How I Burn
The Afghan Whigs and the Church at the Fillmore, July 9, 2024
I was driving into the City on the 101 and the traffic report blamed the Bay Area-wide road jam on the Missy Elliott concert at Oracle and the Blink 182 concert at the Chase Center. What fresh hell, I thought, as I inched along past hospital curve. God. It's as if the entire region is now awash with live music from the 1990s....because it was. But I was so glad to be heading to the Fillmore on the other side of town, to see my own 90s obsession, the Afghan Whigs and the Church. I felt blessed.
See, the Afghan Whigs are my favorite band of all time ever. That might surprise you, because I don't really talk about them, in the same way I don't talk or write that much about my love of diving. Nothing I could write would make anyone want to do high diving, and in the same way, I can't think of the words to convince people to like the Afghan Whigs. Nor do I even want them too, in the same way I wouldn't want someone to fall in love with a man I was in love with. That would just complicate things.
How do you write about true love, anyway? Come to think of it, how do you write about music? Because at their best, to me, those things are one and the same.
That's at their best ,though. They are often at their worst, when it's easier to articulate the issues. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, ever since seeing Megan The Stallion, a show which kicked me mentally out of the magic circle, and also since reading a comment on a private Facebook group that complained that today's music writers never write about MUSIC. Rather, the complainant wrote, they write about everything else: the artist, the lyrics, the business, the show, bla bla bla.
When I read that, I thought, yes, and thank the lord. Because writing about music, qua music, is idiotic. I can't explain to you why I love the Afghan Whigs - nor why I hate Blink 182 - but it certainly isn't to do with either band's musicality. After all, many bands use the same chords as these bands. I mean, I guess I could try to describe my love of the Whigs sound and rhythm, and it may well be that I innately just I like songs at this tempo, that often use minor keys that rocket into 7ths, and singers who can pitch both low and high...but, if that were all it was, then why don't I like Echo and the Bunnymen, or Beck, a little better?
Just for example.
I think we can all agree that what we like best in songs, and music, is related to our memories of when we heard them, but even that doesn't go far enough to explain it. During the Church's set, Ned told me he remembered the first time he heard the song "Reptile," it was while he was mowing the lawn - but his lovely memory isn't my memory, and anyway, something must have arrested him, mid-mow, to capture his love of the Church, and it surely wasn't the grass.
Memories do help though. In 2017, I stole away from a family vacation, boarded a plane, and saw the Afghan Whigs play a teeny tiny show at a commune in Vienna, and it goes without saying that night is a cherished memory for me. I keep the sundress I wore that night sacrosanct on a hanger in my closet, right next to the one I wore I to see Fugazi. At the Tiergarten. In 1991.
You don't actually have to fly to Austria to have a good time at a show though. You can just sneak away from your house, which is what I did the other night. I know it's not for everyone, but me: I like to go to shows alone, at least if I love the band as much as I love this one. The Fillmore is a great place for that too. There are cuttings of old rock criticism decoupaged to the table tops to read, and a vast poster display of previous shows which, though it no longer thrills me to look at them, is fun to hear people walking up and down and reminiscing about.
Anyway, my thing is: I am never alone with a notebook, and I had one in my handbag. However, this was for naught because my pen had run out of ink. I looked around despairingly, since we live in an era when it is unlikely that anyone has a pen on them. Finally, I bethought to myself, maybe the coat check person has one, and I went to the window and said dejectedly to the cute young girl behind it, "I have a question."
The girl in the booth looked up.
Me: "Um. Are you my student?"
Of course that wasn't my real question but luckily she was my real student, and therefore was happy to give me her only pen. Score!
Even without that bonus, it was very nice to see her, but I wondered if she was looking around at everyone in the room thinking how old and grey and tired we all were. Veronica works at the radio station on campus and says she loves all music, but could she - or even you -- possibly enter into the loveliness of my love of these loves, that is, these incredibly special bands? The places I've seen them, the thoughts I've had about them, the actual, literal, sounds they have put into my head...I hear them with my heart, not my ears, and I just can't believe that she could ever, ever, know. And I can't explain. Honestly, it's like an unspeakable SECRET how much I love these bands, like one's internal monologue, or one's sex life, almost. Something you can't articulate in actual, outloud, language.
Yes. It's not up for discussion. Truly, I love the Afghan Whigs so much I will draw a veil over the next two hours. In fact, I refuse to tell you what it was like, because it happened in my heart as much as it happened on stage. Suffice to say that the Whigs played all my favorite songs and then some, like when "66" segued into "Little Red Corvette", but even that is probably saying too much. It's MY heart and MY secret and MY memories, and mere words don't do it justice.
Then I went back to my (bad) seat in the balcony to wait for the Church, another band I like a lot, and I spent the down time thinking about how cute my outfit was while I stared at people as they stared at the posters behind my head. (Given the intense interest, I thought I must be next to something very iconic, but when I turned around it was just a poster of Calexico.) A little while later, I was standing by the merch table and one of the Afghan Whigs' band members came over and started sort of joshing me into buying something, and I said, "The problem is, I am so short sighted, I can't see it," and he whipped out his reading glasses and lent them to me so I could take a closer look. This was nice of him, but it was also a little absurd, because I have to tell you that when I first saw this band one thousand years ago during the actual Stone Age on some tiny sweaty stage like at the Kennel Club or the Bottom of the Hill, I did not expect to be lent their reading glasses or anything like that.
And as I stood there chatting with this age-appropriate person, I suddenly caught a glimpse of Veronica, over by the hat check, and blushed a little, thinking about our agedness. And I remembered one of my other students, Jack, coming to class the other day and saying, he was only half there because he'd seen Blink 182 at So Fi stadium and it was so incredible that he was still vibrating.
Part of me thought, oh yes, little Jack, I know just what you mean, but at the same time, I also couldn't get over how happy I was to be at the Fillmore, and not at the SoFi center or it's horrid equivalent the Chase Center, seeing Blink. It is truly unthinkable to me that Jack could have had as much fun at his show as I had here, even though rationally I know that he did indeed, and that his memories are now stored in HIS heart and are not for me to intrude upon.
One thing Jack won't have, though, is an opportunity to see his favorite band at the Fillmore when he is my age. He won't have the pleasure of walking into a room and feeling like he is being hugged in a warm sonic embrace by old friends whom he happens to have never met, because by that time all the members of Blink 182 will be dead and buried. As will be I, and as will be the Afghan Whigs. There's a saying my mom used to utter whenever I complained that my baby wouldn’t nap, and that was, 'The days are long but the years are short,' and isn't that just the truth? When I see the Afghan Whigs, the days and the years become as one, it's as if I alone have beaten back those proverbial boats, and I am borne ceaselessly, not into the past, but into the here and now. I am borne.
This is so good! You articulate things about this band (and music) that I have not read before and I am so happy I was forwarded this post. Subscribed!
Thanks for the beautiful story. It's hard to explain why certain bands resonate but I try from time to time. I once noted that both Creedence Clearwater Revival and Los Lobos wore plaid work shirts on stage. Maybe that's why.