Shudder To Think at the Bowery Ballroom (I was there!) - posted at 01:30

Tonight was amazing. In short, it was totally worth the fourteen year wait.

Before I collapse into a puddle of giddy I-hugged-Craig-Wedren goo, here's the setlist from tonight's show at the Bowery Ballroom, which doubled as the record release party for their new CD, Live from Home (which I haven't even gotten to listen to yet because the new netbook doesn't have a DVD/CD drive).

Part 1
1. A Vampire's Proposal (from Curses, Spells, Voodoo, Mooses)
2. Jade-Dust Eyes (Ten Spot)
3. About Three Dreams (Ten Spot)
4. Lies About the Sky (Funeral at the Movies)
5. 9 Fingers on You (Pony Express Record)
6. Gang of $ (Pony Express Record)
7. She's a Skull, with Jefferson Friedman on keys (50,000 BC)
8. Beauty Strike, with Jefferson Friedman on keys (50,000 BC)
9. Red House, with a guest appearance by original guitarist Chris Matthews (Funeral at the Movies, 50,000 BC)
10. Day Ditty, with Chris Matthews (Funeral at the Movies, First Love Last Rites)
Part 2
11. Refuse to Die, with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (On In Love)
12. Famous Planets, with ACME (On in Love)
13. Tarrying, with ACME (On in Love)
14. Baby Drop, with ACME (Get Your Goat)
Part 3
15. Shake Your Halo Down, blended with Opening, with strings (Get Your Goat, High Art)
16. Pebbles, with strings (Get Your Goat)
17. Alone in Love (originally written for the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack, later appeared on Craig Wedren's solo disc Lapland)
18. So Into You (Pony Express Record)
19. Hit Liquor (Pony Express Record)
20. No Rm. 9, Kentucky (Pony Express Record)
21. X-French Tee Shirt (Pony Express Record)
Encore
22. Survival (50,000 BC)
23. Ballad of Maxwell Demon (Velvet Goldmine)
24. Saddest Day of My Life, with Jefferson Friedman on amplified acoustic guitar (50,000 BC)
25. Appalachian Lullaby (First Love, Last Rites)

Craig gave me a copy of his setlist and they were originally going to play Love Catastrophe (Get Your Goat) after Lies About the Sky, but it was left off for some reason. Bummer.

We'll start by comparing my setlist wishlist with what actually went down tonight. The vast majority of the songs were there - the only one I really really missed was She Wears He-Harem (but I guess I can't complain because a live version is on their new CD). In reality, I can't complain for several reasons: 1) the show blew my mind. SO. AWESOME. 2) They played On In Love! If I had had even an inkling that there was the faintest chance on earth they would play it, you can bet yer ass that it would have been on the wishlist. 3) After they broke up in 1998 I thought I would never get to see them play. Tonight was a gift.

Now, onward!

I showed up at the Bowery at about 8, figuring that I would miss at least one of the opening bands. Frankly that was fine by me because I wanted to preserve my hearing for Shudder so I could enjoy the show and not be in pain. Turns out that the first band hadn't even played. I was literally jittery with anticipation and feeling a little awkward being by myself so I ordered myself a Jack & Coke to settle the nerves and give my hands something to do and settled in to watch a bit of the first act. Another Shudder fan (hi Johnny!) struck up a conversation with me, and after we decided we weren't really into the first act we went downstairs to talk S2T and drink some more (which is the awesome thing about the Bowery and apparently other venues in NYC - they have a bar on a separate floor from the concert floor so you can escape, preserve your hearing, and chat). So the evening started off on an awesome foot right away because for the first time in my fourteen year fandom, I was having a conversation with another Shudder fan. I'm really not kidding when I tell you that practically no one has heard of them. While mingling downstairs, I struck up a conversation with drummer Kevin March who told me that Nathan Larson (guitar god extraordinaire) wouldn't be there. A bit of a bummer since he's really half of what I consider the core of Shudder To Think, but I refused to be too disappointed - see previous statement about the night being a gift.

After the second act finished, we headed upstairs. I was having none of this namby-pamby standing-towards-the-back-business, so I planted myself up front and prepared to have my mind blown. They started off with A Vampire's Proposal, one of my favorites from Curses. The song is fantastic, but really starts to pick up towards the end with "And now/You know/I'll go/And leave you to your dreams/It seems/The light/Is sifting through the trees/But come/The night/I'll hold your neck to me" and the night was officially ON.

The songs went on in chronological order for a bit with Jade-Dust Eyes and About Three Dreams up next. I love these two songs (old-school friends of mine will remember that my online handle was Jade-Dust Eyes for a while. Seemed fitting with my green eyes and all) and I had even told Cory how much I was looking forward to seeing About Three Dreams live the last time it rolled up on the mp3 player. Shudder disappointed on neither front. Lies About the Sky (up next) was great to hear too. Apparently it reminds Craig of Joe Lo Truglio, one of the members of The State. I'd love to hear the backstory there... But I digress.

The boys skipped over Love Catastrophe and the rest of Get Your Goat for the time being and jumped right into Pony Express Record with 9 Fingers on You. It's one of the three best songs on their best album, so we all went ballistic with the fingerness of it all (vid of that night's performance). Gang of $ followed. I gotta say, I've always loved the song, but I gained a new appreciation of it hearing it live.

50,000 BC was next with She's a Skull (by far the best on the album) and Beauty Strike (one of Craig's favorite songs, he doesn't care that it's not on Pony Express Record). As a treat, Jefferson Friedman came out to reprise the role on the keyboard that he played during the 50,000 BC tour. My neurons pricked up at this because this was the same Jefferson Friedman who wrote the music for On In Love with Craig, who wrote the lyrics. I was happy to see him, but I just needed to wait for another two songs to get two pretty great surprises.

Now, here is where I tell you why I wasn't upset that Nathan wasn't there tonight. Chris Matthews, the original guitarist from way back when Shudder To Think was a mere high school band all the way through Get Your Goat, came out to play Red House and Day Ditty. He's a great performer, though I did miss the flair that the dreads added. Not that I ever saw him perform before, but y'know, YouTube is an awesome, awesome thing. But I digress. Day Ditty was one of my first favorites from Funeral and it's still one that I use to this day to settle an overactive mind when I'm trying to get to sleep. They combined the style of the original (quicker tempo) with the last recorded version (with Angela McClusky on First Love, Last Rites where she goes new places with the crooning). Red House is freakin' awesome on a gorgeous day, driving fast with the windows down, and it's pretty sweet live too. It's a fan favorite, so the energy from the crowd was feeding the band and vice versa, in one of those awesome feedback cycles. By this point, Johnny (remember Johnny? He's the one who struck up a conversation with me) had snaked his way up to the front with me, and dude, rocking out to Red House doesn't get any better than when there's another person rocking out with you (vid of that night's performance).

Thus ended part one. The non-Craig folks exited the stage, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble came out, and I knew what they were about to play. What followed for the next 20 minutes was a completely blissed-out Stacey. See, I loves me some Shudder To Think, but Jefferson Friedman and Craig Wedren are as potent a combination as Craig and Nathan were on Pony Express Record. Yes, that is saying something. Jefferson totally gets Craig's style and wrote some of the most amazing music I've ever heard to match Craig's completely operatic voice and words. Plus, watching Craig perform this is amazing. The emoting that's going on is off the chart. Anyway, On in Love is pretty new stuff (having debuted in February of this year and only having been performed three times before tonight) and as far as I could tell (at least from the people immediately around me) I was the only one who knew the lyrics. The thing that got me was that both Craig and Jefferson noticed that I was there singing along all by my lonesome. C'mon, Shudder fans, why aren't you as into this stuff as I am? Maybe you just didn't know about it before, so consider yourself educated now. I expect better from you next time.

ACME stuck around after the conclusion of Tarrying and treated us to an orchestral version of Baby Drop. I gotta say, it worked, especially the strange instrumental parts at the beginning of the song. I'm all for freshening up old songs. Speaking of: all but three (maybe four) members of ACME departed after Baby Drop (thus ending part two), and the ones who stayed behind played Shake Your Halo Down which then melted into Opening from High Art. This worked even better than Baby Drop because without some strings it's nigh impossible to recreate the sound made with wineglasses in the recording of Opening. Following the close of Opening the band transitioned back into the final thirty-or-so seconds of Shake Your Halo down. I never would have thoughr to combine the two songs, but clearly I'm not the musical artist at work here and I love that the band continues to play with their music, not just play it.

Then there was Pebbles. Ah, Pebbles. This song is impossible to resist from the very opening and, to me, really marks a formidable evolution in the group's songwriting skills. Tonight Shudder To Think graced us with a little slower, more mellow version of the song than was originally recorded. It kinda goes without saying that I loved it.

The next two songs were kind of a blur. Alone in Love was axed from Velvet Goldmine and picked up on Craig's solo CD, so, y'know, it was cool to get to hear it. So Into You was excellent as usual due to the facts that a) it's dripping with kinky sensuality and desire and b) the fact that it's not cheesy, neither of which the original can claim. Hopefully I can be forgiven for glossing over these two when they were sandwiched between powerhouses Pebbles and Hit Liquor. Hit Liquor is such a rad song and it was really, really ballsy for them to release it as a single. It holds the distinction of being the second Shudder song I ever heard - it was on an episode of Beavis & Butthead. What can I say? When you're 13, well, you like that stuff. I remember thinking it was pretty sweet that they didn't change the channel, because they always did that if they thought the song was lame. So, by the contrapositive blah blah blah, Hit Liquor passed the test and is officially cool - not that I needed a tautology to tell you that. Anyway, the version that the boys played tonight was more true to the original recording than the sped-up amped-up version on the new CD. I gotta say, once you've had the newer version it's hard to go back. But Craig kept the new super-sexy "Wanna............... watch?" and that more than made up for the slowed tempo. By the way, this song in particular proved that Mark Watrous, the hired gun who plays the guitar these days (albeit usually alongside Nathan), is well on his way to becoming a guitar god a la Nathan.

No Rm. 9, Kentucky followed and was made particularly memorable by the fact that it was the birthday of Caleb Burhans (one of the violinists) so Craig definitely was singing the first part of the song to him. At the conclusion of the song he said that the next song was their last, which I misheard as "that song was our last," and.... cue very very sad Stacey. I was all like, dudes, REALLY? You're going to leave out X-French Tee Shirt? I could overlook Nathan's absence but omitting that song is TREASONOUS. All was forgiven a moment later when the opening "Say what"? greeted my ears. As they played it, I went back to the moment in time fourteen years ago when, pissed off at my parents for not letting me sleep over at a friend's house, I stayed up late into the night watching music videos. What can I say? My parents' stubbornness and my angsty teenager-ness paid off, since that's the night I discovered Shudder To Think and my favorite song, yes, of course, X-French Tee Shirt. I closed my eyes (but not for too long, because those guys are awesome performers) and thought back to that lonely, angry night on the couch, how the music grabbed me, and how far we'd come together to that moment and space in time. It was an intense experience, almost religious in nature.

Honestly, a big part of me wanted them to be done with the show at that point. I didn't want them to stop playing, but how can mere mortals - even Shudder To Think - follow something so transcendent? Seriously, they would have had to pull out all the stops, like bring out Nathan and Stuart and play Kissi Penny with all its sweet little riffs perfectly intact, She-Wears He-Harem (in itself transcendent of sorts, but for very different reasons), and play the faster version of Hit Liquor. Twice. All the same, I was clapping and yelling for them to come back out and play some more. I mean, who knows? It could have happened.

The final four songs were from the twilight of their recording career, and honestly, are not my favorites. They started off with Survival, Craig saying "This one's about cancer... but it's happy!" I had always wondered about that. Next up: I have a soft spot for the glammy Ballad of Maxwell Demon, but it's not very Shudder-esque and probably could have done without it. I'm glad they played it over Hot One though. Next, we were treated to the ministrations of Jefferson playing the amplified acoustic on Saddest Day of My Life. They wrapped everything up with Appalachian Lullaby, Craig singing Nina's part, and no disrespect to Nina (Nathan's wife), but Craig does it much better.

At the conclusion of the show, I picked up my new CD (two weeks before the official release! Whooo!) and shirt and set about trying to meet Craig. I had come so far and loved his music for so long and been moved by it on so many profound levels that I couldn't not try. Talk about regret. So I found the manager and told her my story and, after refusing to make any promises, she cleared it with Craig. After he hadn't come down in the allotted time (not that I was upset or blamed him because he had family and friends up there), the security guy sent me up to do some mingling (don't ever let anyone tell you that New Yorkers are jerks. More on that later). He was in the middle of saying good-bye to a couple of people when I arrived, but after he was done with that he turned right to me and, with what was probably the least-needed sentence in the history of language, introduced himself. All the same, I'm glad he did because I got to see his smile up close. In photographs and in short films/movies I've seen him in, he always has the stone cold rock star look on his face (typical shot here - he's second from the right), even though you know he's gotta have a great sense of humor because he's great friends with the folks in The State and his roles in any State-related projects are always hilarious (two cases in point, from Wainy days: The Waindow - he's knitting - love it! and Rochelle Part 2 - he's singing about swimming - love it!). So don't believe the poker-faced man you see in the media: a warm genuine smile - the type that goes all the way to the eyes - comes to his face easily and often.

We talked briefly about the old fansite I used to run, about WAND, how much I love On In Love, his continuing work with Jefferson, and as I mentioned earlier, he gave me a setlist so I could check the one I had scribbled during the show for accuracy. So I made to leave at that point because as much as I wanted to stay, I didn't want to be that girl, but Craig offered me a drink instead - including some champagne from a bottle which I'm pretty sure he was drinking straight from during the show (it was a party, after all!) and started passing to the audience toward the end of the set (but it's cool, right? He told the girl he passed it to that she'd better not give him swine flu, so nothing to worry about...). I opted for the red wine instead and started talking with some of the other guys up there and Craig went downstairs a couple of minutes later. After I finished the wine, I knew I had to take off or I was seriously going to be that girl even worse than a couple of minutes earlier. He was on the stage packing up some equipment so I paused to thank him again and say goodbye. He apologized for taking off (wholly unnecessary but supremely gracious), expressed some gratitude for my making such a long pilgrimage to see Shudder play, and crouched down on the stage to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I told him to keep making beautiful music and said goodbye. I managed to keep my shit together until I got back to my hotel room, whereupon I jumped up and down with abandon and SQUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEd like a little girl.

And thus ended my brush with some amazing people. I always knew that Craig Wedren had to be a great person - I had read on other fansites and in interviews how warm he is to his fans, and let's not forget the kind and appreciative email that he sent me six years ago when he found the fansite that I was running. I, uh, may have neglected to blog about it because some things just get you floating so high on cloud nine that you can't come back to earth and do something mundane like write about it (this being a notable exception). But I digress. The point is that Craig owes me nothing and yet he showed absolutely no hesitation in being 100% hospitable and warm to me, a total stranger, despite being surrounded by old friends who are so much cooler than me. That's the very definition of a gracious and wonderful human being.

So, how does one sum up a night like that? Part of me had been worried that I was anticipating it so much that I could only be disappointed, that it was unreasonable to expect Shudder To Think to live up to my astronomical expectations. But these guys totally delivered. The concert was amazing - Craig's voice was in prime form and he sits so comfortably in his role of consummate performer. Kevin is incredible on the drums. I'm a little disappointed I didn't spend more time watching him, but I was distracted by someone else less than six feet away from me. Jesse Krakow and Mark, the two hired guns on bass and guitar, respectively, were fantastic too. It's too bad that Nathan couldn't be there but the surprise of Chris Matthews and ACME made up for it. Getting to meet Craig at the end just put the whole experience over the top. Before I bought my ticket to New York, I had known that if I passed up this opportunity I would regret it. Having now been through the whole glorious experience, I now realize how much I had grossly underestimated the potential enormity of that regret. It goes down in the list of the top three nights of my life.

Now if only I could get A Vampire's Proposal and Tarrying unstuck from my brain...

Note: I'm pretty sure the pictures I got were crap because I was under the mistaken idea that it wouldn't be a good idea to take my D50. BrooklynVegan got some amazing shots - check them out!

Note 2: I apologize for the rambliness. It's part being passionate about the band, part I-haven't-slept-since-the-concert, which was 24 hours ago. I've spent the whole night/morning/afternoon writing and editing and my brain is a little fuzzy. Effing plane rides and airports...

allen commented:

I'm so glad it turned out to be everything you'd been dreaming of all this time. I have to admit I, too, wondered if it could live up to the build up -- I mean, there was a LOT to live up to.

Now it's my turn to see Alphaville . . .

Jitterbean Girl commented:

Thanks - I'm glad about it too, obviously! I have yet to really come down from the high of it all. Let's hope you get to fulfill your own dreams of a concert-going experience soon too :)