All I wanted to do was catch yet another bucket list concert this summer, but dammit, the Boomers beat me up.
To keep it 100? Just gimme the spry and still shit-talking 72-year-old Chrissie Hynde, man she sounded great, and her new formation of the band—Pete Farndon, and James Honeyman-Scott have both passed, and Martin Chambers has left—to play that loud and ripping debut record Pretenders from 1980, front to back, and I’m good.
But concerts don’t work that way… an artist has a certain set and a specific way they want to work through it. To Hynde’s credit, the new line-up featuring bassist Nick Wilkinson, lead guitarist James Walbourne, and Kris Sonne on drums is pretty rocking despite Walbourne’s affinity for turning every guitar break into a 5-7-minute showcase. Hey buddy. you’re on Chrissie Hynde’s stage, not Led Zep’s. Why do you even need long guitar solos for post-punk?
Anyway.
As much as I might have agreed with the older gentlemen to my far left, who kept on shouting at every pause in the show “Tattooed Love Boys” (that’s my joint too), Hynde is not a jukebox, Holmes.
Which speaks specifically to the crowd at hand. Lemme tell ya, Boomers are the worst. And my folks are Boomers, but I’m not talking about elderly Black folk.
Nope.
Metal shows? The patrons are some of the sweetest people who will carry wheelchairs through the audience and everything. Old school hip-hop shows? Folks are out to have a good time. Nobody is about to pay good money to partake, witness, and engage in foolishness.
Those shows are all about the love.
But the Boomers at this show? And I say this with all the tolerance and respect I can muster for that generation that came before….. They are the most entitled crowd there is.
That’s who showed up in droves, clad in brand new Levi’s jeans and Hoka shoes, to see The Pretenders at SF Masonic on Tuesday, August 13.
In a 90-minute set, where Hynde, who sounds peak career voice-wise, and the crew played discography hopscotch with the selection. “Kid,” which was dedicated at the show to Honeyman-Scott, got played early, and “Precious” closer to 10pm.
The band’s 40-year discography includes 12 studio albums, from the beginnings of post-punk to the middle of the road rock and beyond, so they had plenty to pull from.
But at this performance, they stayed right around those radio-friendly hits, MTV hot spots, and things commercially suited to fill stadiums across the continent.
What’s celebratory is just as disappointing though. This configuration, a rocket ship of a band with not a mothball on them, could have easily handled the ruff-and-tumble early punk-sounding joints that Hynde and that first outfit are known for worldwide. When they did, finally, get around to “Precious” after hitting stadium rock swayers “Talk of The Town”, and “Back on The Chain Gang” (an ode to the traumatic loss after her bandmate and former lover Honeyman-Scott died from a drug overdose in 1982) and “My City Was Gone”, it still had those teeth, that bite. Hynde’s not done yet.
But the undercard played out in the trenches.
Between Hynde arguing, playfully I believe, with someone in the front row commenting on what should come next, “It’s all pop music, man,” she reassured the active participant, to patrons in my row, dropping phones, finding phones, turning phone lights on while making calls, which prompted other boomers to shout at those boomers, “turn off your damn phone.”
People standing on the aisle steps, obstructing the view, excited people taking selfies during the show. At one point, I was trying to get an opinion from the woman standing next to me on what she thought of the guitarist’s tendency to stretch every damn solo out when, from behind me, emerged: “CAN’T WE STOP THE TALKING AND JUST ENJOY THE CONCERT?” As I glared at the Karen, mustering up all the control in my body possible, that woman, the compadre standing next to me on the left just gave me the “She’s a well, you know” face, and I went back to Hynde’s spooky rendition of Grace Jones’ “Private Life”—who had just performed at Outside Lands the previous weekend.
As a way of acknowledging the crowd’s lack of patience just after 10pm, Hynde announces: “You’re such a lovely audience. What would you like to hear?” And before anyone can muster a response, ‘Back on The Chain Gang’ begins and all the phones come out.
I give my audience member to my left the “get home safe look,” turn around and let the Karen know, She’s a Karen, and exit posthaste.
DRUGDEALER
No matter the tier of talent, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus is a common song structure, also known as ABABCB form. But it’s what you do within those lines that sets you apart. Michael Collins, aka Drugdealer, has this pervasive style of writing songs that tracks as Steely Dan with folkie friends—like Weyes Blood, Jackson MacIntosh, or Kate Bollinger. But even without those more popular known elements of chill, he still puts together these song systems. Remnants from that terrestrial FM station that no longer blows in the breeze.
It’s a raspy, lived-in voice. Like one you’d hear in a Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, or Walter Mosely novel. But even if Collins is not singing, you can still hear the story in the selected vocalist’s presentation.
That’s talent, Jack.
I was relieving myself in The Chapel restroom a couple of years ago during (of course) a Vinyl Williams show, gazing up at the Drugdealer psychedelic concert poster advertising a Halloween show that I knew I wasn’t going to be in town for, but checked it in my head.
Next time for sure.
So it’s August 16, a typical Friday night in the Mission… I have high hopes but am quite aware of the neighborhood’s behavior on a bridge and tunnel type of night.
Rookies. You know what it is.
As I get into the Chapel, my man Raffa at the ticket booth tells me the capacity is holding strong at around 400, which means people are here for the second night of the Drugdealer two-night stand.
Homeboy pulls people. Good sign.
By the time they get on stage—there is a long pause between opener Color Green and the Drugdealer band—Collins, a little bleary-eyed, wearing a hat (he claims he shaved the top of his head—fun times in SF) gets behind the keyboard.
Lets the crowd know he bought the shirt he is wearing that night at CTS, Community Thrift (that’d be right up the block on Valencia), and that he’s currently living in the UK and the band is staying at an Airbnb in the Embarcadero on a little work trip to get out of Los Angeles.
Collins is very charismatic, has his on-stage persona schtick together, and then the band kicks in. Now there are always stories about how LA has the most lethal session musicians in the country. I dunno if these cats are session cats, but they can burn. Especially guitarist Mikey Long, who is lethal with that “get in, turn up, and get out” solo axe sharpness. Every song, he knows his spots, knows where to accent, and then bows out. The dude is a pro.
The vocalist Sedona takes over the vocals on the Kate Bollinger feature “Pictures of You,” which just cut through the audience, with couples making out in the back and folks dancing in the front. It’s a catchy bop, built on the chill psychedelic tip. And that’s the stuff Collins should be having a fully formed career off of. If everybody could write like that, these types of warm ’70s-tinged tracks would be more ordinary. But then again, maybe not; Spotify doesn’t do much for those warm thumpers.
In any event, the rendition was a moment; bleary-eyed or not, Collins, playing more keyboard, getting his Donald Fagen on, led his five-piece ensemble through an evening of sometimes disorganized modal pop blues.
Can’t wait to catch them again.
