The Juice was Worth the Squeeze
September 9, 2021: I go to my first concert in eighteen months and I just can't keep my shit together.
What with the orange and brown sky
Poisoned by traveling plumes of smoke
From the wildfires in California
And the pandemic—
Well, everywhere
I had barely left my apartment in months
So how is it that tonight I’m sitting dead center
Upon a plush red velvet cushion
In a 2,700-seat theater with matching red walls
Adjacent to Reno’s newest and biggest casino?
Yet I’m completely out of control
Crying elephant tears—
Positively wailing in fact
But no one can hear me
Because music is roaring through the theater
A particular kind of music
A big band fusion experiment from Los Angeles:
Think Count Basie meets Fiona Apple—
Or something like that
My darling squeezes my hand
She’s sitting right next to me
Equally bewildered that we’re at a huge concert
For the first time since the pandemic
Amazed that we even put on clothes—
Or left the house for fuck’s sake
But tonight we’re doing it like we used to do it
Three to five nights a week
She donned a mid-length swing dress—
Cherry red
Cream on white suede vintage reproduction shoes
Paired with a tiny black leather bomber
Like Amelia Earhart showing up for a USO concert—
On a fucking Harley
Before we left the house I called her Bad Sandy—
You know, from Grease
And who do you think you are, Frankie Valli?
See we understand one another
So well in fact
That she doesn’t need to ask me why I’m sobbing
She already knows
She sees me in a way that makes me wonder—
If we even need to talk at all
She understands that this is more than just any old concert
I mean it’s big deal for a lot of reasons
One being that we fell in love a month before the world ended
So we’ve been dating for almost two years
But we’ve only been on a few dates
A couple weeks ago our big night out—
You know at 8:30pm on a Tuesday
Was going to Raley’s
(That’s a supermarket)
And buying all the exotic flora and fauna
Not offered by our weekly grocery delivery service
The only other people there
Were adorable couples
Running around the store
Holding hands—
And probably doing the same damn thing
So okay this is a special date
But it’s also a project
One of my biggest faults it seems—
Because it comes up in every performance review
Is that I take my work too seriously
Like why does everything have to be so personal?
Well because if I think it’s worth doing
If I actually give a fuck
If I’m going to invest my time in it
Then yes I’m gonna take it personal
In fact I’m gonna make it personal
And this night wasn’t just a concert
It was a project—
A personal project
I guess it began in 2017
When I first discovered Lizzy & The Triggermen at Dapper Day
Where people as crazy as (or crazier than) me get dressed up
And invade Disneyland
A place where—
If you open your ears
You’ll hear both live and recorded swing music
Playing just about everywhere—
Especially so on Dapper Day
Plus purveyors of vintage clothing and products
Filled a large hall in the convention center
Which also featured a stage and parquet dance floor
Where I lindy hopped to several songs by Lizzy and her band
It was too crowded to dance—
At least not very well
But the music—
Oh my god the music
Between sets Lizzy did a sneaky wardrobe change
From a shimmering floor-length sequined gown
Into a blue velvet romper
We started to chit-chat side stage
About clothes
And dance
And music—
You know the usual shit
But also about how great it would be
To get her band up to San Francisco
As the months went by
We even had a few chances to make that happen
You know before the world ended
Nothing ever panned out
But Lizzy and I stayed in touch
I drove down to Los Angeles a handful of times
And danced to Lizzy & The Triggermen at Clifton’s
And The Edison
And the El Rey
They also played big shows at The Wiltern
And The Troubadour—
Some of LA’s most fabled venues
And then the world ended
But I’m not one for giving up
Taking this personally, you know
So I connected Lizzy to a team of creative and technical types
As we attempted to build a massive live streaming platform
You know to bring live concerts
Into your living room
Without asking some obvious questions:
Like do people actually want to watch concerts—
In their living rooms?
We got pretty close
To having a live streamed Lizzy show
But things kind of fell apart
And people got frustrated and left
Including Lizzy and me
She had invested an enormous amount
Of her time and energy—
For nothing
She takes things personally too
That much is obvious
So I called Lizzy one day—
After the live streaming thing fizzled
She wanted to record a new song
And I asked her how much it would cost—
For studio time
And to pay the musicians
(It’s a big band)
She gave me a number
But I took it kinda personal
And sent her almost five times what she asked for
And that’s why I’m sitting in this enormous theater
Red carpet
Red walls
Red velvet seats
Dressed like Frankie Valli
Holding hands with Bad Sandy
Elephant tears tumbling down my cheeks
And leaking into my valveless KN-95 mask
Having financed Lizzy’s latest recording—
And part of this mini tour
I’m having this deep personal moment
Like something I helped out is taking on a life of its own
But I’m also noticing something else happening
And it’s making me feel like I’m not alone—
Not in the slightest
Jerry Garcia once said something about how
Once a note leaves the musician’s body
It belongs not to the musician but to anyone—
To everyone
Free for the taking
But this is not that
See Lizzy is taking
Just as much as she is giving
Growling and wailing her way through an original:
I’m Out of Your League
The searing energy of her voice
Backed by a horn and reed section so precise
That it sounds like one instrument
Coupled with a backline so tight—
But not tight enough for Sam Rocha
Who picks up his doghouse bass
And moves even closer to the drummer
Mid-song—
To make it tighter
Good bands give the gift of music to their audiences
Like Jerry Garcia said
But great bands don’t give a goddamn thing
They take from the audience
They suck out their very souls
Swallow them whole
Swirl them around in their bellies
And spit them back out at the end
Leaving them changed forever
You can’t un-watch or un-hear a show like this
There’s no going back
Not tonight
See Lizzy & The Triggermen were opening for Squeeze
When the house lights went down—
By then all three orchestra sections were already full
Of people who wanted to see the main act
But now as Lizzy raises her right arm
Triumphantly conducting her band through the final coda
The whole goddamn place erupts
Into a unanimous standing ovation
Squinting through my tears
I try to watch
A thousand Squeeze fans in Reno
On their feet
For a Los Angeles big band—
They’ve never heard of
After the show we try to say hello to Lizzy at the merch table
But she’s swarmed by boomers—
A little too young for original big band swing
But a little too old for the great swing revival of the 90s
They all have the same conversation with Lizzy
Something like:
I don’t know what the hell I just heard
But it changed my life
And it changed mine
Too