Have you ever had a Saturday schedule so empty and lame that you wondered if you could possibly squeeze two naps into it just to spice things up a little bit?
I found myself starring right down the barrel of one such Saturday just this past weekend. I get to have my children stay with me every other Saturday and Sunday. This was not my weekend. A quick scroll through Facebook revealed that my friends were all either out of town or otherwise engaged. Fun was being had, but not by me.
When I came across a status update from Foxy Shazam, I immediately remembered that that night was the CD release party for the band’s new album, The Church of Rock & Roll. This was the same band that I had previously set out to see live, only to be chagrined by the concert selling out before I could purchase my tickets.
A couple of quick Google searches let me know: A) that there were still tickets available, and B) that a trip to the band’s hometown of Cincinnati would take about four hours. With a couple of texts, I was able to procure a couch to sleep on after the show, and convince myself that it was an idea of real merit, if not brilliance.
Before I could even talk my myself out of it, I was cruising down the interstate on a pilgrimage to the Church of Rock & Roll.
The live experience was everything that I could have hoped for. While I expected to be (by far) the oldest and least hip person at the venue, I pleasantly discovered that I was neither. There was a huge mix of Foxy faithful in the crowd, and I quickly felt right at home among my fellow parishioners.
This was no church, at least not in the sense that a church has a steeple, pews, a pulpit, and stained glass. But it was a church in the sense that there was a throng of people expecting to be changed, a charismatic leader to be listened to, rapturous music, and folks collecting money to help with the good works being done.
By the time they played this song, I couldn’t be sure if I was really in a church or a concert hall:
Because of the lighting, none of my pictures really turned out. However, this spectacular failure did yield one fascinatingly appropriate image.
The guys put on a categorically amazing show. Sky (with his crazy long beard), stood on top of his keyboard, stomping the keys right along with the song. Daisy spent a good 30 seconds balancing his bass, upside-down, on his fingertips, in the middle of another song. The horn player, Alex, when he wasn’t swinging it around wildly, managed to toss his trumpet at least 20 feet up into the air… and catch it in time to blast a high C, right on the beat.
But it was Eric Nally, as I expected, who ruled the show.
There were the standard head bangs and stage dives, and even a bit of miming an archer with his arrows. While I can’t recall all of his antics that night, I am sure that he gave a few displays of his mic trick, and even told some crazy half-relevent stories to segue between songs. But the most memorable moment happened when he solicited the crowd for a cigarette, was subsequently showered with a few dozen of them, further requested a lighter, took five of the cigarettes, lit them, sucked in a couple of puffs, then proceeded to eat them. All of them. While still lit. Filters and all.
If you can’t believe that, perhaps this YouTube video from an earlier show might act as Exhibit A:
You even get a glimpse of Sky on the keyboards with that one.
By the end of the night, I no longer wondered if I had made the right choice in coming.
This was an experience that I hadn’t had since college.
It was a rebirth into a scene that I had once been fully fluent in.
While much of my former life is still smoldering in ash… I believe that a phoenix may rise just yet.
It was now official… I had been baptized into the Church of Rock & Roll. And oh, how sweet it is to be saved…
