This weekend was the 19th annual Bridge School Benefit Concert, at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View.
Bridge School seems to draw a vastly different lineup every year. This year was the Year of the Fogey. Neil Young was opening, like he does every year (Bridge School is his pet project) and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were closing. In between were Los Lobos, who I used to love when I was a little kid, Emmy Lou Harris, John Mellencamp, and a couple other acts, including the newer groups Good Charlotte (personally I think they should be forced to rename themselves into Not That Bad Charlotte until they come up with some killer songs) and Bright Eyes.
The reason I say that Bridge School is quite meta is that it involves a lot of experiences that aren’t really immediate and are more based on evoking some other feeling… like the first time you heard Ohio, tripping in the back of a VW bus down by the river. New songs? We haven’t heard of those. Except for Mellencamp, who had not one, but two political protest songs that are probably the least poetic songs in the history of folk rock. Fucker. I hate you now. ‘This is the first time in six years that I’ve smelled freedom in this country,’ my ass. What? Are you psychic? Did you actually start hating the Bush presidency before, you know, there was a GOD DAMN ELECTION? Fuck off.
Anyway, there was nothing at Bridge School that could compare with Vanilla Ice’s performance of the Ninja Rap, but I think that selling out is on the rise again, and maybe Ice is going to lose his record. I say this because Emmy Lou Harris came out on stage to sing with Bright Eyes (who, by the way, are essentially the polar opposite of the White Stripes; when the White Stripes play, you find yourself wondering where all the extra musicians must be hiding, because you are hearing way more than two people could possibly produce, but when Bright Eyes play, it’s like, how can you possibly need SEVEN GODDAMN PEOPLE to play this song?) and she was reading the words during the song. I mean that as literally as it can be said: she had on her reading glasses, and she was holding a sheet of paper with the words, often holding her breath for the first part of the line and then joining in, because she didn’t really know the melody. Wow. Yeah, Emmy Lou. You’re hip. You’re with it. Young people are totally going to find you relevant in their lives. Oh yeah, you also brought out Linda Ronstadt to randomly sing with you for one song as a ’surprise’. Nothing gets a bunch of aging hippies harder than a cheap cameo from several decades ago.
Speaking of age disparity, I thought it was funny that the only people smoking pot were over 50. I’m sure Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were quite a bunch of dangerous, revolutionary hooligans in their day, but the only young people who listen to them are complete squares like me. Funny how the times change. Also, my girlfriend’s dad was at the show (this guy is older than dirt, but cooler than Freon in Fresno) and, while me and the ladyfriend just brought some iced tea, Old Man Dodson snuck in a big-ass flask of brandy. I can’t decide whether I should keep doing the ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Dodson, I’m a swell, upstanding guy who will take good care of your precious angel’ shtick, or just grab a shot glass and ask him to pass the vodka.
Winner for the ’surprisingly least-powered-by-nostalgaia’ moment was Jerry Lee Lewis. I had no nostalgaia for him, because frankly, I didn’t even know he was still alive. But good god, the man can wail. Man. I wonder if I can score a copy of him covering You Win Again. Hank Williams never sounded so good. And yeah, he played Great Balls of Fire, and it was incredible, and the crowd knew it. People got up off their asses and shook it, and I’ll be damned if the Killer didn’t get ten times the applause that Neil Young and his folk-ass band drew. And now, for the rest of my life, I can say that Alexis and I shook our asses with Jerry Lee Lewis. Damn.