"Exhume Our Idols..."

Reasons I’m bringing back the blog:

Part IV: Carrie Brownstein

So far we’ve discussed a rare beer brewed by monks in an abbey, the greatest race circuit in the world, and the glory that is ze autobahn. But, I’ve driven on the autobahn before and if I really wanted to, I could track down the monk beer somewhere here in Edmonton. It might cost me $50+ a bottle, but it can be done. And yes, while the Nürburgring was definitely an item high up on the old bucket list, chances are I would have been through Germany at some point again in my life to check it off. So, while all of these were things that I wanted to do at some point in my life, and were most definitely very fun and very much worth having done, they were not the reason for this trip. I could have done them at any time, really. Perhaps during Oktoberfest one year? Perhaps in the summer when the temperatures would have allowed me to lower the top on the Porsche and feel what the autobahn was like with a cool wind blowing through my hair? In fact, you could argue that everything I’ve done so far on this trip would have been better had I done them at a different time of the year. And you’d probably be right.

So then, why on Earth did I choose March?

Well, to answer that, we’ll need to take a little trip down memory lane. The year was 2002. Maybe 2003. My sister, because she was dating a local musician at the time, was going through an unprecedented stretch of having impeccable taste in music. I was fortunate enough to be in the enviable position of having much of that great music trickle down to me, whether through CD’s playing in her car when I would catch a ride somewhere, or even mix tapes that she would make for me out of the kindness of her heart. This was probably the greatest period of musical discovery in my life. In fact, this is when I was first exposed to many of my all-time favourite bands and songs. This is when I first heard The Distillers. Tegan and Sara. The Sounds. I mean, that’s three out of my top 10 (maybe even top 5) right there. It was a glorious time to own a Discman.

And, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, there was another band that was first exposed to me during this period, even if I wouldn’t come to realize it until many years down the road.

You see, one of the tracks that my sister placed on a mix tape (and keep in mind, by mix tape, I really mean mix CD) was "Combat Rock" by a band I had never heard of, called Sleater-Kinney. It was buried towards the end of the disc (at this point, technologically, these were MP3 CD’s, which meant they could hold 140-160 songs), and seeing that I loved so many of the other tracks on this CD, although this song was definitely one of the top 15 or 20 that I liked, it just didn’t resonate quite enough with me to make me bother checking out the band any further, certainly not digging into their back catalogue or anything of that nature, like I was doing with a lot of the other artists on the CD. Then Spin Magazine released their Best Albums of the Year list. And, like always, I was keen to give it a read. As I thumbed through the pages, I was surprised to see that this band, Sleater-Kinney, and the album from which "Combat Rock" had been lifted, One Beat, sat high on the list at number 12. Number 12 was no joke. It was higher than a lot of very good albums that I was already a very big fan of. So, because I liked "Combat Rock" well enough, and because I was curious to see if the rest of album could possibly merit it’s high placement on this list, I had to listen to the whole thing.

And I loved it. Loved it. Loved it.

Well… maybe not. I liked it just fine, but still not enough to coax me into going into their back catalogue or even to get their next album when it came out in 2005. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, by any stretch of the imagination. Anyways, it wasn’t until that 2005 album had been out for a few months, when I popped that old mix CD that my sister had made, into the stereo during a gathering of friends at my apartment - you know, just as background music - that my friend, Dennis, suddenly got a little excited and asked, “Is this Sleater-Kinney?” as "Combat Rock" came up in the playlist towards the end of the night. “Ya,” I replied, kind of surprised that he had even heard of them, and slightly proud to have my taste in music validated by one of my peers. Not having played this CD is a few years at this point, I was reminded of this band Sleater-Kinney for the first time in a while, and again, my curiosity was piqued. So, off I went to get my copy of 2005’s The Woods. Which, again, Spin had ranked in their list of Top Albums of the Year.

Now, most people love The Woods. So, you would think that this would be it for me as well. A few years longer than it should have taken, but love at last, right? Well, actually… I’m lukewarm on it. It has it’s moments, but if I'm being honest, I probably have it ranked as Sleater-Kinney’s 4th or 5th best album. And that’s as of today (spoiler alert: I eventually fall in love with the band and obsessively go through their entire catalogue). If I’m lukewarm on it today, imagine how I felt about it on first listen. Needless to say, not enough to get me tracking down all their old albums yet. Once again, I shrugged and moved on.

Then something magical happened. Around 2010, I stumbled randomly onto the song "One More Hour." And it absolutely devastated me. While that might not exactly be the textbook definition of ‘something magical happening’ to most people, it is to me. I love getting devastated by a song. Or, more accurately, I love having that strong of an emotional reaction to a song. Joy, devastation or otherwise. And, when I read the background story behind the song, that devastation only grew with each subsequent listening. Now it was unavoidable, I was 100% in on Sleater-Kinney, and I would soon know every square inch of their back catalogue. Every second of Dig Me Out. Every note of The Hot Rock. Even The Woods - when I say that I’m lukewarm on it, that is only in comparison to the rest of their albums (and I still ranked it 4th or 5th out of 8). One Beat, which hadn’t been enough to hold my attention back in 2002, was suddenly on an endless loop in my car. I gobbled up every verse. Every chorus. It had taken me far longer than it should have. In fact, I’m almost embarrassed to admit to the time lime of this written history. But hey, better late than never.

Or is it better to be late than never? What if you're too late?

You see, after the release and subsequent tour for The Woods, the band decided to call it quits. No more new albums. No more tours. No more anything. Had I fallen in love at first listen like I was supposed to back in 2002, I could have seen them then, or one last time in 2006, before they hung it up for good. Or any of a thousand shows in between. Instead, I was left with a bucket list concert to see, and no chance of ever seeing it. Better late than never, sure. But too late, none-the-less.

And then, as if to kick me while I was down, I discovered that one of the main stars of Portlandia (the one that wasn’t the guy from Saturday Night Live) had in a previous life been the guitarist and co-singer in Sleater-Kinney. The girl that wrote "One More Hour" was now writing and starring in one of my favourite TV Shows (yes, I know that it’s a Corin song, no need to correct me). Ugh. How awesome would it have been to see a live show now that I knew Carrie was the creative force behind two of my favourite things? Things that I had discovered and loved completely independent of each other, with no prior knowledge of their glorious common bond. It just wasn’t fair, dammit!

And then...

On October 21, 2014, they released a box set of their entire back catalogue on vinyl. Mine arrived in the mail on the 22nd. Sure, maybe I would never see them live, but the warmth that only a vinyl recording can provide was a fine silver medal for me that day. I opened it with great anticipation, an anticipation that, for perhaps the first time ever, was actually lower than it should have been, unbeknownst to me at the time. For you see, a funny thing happened when I opened that box set. Packed in neatly beside the poster and the book and all seven of their studio albums on glorious vinyl, there was a single 7” white 45 rpm record, with nothing but a couple of numbers scratched on it’s label.

1/20/15

I was confused. Those numbers meant nothing to me, and that 7” had not been listed as part of the box set when I had pre-ordered it several month’s prior. So, I took the dust cover off my turn table and set this mystery record down on the platter. In today’s day and age where everything gets leaked and all news is broken long before it is intended to be, what happened next when I lowered the needle down onto the wax came as a huge shock to me. A song started playing that I had never heard before. It was obviously a Sleater-Kinney track - their style was unmistakable - but what could it be? An old B-Side? Some rarity that I had never heard before, dug up and included in the box set in order to make it ‘definitive’? And then it clicked. 1/20/15. January 20, 2015. This was new Sleater-Kinney. They were coming back.

As you can imagine, the joy I felt that day was intense. Not just because I had new Sleater-Kinney to look forward to, but because of the way the news was delivered. It was like finding the ultimate prize inside a cereal box. And it had been a complete surprise. Not just to me, but to everyone. Which, again, is not easy to do in today’s day and age. So, you’d better believe, if there was going to be a tour announced as well, I sure as hell was going to be in the audience for at least one of the shows. There was no way I was going to risk this being a one-off album or a one-off tour. When the dates were announced, I looked up the closest show to me - Spokane - and set about pricing out the trip. When it was all said and done, I was looking at about $450, all-in. And that was if I did everything on the cheap.

Whatever. Any price was worth it to me at this point. And then I got this crazy idea: If I was going to pay at least $450 anyways, why not put that $450 towards a flight to Europe and go see them at a couple of their shows over there instead? So, I went online, starting entering dates and cities into Expedia and praying that something might match up. Berlin was out. London was out. Ireland was out. Paris was out. The flights were either too expensive, or the cities I could fly into for cheap were just too far away. Hope was dwindling.

Just as things were looking their bleakest, I struck gold. I could fly into Frankfurt on the 18th, back out on the 24th, and have plenty of time to drive to both the Amsterdam and Antwerp shows in between. And on top of it all, the flight was dirt cheap. I asked Jen if she wanted to join me, she said yes, and that was it. I couldn’t have booked it any faster, unless I had been able to harness the fingers of one of those bad actors that types so fast that it’s painfully obvious that they aren’t actually typing, and it becomes unintentional comedy gold. Especially if two actors do it on the same keyboard at the same time. Do writers even know how computers work?

And that my friends is the only reason that you’re reading this blog today. Because of Carrie. Because of Corin. Because of Janet. (photo credit for those three links to Abel Cruz at qromag.com, because my close ups all came out blurry.) Monk beer could wait. I could drive the Nürburgring whenever. But, if I wanted to follow Sleater-Kinney around Europe, it had to be now, or I risked missing my chance forever.

I’m not much for reviewing concerts in depth. Just know that they played pretty much every song* that I could have hoped for, and every second of it was glorious.

*Actually, they missed a couple of key ones for me. "You're No Rock n' Roll Fun" and “Sympathy” (I know, Dennis, I know) are the two that stick out the most. I looked up their set lists from the rest of the tour, and it looks like “Sympathy” was in the rotation a few times, so I'm sad to have missed out on one of those performances. That said, “Good Things” barely got played at all, and yet they played it at the Amsterdam show that we were at (the only time they played it on the whole European tour), and I would trade pretty much any song (except for "One More Hour") to have seen that one live, so all things considered, it was still as close to a perfect couple of nights as I could have asked for.