pair of fun, catchy rockers, provide a respite from the emotional intensity before we get to the heart of the album: "Baseball" into "Rocks" into "Battlescars." "Baseball" is just, as far as I'm concerned, a masterpiece. It's so poignant and the way it taps into nostalgic feelings to tie memories of baseball to memories of young love is so good and the vocals just soar. I really have a thing for songs that evoke feelings of nostalgia. For some reason, I always have, but I do even more so now than I did prior to everything that happened with Cara. This is one of the best such songs that I know. And it's actually a theme that runs through a number of songs on the album, which is so fascinating to me because how were teenagers, still so young, able to evoke those feelings of yearning for the past so powerfully? And I guess that even when we are teenagers, we already have great nostalgia for our still younger days, even though it's easy to forget this as adults.
"Rocks" is a perfect break between the twin emotional climaxes of "Baseball" and "Battlescars" - two minutes of super fast, super fun, super danceable rock music. And then "Battlescars" is another soaring and emotionally intense number, starting out quiet with an evocative keyboard intro from Star Wick and eventually building toward crashing guitar chords and co-frontmen Brummel and Ryen Slegr repeatedly trading off vocals and competing to rip your heart out with the raw emotions in their voices. And in this track the quasi-symphonic elements of the album really come in - the lyrics mention "shooting stars" ("Of all the shooting stars I knew/I never felt at ease with anyone but you" was a lyric I once told Cara made me think of her), a callback to track three on the album, and then after the song "Battlescars" ends, an acoustic (instrumental only) reprise of the melody from opening track "Domino Effect" provides a lovely little chance to catch your breath. Before the last acoustic guitar notes finish fading out, the driving "In Search of 1988" kicks in, and it's another one of those great nostalgic songs, with lyrics like "Turn on Mario and Luigi/Let's sit down, put our hands on the Ouija." And then just as track one of the album smoothly segued into track two via bass guitar, track ten smoothly segues into eleventh and final track "Last Dance," which dials down the tempo and is a perfect album closer. Lyrics "After the last dance/you lose your last chance" call back to the album's opening lyrics about chances lasting a finite time, to boot.
I don't know. I mean none of this is incredibly complicated. Maybe my gushing seems excessive if you aren't a passionate Ozma fan yourself. But it all just works so well! And all of the songs are so catchy! And they all just fit together perfectly! And teenagers did this!
I remember thinking many years ago that the five-song stretch from "Baseball" to "Last Dance" was easily my favorite part of any album ever. Thinking about it now, I think that I still feel that way. The album in its entirety was my all time favorite album for many years and then eventually I decided I no longer had a favorite album, I had several, with R&RP3 being one of them, but you know what? After these concerts, if I had to pick just one album as my favorite, I'm probably going back to Rock and Roll Part Three.
The concerts. I haven't even described the concerts yet! And they were so marvelous. I had never been to show venue the Troubadour before.
It's a legendary venue in West Hollywood that a number of famous musicians have played at over the years. (Incidentally, the venue for the 2006 shows, the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, no longer exists.) I was excited about the Troubadour based on what I'd heard, and I really loved it; it's definitely one of my favorite venues. It's very intimate and wherever you are inside, you'll be close to the stage and with a good view. On both nights I got there before doors opened and joined a lineup of excited fans outside, many of whom had also traveled from far away for this special event.
My excitement continued to build and build after I entered the venue. I was finally getting to see Ozma again! After all those years! Two other bands preceded Ozma on both nights. My favorite opener was Pushstart Wagon, the second opener on night one, another band who had been around the LA music scene for a long time and had not played in a while and who talked about having played with Ozma long, long ago.
After Pushstart Wagon left the stage, the time had almost arrived. And I really did feel like a little kid on Christmas morning. Enthusiastic cheers filled the venue as the members of Ozma descended a stairway and took the stage. And what came next was one of the most blissful almost two hour periods of my life.
When Ozma started in with the opening notes of the first song of their performance, I did not immediately recognize those notes, which surprised me. But before long I realized what they were doing, and I'm sure that a big goofy grin appeared on my face, because I loved it, and really, I thought, what other way would there be to begin a performance of Rock and Roll Part Three in its entirety?
They were playing a (modified and slowed down) version of their classic song "Iceland," which predates R&RP3 and appeared on the long out-of-print Audible Sounds of Trucks and Cars. It's a fantastic song. I'd never seen it performed live before. The reason it was a perfect show opener was that it contains the lyrics "We loved to listen to our Rock and Roll Part Three." (I don't know the story behind this - that is, were they already working on an album of that title when they wrote "Iceland," or did they make up the phrase (obviously a riff on Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2") for the song and then decide to use it as an album title? My guess, though, would be the former.) After the second and last time those words were sung (with me and many others in the audience enthusiastically shouting out the album title), Ozma abruptly transitioned out of "Iceland" and into the oh so familiar opening notes of "Domino Effect."
I already described the whole album so I won't go into a detailed recap of its live performance. But it was so, so good, everything I hoped for and more. I didn't realize just how deeply every note of that album was etched into my brain until I saw the whole thing performed live. The band's performances were stellar and they brought so much passion to the stage. I especially enjoyed Daniel Brummel's vocals - his voice has matured a lot since the album was originally recorded (it's funny, on the album a casual listener would likely have great difficulty telling apart the Brummel from the Slegr vocals, but their voices are much more distinct from each other now), and it's deeper and more powerful now, but he still hit the old high notes on songs like "Natalie Portman" and "Baseball" and it was a thrill to hear and see. In my prior Ozma concert experiences taken together I believe I had only gotten to see six of the eleven tracks on the album performed, so getting to see all the rest was amazing in and of itself, and the whole album straight through just had me in heaven. It was so utterly exhilarating. I sang along to every line of every song and I danced and jumped up and down and it felt like 2006 again but in a way that was deeper and rawer and even more meaningful. By the time we got to "Last Dance" it felt like the whole thing had just flown by.
One thing to note about the album performance: I had wondered how they'd handle the acoustic "Domino Effect" reprise that bridges "Battlescars" to "In Search of 1988." A friend of the band came out to join them with an acoustic guitar for that part, and he played it flawlessly. It was a really nice touch. And it was lovely when an impromptu audience sing-along started up partway through the instrumental acoustic interlude with those familiar words from "Domino Effect": "Sing that song you sang long ago..."
How perfectly fitting for this anniversary concert, almost twenty years after the initial release of the album (January 1, 2000), and how fitting for me, so many years after the last time I'd seen Ozma and so many years after the pivotal period of time in my life that their music soundtracked.
Ozma left the stage to thunderous applause, saying they'd be "back in 5," which turned out to be an overestimate. I didn't know what songs would make up their second set, but there were certainly some songs I'd guessed would probably show up, and most of my guesses were right. There were also some songs that weren't so expected and I was especially thrilled during their night one set with the inclusion of the beautiful "Continental Drift" with keyboardist Star Wick playing the flute. Some selections were very obvious - no Ozma concert would be complete without "Gameover" or "Korobeiniki" (a.k.a. the Tetris theme), and for good reason. Another song I knew would be coming was "Eponine" but I. Was. Not. Prepared. For how emotional that song would make me. Here's the thing about "Eponine." The last time I'd seen Ozma was in July 2007, in Columbus with Cara. Just over a month earlier I had adopted a little black kitten, the first pet I had ever had in my life. I had named her Eponine after the Ozma song (yes, the Ozma song title is a reference to the Les Miserables character). How could I ever have imagined back then that the next time I'd be seeing Ozma live would be over twelve years later and that Cara would be gone by then - but that adorable little kitten would have become my friend and companion through all those tumultuous years? I had no idea in 2007 that I could ever come to love a cat as much as I love Eponine.
Eponine, then and now
Night one was the more emotionally impactful of the two because it was first. Night two ended up winning out for the amount of pure fun. I managed to get even closer to the stage, for one thing.
Also, the crowd was more into it on night two, I think both because it was a Friday night and because it was the show that had been announced first and quickly sold out so the audience had a higher percentage of truly die hard fans. The sing-alongs were more boisterous, there was more energy all around, and there was some great moshing action on songs that called for it such as "Rocks" and "Korobeiniki." It's hilarious to me that seeing Ozma in Hollywood at age 22 I had hightailed my way out of the area of the crowd where moshing was going on because I had never experienced anything like it and it was too rough, and now at age 36 I love having my body bounce around and collide with other people's to energetic rock music. I mean it makes me feel really alive! The night two non-R&RP3 portion of the set was also a somewhat better selection of songs than night one's in my opinion, although both were excellent. There was a lot of overlap between the two with the more obvious hits, which I didn't mind, but I was really pleased to hear "Immigration Song" (one of the only Ozma songs with Jose Galvez on lead vocals) and "You Know the Story"/"Landing of Yuri Gagarin" on night two, and most especially thrilled as well as very pleasantly surprised to get a rare performance of "Light Years Will Burn," which was super heavy and intense.
On both nights partway through the second Ozma set there was also a guest appearance by Matt Sharp, frontman of the Rentals and bassist for Weezer on their first two albums. As Cara and I saw the Rentals with Ozma in DC in 2006, this added to the throwback nature of the show for me. Sharp sang and Ozma played new Rentals song "Breaking and Breaking and Breaking" (fun but definitely my least favorite song from Ozma's sets) and old Rentals hit "Friends of P," the latter a rousing crowd sing-along. It made my day the other day when the Rentals released a video of the night two "Breaking and Breaking and Breaking" performance and I discovered that I appear in it numerous times, including a closeup of my screaming face that was captured by a camera held by Matt Sharp himself!
I think one of the reasons I loved seeing this so much was that it was a reminder that yes, that concert was a real thing that really happened and I was really there!
It was just all so amazing that it almost does feel like a dream, but it was very real, one of the realest things I've ever experienced, and I marvel at the fact that I did get to experience it. March 2006 was quite a month, one of the most eventful and important and memorable in my life, and now I'd have to say the same thing about December 2019.
P.S. The day after the second show I was very hoarse from all the singing along and screaming and cheering. It was very, very worth it.
