Sebadoh - Whelans

I'm a solitary kinda fella. Mainly I think because i) I'm not a Catholic, ii) I grew up in the countryside and iii) I'm the eldest of 2 and the age gap between my sister and I is such that it's only since she went to college that we've been able to relate properly and move away from the me as dickish big brother/her as annoying little sister dynamic.

But mostly it's the first 2. There's not all that many Church Of Ireland folk around and consequently not a great number of schools that have their religious hang ups based on the Anglican ethos so those that do tend to draw kids from a large catchment area. And of those few kids my age that did live around me, almost none of them I knew from school so I wound up keeping to myself a lot; reading, hammering a football against a garage wall, playing games on my C64 and watching TV.

This lack of contact had a number of consequences. I've got a vast swath of Hardy Boys books ticked off on my "read list"*, I used to have a decent first touch and could finish well but couldn't beat a defender for shit, I've got an unhealthy feeling of nostalgia for "Way Of The Exploding Fist" and I apparently, to some, speak with a slight American accent which often confuses folk when they learn that I'm actually from Kildare. Though I suspect that may be more to do with the fact that I can pronounce "th" properly. They taught it to me in school during the time saved in R.E. classes not discussing the divinity of Mary, also I say "dude" a lot.

But you fall into habits and I got used to not talking to people so I stayed fairly quiet where possible in secondary school (again Prod but this time even further away and with an even wider catchment area) and for much of college (TCD, so I suppose Protestant again but I believe they've done away with the rule that states if you are looking out of a certain window in front square you can shoot a Catholic cleric with a crossbow). In fact one of my now closest friends who did the same course as me told me a couple of years ago that until he heard me ask him a question about halfway through our second year he suspected that I may in fact have been mute. Though that was in part due to the fact that by that point I'd begun to have panic attacks when faced with the prospect of having to deal with social situations. Even now I hate making smalltalk and often find myself feeling profoundly uncomfortable when chatting to people that I don't know that well.

But going back to my teens, my musically formative years. I missed out on the experience of sharing new music with my mates, obsessively listening to some cool new discovery and furiously discussing it and trying to one up them by turning them on to something great that they'd not heard before, at least that's how I'm led to believe that these things are supposed to work. Nor had I a clued in older brother type to contemptuously dismiss whatever it was that I was listening to at the time (for the most part mainstream Britpop) and shove a copy of Daydream Nation or Loveless in my hand and make me throw away that first Garbage record. This means that up until the last couple of years there's been a giant 90's US indie sized hole in my musical knowledge that with the disgracefully recent broadband enabling of my sub-suburban home I've only recently had the chance to fill.

All the above is basically a long preamble saying that I've not listened to all that much Sebadoh apart from III and Harmacy and my knowledge of their mythology is some possibly inaccurate idea that it's what Lou Barlow did when he got pissed off about not being able to get his songs played with "Asperger Jr." and also an explanation as to why I'm not going to write "well they played this off of this and it was cool but I'd have liked to have heard something else off of something else". I basically know jack-shit. Christ I didn't even realise they swapped instruments and that all 3 of them sang their own songs until it happened, and the significance of Eric Gaffney's return to the band is somewhat lost on me.

But boy, did they kick my arse last night. My cool uncle is a painter so it's not really appropriate to drag out that tired old cliche but as I have a cool third cousin who is a Mezzo-Soprano who was I understand, as a member of the La Scala company for many years, of some repute (lovely lady Marjorie but terribly eccentric, one time about 15 years ago she visited with my family and insisted that my dad drive her to U2's studio near Pearse St. because "that boy can't sing, he doesn't know how to breath") so I'll go for that one. The trio of cool third boy cousins I never had and always wanted played 30 or so songs touching on material from all lineups and eras of the band (apparently, like I fucking know) with all 3 rotating into the frontman role and displaying completely different ways to handle being the focus of the crowd. Gaffney threw all manner of shapes around the stage as he played and was otherwise witty and glib though it was hard to tell if some of his sarcastic comments were good natured ribs about the fact that the 3 of them were back together after 14 years or massively passive aggresive; Barlow, dry and just likable in general when not wringing a furious racket out of a Martin acoustic strung with only 4 string; and Jason Lowenstein didn't say much and seemed content to sing his songs.

By my standards I've not actually been to that many gigs in the past few months (though that will certainly be rectified in the next 8 weeks) but I don't think I've enjoyed a gig more this year than I did last night's.

Oh, a quick note on openers Bats as I know that one of my companions from last night is planning on doing something a bit more in depth on them but after a year of hearing their name being mentioned over and over I finally got the chance to catch, and be hugely impressed by them. The label of "prog-metal" that I'd heard attached to them had put me off checking them out but I think the description I saw on thumped today was far more accurate, "it was like there was a metal band on the right hand side of the stage and a hardcore band on the left hand side".

* I don't actually have a "read list" any Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies I have don't extend that far.