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for all my isu brethren …

trying to finish “Bosh! Pure Bosh!: Hank Morgan as Standup Comedian in Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” but I’m really listening to uncle tupelo and hitting the Internet after every other sentence i write. and I found some memory lane shit.

setlists from the two uncle tupelo shows i saw back in the day:

10/13/93 – Scotty’s Pub, Bloomington, IL

Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down/ Grindstone/ True to Life/ Chickamauga/ Watch Me Fall/ Anodyne/ New Madrid/ Sandusky/ Slate/ Atomic Power/ Fifteen Keys/ Long Cut/ Acuff-Rose/ Steal the Crumbs/ We’ve Been Had/ Give Back the Key to My Heart/ Looking For a Way Out/ Life Worth Livin’/ Nothing/ No Depression

Soundboard recording. Bottle Rockets and Stumptwhoopt opened.

this was also the first night i saw the bottle rockets. got in there somehow (i woulda been nineteen at the time, but i reviewed the show for the daily vidette, so that must have carried some serious pull) and managed to get hammered as well. i talked to brian henneman at the bar for a short spell. nice guy, but i remember him having no interest at all in giving me any sort of an interview. he said something like, ‘well, you just listened to the set. you go ahead and write whatever you want.’ i must have come across like a complete fool to that guy back then. i had no idea what i was doing. none. hair down to my ass. probably wearing something tie-dyed. god help us.

04/21/94 – The Quad, Normal, IL

Grindstone/ Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down/ Watch Me Fall/ Sandusky/ New Madrid/ Slate/ Atomic Power/ High Water/ Acuff-Rose/ True to Life/ We’ve Been Had/ Give Back the Key to My Heart/ Willin’

Audience recording. This was on outdoor show on the college campus.

that’s right, y’all. uncle tupelo … in 1994, no less … playing acoustic at fucking quad fest. i don’t know who the hell got this booked. the same tour featured a four night stay at lounge ax in chicago, the 40 watt in athens, an appearance on conan o’brien … legit gigs. fucking isu quad fest! amazing.

my favorite story from the quad fest gig: the editor for the features section of the paper was this disaster of chick … god, i can’t remember her name right now … but she was my ‘boss.’ just another student, probably a few years older than me. super high energy, blond hair, big tits, real dippy, real moody. i generally tried to avoid her, but for some reason she kinda liked me, so she was kinda hard to shake. i’m covering the quad fest gig … uncle fucking tupelo let’s remember … standing at the side of the stage, minding my own business. here comes what’s her name. loud, bubbly, giggly, terrible. stands right next to me. they’re playing acoustic through a fucking rented p.a., so they could probably hear her carrying on about nothing over the shitty monitors. they finish and come off stage right in front of us.

now, uncle tupelo were some dour motherfuckers back then. jay farrar sure as shit ain’t anything close to lighthearted, and jeff tweedy in those days usually wore a baseball hat pulled down so low in front of his face you couldn’t see his eyes. so they step off the stage after what must have been a terrible gig (it was in the middle of the afternoon in front of a scattered crown on the isu quad for fuck’s sake) and what’s her name makes a b-line for jeff tweedy. throws her arms around him, starts kissing him on the cheek, telling him how amazing he is … the whole nine. i’m watching thinking ‘please don’t get me involved, please don’t acknowledge me, please leave me alone.’ i hoped to maybe talk to them a bit, get a little interview, something. so she’s gushing and jeff is recoiling like she’s got fucking leprosy, trying to plan his escape, and i’m praying to god she leaves me alone when i hear her fucking scream, ‘kevin! kevin! kevin! kevin! will you take our picture?’ she runs over and hands me her camera, runs back and throws her arms around the saddest, most dejected looking man i have ever seen in my life. i felt like a douche bag. before i took the shot, i remember i looked right at jeff and said, with feeling, ’sorry, man.’ i gave the camera back to what’s her name and split. they’d been through enough …

it’s one of those things, man … life. you never appreciate anything enough when it’s happening, you know? i liked uncle tupelo back then, friends played their shit, but i didn’t really understand the depth of what was going on at the time. it wasn’t until three or four years later when a girl i knew from working at barnes and noble – leigh anna, i remember her name; she was cool – made me an uncle tupelo cassette with ’still feel gone’ and ‘no depression’ on it that i fell in love. i even remember the exact moment it happened. i was having some crisis of identity at the time and decided to go camping for the weekend by myself south of san francisco at some state park. i played that tape the whole time, smoking cigarettes, looking for answers. and those records just got right in there. you know how they do …

i’m laughing now, because i remember feeling really unsatisfied after that weekend of camping alone, like i wanted to figure something out and i didn’t. like i was supposed to find something but i failed. shit, now it’s obvious. i was supposed to figure out uncle tupelo. i was supposed to find uncle tupelo.

clearly.

some of that wisdom, i suppose.

still, how great would it be to go back?

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