Night of live music lightens burden of past 18 months
The last time I saw a band in a small bar was nearly two years ago, in early November 2019.
It came on the eve of my spine surgery, and coupled with my requisite existential fretting about hospitals and procedures that might go awry, that night out with my daughter to catch Texas indie-pop act Dayglow was especially bittersweet.
The surgery was a success, but there were no more shows for me in the following weeks. The days, most of them spent trapped in my recliner, ran together. They didn’t end early so much as never really started.
It wasn’t until after the holidays that I began to feel like myself again. I was back in circulation.
Just in time for COVID-19.
Now here I am, finally back at a show on an early Sunday evening in the Rumba Cafe on Summit, joined by my wife and daughter.
We came to see a local band, The Secret Life of Houseplants, and another out of Brooklyn called Wild Pink. It was a dream show for a fan past the age of 50; a few hours of wistful indie rock, wrapped up neatly by 7:30 p.m.
After an early dinner at Harvest Pizzeria in Clintonville, we show our proof of vaccination at the Rumba’s door; I do not feel put-upon.
It’s one of those gigs that you love if you’re a fan, but I suspect must look quite different if you’re a musician. When the Houseplants take the stage, there are maybe a dozen of us watching.
The band’s shimmering guitar work, and covers of early New Order and The Smiths, make me a fan for life. But its own songs are the highlight, particularly, “Inspecting the City,” an ode to late Columbus Mayor Tom Moody and his infamous explanation after a middleof-the-night car crash during his final term in office.
The crowd has doubled by the time Wild Pink takes over.
My daughter notes approvingly that singer John Ross is wearing a Cocteau Twins T-shirt. She shares his and her father’s fine taste in music. We grab a table up front.
Early in the set, my back soaking up the vibrations coming through the wall, I realize how much I needed this. Months of anger, frustration and boredom wash away. I notice my mask only when I need to tug it down for an occasional swallow of beer.
That bittersweet feeling comes creeping back. Every lyric takes on new pandemic meaning, full of heartache and loss.
You thought you’d never get out, never get out...
Resilience and hope too, though.
You had so much angerand now you’re turning it around
There’s that sense you have at a good gig, where you feel that you and everyone there with you — the band, the fans, the bartenders, the sound guy, almost all of them strangers — are smack in the center of the universe, bathed in sound and illuminated by stage lights, while realizing in the same instant that the world outside is expanding.
The band finishes. My wife, the musician of the family and enamored by the band’s pedal steel guitar, chats up the guitarist. I join the small line for merch and add two more records to my far-too-large vinyl collection. My daughter will later share happily that the band had seen and liked her post on Instagram.
The three of us walk down Summit to the car. We drive south through Downtown, and in my head I’m singing, “Inspecting the City,” finding in its lyrics not the tale of Mayor Moody’s late-night debacle but something else entirely.
In moments of your crisisremember nothing lasts forever. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker