Silver Jews, The Bluebird Nightclub 4.14.2006

There’s no better way to establish a mythic rock presence than to resist public appearance while continuing to issue uncompromising, obtuse, and often brilliant music. That’s been the case with the Silver Jews’ David Berman for the past decade and a half, and it was great to witness a manifestation of the devotion he’s accumulated last night, when the Jews played their eleventh live show ever at Bloomington’s Bluebird Nightclub. The turnout was, in my estimation, divided between the die-hards and those aware of the die-hards. I put myself in between the two—I really like the Jews, but can’t sing along to everything. Which is fine, because the majority of the crowd took care of that for me. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a group of fans as reverent as those I saw last night—the first few notes of each song would spur the recognition, which was then followed by fist-pumps and shared glances between mutual devotees who probably hadn’t met before, but no doubt felt a kinship when they could sing along to “Smith and Jones Forever” for the first time, well, in forever. And then there was that guy; we all know him—the guy that just absolutely can’t believe what he’s seeing and has to get communal with every person he sees. His shirt was off for a while (below), and then it got put back on, but backwards. I’m pretty sure he tried to grab my girlfriend’s boob at one point, too. Shit, I think he grabbed my boob a few times.

The band’s stage presence aptly represented the ideal I’ve always had of Berman’s music—highly literate rural folklore with prominent religious overtones, related in monotone both deathly serious and darkly ironic by a man much more confident in what he’s left on the page than in his ability to deliver it live. Berman and his two guitarists were dressed in shabby, dark blazers—Berman in a full suit with visible stitching—which set absolutely luminous bassist Cassie (whose entire immediate family, it seemed, was in attendance), dressed in a bright red mini-skirt, apart from the rest, to say the least.

Which was more than fine with Berman, I’m assuming. He also had a music stand with his lyric sheets, no doubt another prop to hide behind as much as a reminder of the words he needed to sing, next to the microphone that he’d frequently squish into his face between verses, another probably unconscious gesture of exhaustion that only made me like him much, much more. While performing, he would furrow his brow and squint at the pages, as if he still couldn’t believe he’d written what he did.

By the end of the show, though, Berman had gotten comfortable enough to set the stand aside, allowing a full view of a mesmerizing performance of “There Is A Place” (mp3), the lead break of which saw him running around the stage, finding any paper-based souvenir to toss into the crowd, leaving devotees with tangible evidence of what they’d witnessed. And which ended with eventually crouching at the front of the stage, screaming the phrase “I saw God’s shadow on the world!” into the microphone he was now clutching as if letting go of it would mean the end.

The rest of the songs hewed closely to the setlists from the prior ten shows on this tour (For details, etc., check this guy out. Big fan.), and along with “Place” and “Smith and Jones”, I was able to distinguish “Trains Across the Sea”, “Dallas”, “How to Rent a Room”, personal favorite “Pet Politics” (mp3) and, of course several from last year’s Tanglewood Numbers, including “Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed”, “Animal Shapes”, “I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You”, and a fucking amazingly delivered version of “Punks in the Beerlight”, which has so much more power when performed in front of the people the lyrics describe with such potent grace. The line “Adam and Eve were Jews” from that song, along with “Adam was not the first man, although the Bible tells us so” from “Pet Politics” have a different meaning after last night’s show—they’ve always been a way for Berman to vocalize his idea of a parallel creationism, but actually seeing him perform it in full rustic preacher/boho tramp garb, with his stoic, resplendent wife at his side, transfigured it into something completely different, and, dare I say, moving.
(More pictures to come…)

Filed under: bloomingtopia  concert  Forrest  Silver Jews  The Bluebird