THE WYMAN WEEKLY

Underemployed. Unattached. Unimpressed.

Issue 33 December 4,1996

 

 

 

Sitting in Ole and Lena’s Coffee Shop and at the table in front me sits this pale, lithe, impossibly thin young girl, sporting black shin-high boots, black nylons, black miniskirt, black turtleneck, her bob hairdo dyed black, black leather purse, black fake-fur coat, and black gloves. Her lipstick was burgundy, but she had on no (shoulda had on black) nail polish. It goes with saying that she was smoking. I, of course, was infatuated. I had been led to believe that girls like this were mere coffee shop stereotypes, but now I see that one exists. Now I know that there IS a reason to keep on keeping on (actually, I didn’t need a reason: Pearl Jam puts out albums every year and a half) and plus I overheard her say this little tidbit of wisdom: Paraphrasing is a good idea. My words - their ideas.

                  

BEER

 

Lately I’ve been sipping on Huber Bock around the household. You pour one of these into a glass, hold it up to the light, and you won’t be able to see your hand on the other side of the glass. Drinking it isn’t as much fun as saying it, though. A day doesn’t go by where I’m not loudly saying “HUBER BOCK!” in my best impression of Mike Okerstrom, who as he walked down 6th Street on his way to a Neil Young concert in 1991, whooped it up over the fact that he had bought a case of it for his hockey team.

 

SEMISONIC

 

Standing down on the First Avenue main floor before the Semisonic show, this tiny brunette in front of me sporting a little mascara, some damn cute freckles, and a Denver Broncos-colored ski sweater with stripes down the sleeves was dancing to the Jackson Five tunes they were playing on the sound system. She was bouncing off of my knee every once in a while. I made some small talk about the J5, but then her boyfriend showed up and my knee was left to amuse itself. Then the curly blonde to my right started doing a variation on the Elway Girl’s dance. I finally figured out that it wasn’t me, the place was just extremely crowded and I was in everybody’s way.

 

The night before the show, I dreamt of being at the club and seeing Semisonic come out on stage. Their first song was “I’ll Feel for You”, which is the dream-like last song on Great Divide and one of the few mushy songs that we can tolerate these days in WymanWorld. I woke up, shook the cobwebs out of head and said “stupid subconscious - they’re going to come out and play a rocker first up.” So at the show, I’m standing there thinking Semisonic will start out with “F.N.T.” or “If I Run” and they come out into the darkness and Dan Wilson begins to sing “I’ll Feel for You” and it was exactly like my dream. The rest of the show was filled with their usual blend of explosive guitar pop. Allegedly these guys are “Beatlesesque”, but I heard a lot of Henrixesque stuff (like taking solos against the rhythm of the song) plus “Delicious” could easily be a Prince tune and they covered his “Erotic City” during the show.

 

When I was waiting outside in line before the show, parked right there by the front door was the black van representing the alternative-marginalizing 93.7 The Edge, blasting the latest by the Smashing Pumpkins. The two dudes in line behind me started muttering and then one of the dudes said “all I gotta say is: Fuck the Edge!” I turned around smiling, and then he was worried that I was an Edge supporter. But I said “I second that notion.” (I think it goes “I second that motion”, or “I second that emotion”, but he knew what I meant.) He then patted me on the back and said “You’re a good man, Chico.” Yes, I am a good man. And I wish my name was Chico. So please, next time you talk to me: call me Chico.

WILCO

 

During the last two times I’ve seen Wilco, I was almost getting the sense that bandleader Jeff Tweedy doesn’t exactly like his fans. There was something about his attitude that sometimes comes off kind of surly. Turns out that what he’s doing is pushing us while he’s pushing his band into new territory. Just like that teacher you had in high school who you thought was a jerk, but turns out just wanted you to do your best. The result is that Wilco is one the best bands I’ve seen in a small club, not as transcendent or euphoric as Soul Asylum, but exceptional nonetheless. They started out doing “Misunderstood”, with Tweedy looking eerily like Hank Williams Sr., and not just because of the cowboy hat he was sporting. With his high cheekbones and narrowed eyes, his face looked like Hank’s. Then when Tweedy turned the song into its dynamic, loud, guitar riffing, his hat fell off, his hair came down and he looked like Neil Young. Seriously. Throughout the show, Tweedy showed that he is a bandleader in the best sense of the word. He pushes his top-notch band, and he rearranges their songs like Springsteen has always had a knack for doing with his songs live. So at this show we got “Passenger Side” done straight and done immediately after as a punk number, and “Someone Else’s Song” done as a heavy blues. And just to show us that he wanted to be part of us, Tweedy dived offstage a couple of times and did some crowd surfing.

 

Before one of the encores, from my spot down on the main floor, I could hear some girl yelling. Halfway up the stairs going towards the rest rooms, she had stopped to drunkenly call out to her friend, who she must have spotted down on the floor. What seemed like at least half of the people in my immediate area began yelling back, doing their best slurred imitations of the party girl. I yelled out “Have another!”

 

RUN WESTY RUN

 

Due to a cold I was battling (I hope whoever invented Alka Seltzer Plus cold medicine is eternally wealthy and happy, ‘cuz the stuff is magic), I had to skip the highly anticipated Honeydogs/Steeplejack show at the Entry the night before Thanksgiving. Since Honeydogs main man Adam Levy stepped on my foot a few weeks back while watching Trailer Trash at Lee’s, I figured the least he could do was buy me a beer. (He did apologize, so overall things are okay between us.) My make-up date for this missed show turned out to be Run Westy Run at the 400 Bar last Saturday. First of all, the bad news: no more Pabst longnecks at the 400. In fact your bottled beer chances are slim to Bud, making the joint resemble some sort of place you’d find on the 494 Strip (we have both kinds of beer - the Anheuser Busch family and the Miller family.) And if you ordered up a tap beer, you got served in a plastic keg cup. But they put three quick, efficient, and non-flashy bartenders (a full-house backfield) behind the bar, so you didn’t have to wait too long for a drink.

 

The good news is that the Westies rocked my socks off, like they always seem to do these days. These guys are rapidly climbing to the upper regions of my Favorite Stones-like Bands list. They’ve learned to put their songs, swagger, and swing up front and leave the noise behind. I remember seeing them years ago at the Uptown and they blew out the hearing in my left ear for a day or two. My roommate’s girlfriend had a high voice and I couldn’t hear a word she said to me the next day at lunch. She thought I was just being an asshole and was ignoring her.

 

PRIDE (AND COLD BEER) ON ICE

or COME FOR THE TRADITION, STAY FOR THE CASH PAYMENTS

 

We enjoy making fun of that stupid fucker Doug Woog around here. We admire the term we learned from the Star Tribune’s Patrick Reusse: Doug Woog’s hat trick. However, we prefer the phrase coined by KFAN’s Dan “The Common Man” Cole: Doug Woog’s salary cap.