November 21, 2006 "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed"

11/21/2006 Newport Music Hall - Columbus, OH
Other bands: Smile Empty Soul, Action Reaction


Photo by Joe Major.

It is called America's Longest Continually Running Rock Club and it's where I saw my first and last ever performance of the afro'd duo of Omar Rodriguez and Cedric Bixler and the rest of The Mars Volta during a long uneventful and introspective summer in which I tried to find a stage persona of my own. I figured it would do me some good to at least see these people to whom we'd been diligently compared by every music rag and mouth-breathing scenester in the western hemisphere.

The first five minutes were an acrobatic homage to the early days of At the Drive In, with Bixler having carnal relations with the microphone stand, culminating in a headstand and signature twenty-foot microphone toss. It was impressive, yet not quite enough to fuel my enthusiasm throughout the rest of a meandering fractal set. I left as quietly as I came, an anonymous student of the stage in a nondescript white van parked blocks away.

Fast forward a few years, and me of '03 would find that I'd perfected an awkward yet comfortable mix of David Bowie, Robert Plant and Doc from Back to the Future. As unorthodox of a composite as it was, it felt nice. It was a warm pair of broken-in shoes into which I stepped every night.

I smoked cigars with Bella and Jason in the green room of the music hall. I had a simmering safe-crush on Bella, which is an innocent variant on an already innocent feeling-set that never results in any sort of embarrassing or life-altering mistakes, but merely insists on making us take quick furtive glances at the object of our safe-affection and, on occasion, imagine the feeling of a secret, quick kiss. She was cute and fashionable and seemed to have remarkable taste.

The hall was half full of fans of the X-fest set. Passive rock radio listeners mixed with the true breed of baggy-panted nu-metallers. There was a pair of girls in the dead center of the crowd who made constant eye contact and smiles, and later at the merch table one pulled her breast out for me to sign. She went into greater detail via Myspace e-mail to the band's account later about how she would have preferred the evening to have played out in her bed. I played the passive flirting game, but in my head I was visualizing much more than secret and furtive kisses. I never saw her again.

We left for home that night for a small Thanksgiving break, where I would once again return to the land of the living. Where people lived and worked during daylight hours and where I had less and less grist for the conversation mill, as a result of my world having grown exponentially less conventional over the years, where my peers were buying houses and Baby Gap clothing while I was holding myself over the ever-widening chasm of nightclubs and minimum wage manual labor.