Cripsy Duck's view from Charlottesville - 4.22.01

There it was, Dave-Day, April 21, 2001-- due date for the historic deflowering of U.Va.'s football stadium by Charlottesville's prodigal popstars, the Dave Matthews Band-- when that most wholesome of unlikely superheroes would bring stadium rock to a venue stubbornly reserved for the not-so-friendly bouts of pigskin rivalry that regularly leave surrounding neighborhoods littered with tailgate-party-twisted, pissed off and unmanageable college alums, football enthusiasts and their glorious refuse.

The neighborhood, fearing concert craziness would surely exceed sports insanity, collectively braced itself for the worst. It never came.

In fact, from where I live-- not four blocks from the stadium-- you'd have hardly known a major rock spectacle was taking place. Unlike football games, which attract the silliest form of drunks known to man (next to Marines on furlough, of course)-- people who spend full days throwing trash in my yard, blasting stereos out of their ridiculously adorned SUV's and yelling at each other in overbearing sports enthusiast-type voices-- the DMB brought in a relatively well-behaved crowd of middle-class kids. 45,000 of them. A meeting of the Southern Christian Coalition couldn't have been much more low-key.

Sure, there was some partying and a bit of unsightly trash accumulation along the road in front of the Beta house (Dudes-- that's what pledges are for...), but even the party at 1912 Stadium Rd-- where Neil Young suggested the entire stadium visit after the show (who put him up to that?)-- was relatively mellow when I rolled by.

It was a righteous event flawlessly executed in grand style by a crew who at this point are at the absolute top of their game-- business-wise.

Musically, I wasn't so convinced that this was the most fun Dave and co. have had playing a concert-- scruffy-faced Matthews seemed occasionally at odds with himself, alternately ruling the dance with his shamanic shimmy and then looking lonely like a prisoner in a multi-million dollar gilded cage, remarking at one point that he was "a little afraid being home so you gotta forgive me if I act a little stupid."

I can imagine his trepidation: first time playing "home" in half a decade, coupled with the first night of a new tour, topped off by the fact that this was the first rock concert ever thrown at Scott Stadium. The pressure had to be pretty intense. If anything went wrong, you know who everybody would blame... that's right, the scruffy guy with the guitar and his name on the tickets. But, other than regularly resounding choruses belted-out by a relatively tone-deaf audience-- nothing went wrong.

The band rolled through a show dominated by newer material, commencing with a bright and fiery "Two Step," followed by a rendition of "So Much To Say" that seemed a click or two slow but segued nicely into a ripping "Too Much."

The monolithic stage looked like a massive psychedleic terrarium with huge lava lamp tubes and strange fungal set pieces that I never could figure out. (Magic mushroom clouds, maybe?) Two giant screens flashed unending images of the band, so that even from the highest altititude nose bleed seats you could catch Dave firing a Spock eyebrow at Leroi Moore (who looked dazzling as usual in his Captain America t-shirt) or smiling wildly like a man about to drool uncontrollably onto his instrument.

Security was omnipresent and absolute. A small army of yellow-shirted event staff and their more menacing counterparts, the day-glow yellow bouncer squad, were stationed every ten feet or so throughout the arena. Sheriff's deputies with their stiff hats cocked forward also regularly rolled through.

Somebody had prepared for the worst. But it didn't come. Dave kids are good kids. I only saw one drunk. Stretching across the field like so many rows of disciplined soldiers were perfectly well-behaved, orderly lines of happy partiers. It was a clean scene. There was almost no "freak" element. I may well have been the wierdest person in my section (ironically, the exact same section my fraternity used to sit in for U.Va. football games), and other than the pot smoke that wafted through the place as soon as the lights went down, the scene was so squeaky that there was an almost Twilight Zone-ish vibe to it. Like the Truman Show or something.

And the chicks... oh yeah, there were chicks. Just like in the good old days...

Back in the early nineties, there were two consistent DMB truisms in the buzz mill: first, they're really good, and second, they always bring in scads of beautiful women. At the time it was even rumoured that manager Coran Capshaw spent time wandering the Corner with free tickets, looking to pad the show with hot babes. After all, a good-looking audience is a sure sign of success, right? And let's face it-- hotties attract.

So there were always tons of rock-star hungry women. Really good-looking, upwardly mobile, sorority cocaine kinda gals, all dolled-up with bows in their hair and tight black pants. Hundreds of them weekly, without fail, honing in on Dave and his pigeon-toe dance like so many maggots on a mare's carcass. They loved him like they wanted to eat him. Literally. Dripping insatiable drool onto their Louis Vitton handbags and luxury pumps.

It scared me a little. There's just something creepy about the vibe that surrounds a band when it's really taking off-- tangible adulation choking the air while mini-mavens compulsively jockey for placement in the scene. You can't really see it, but you can feel it. It's everywhere, and it's refreshing, exciting and repulsive all at once.

There was no denying it, Dave was on his way up, and the throngs of perfume-drenched sorority-betties in heat were just adding fuel to the fire. I could just barely stand to look at it, consumed as I was with jealousy for the band's new stature, so I didn't make too many of those high society Trax shows, but I did catch Dave solo in the basement of Sigma Nu fraternity one time, charming a crowd of strangers with his peppy tunes and odd-ball banter-- always affecting a baby voice or an effeminate lisp or making some eloquently crass fecal joke. The kid was hot. I remember him announcing a tune: "This one doesn't have a name yet-- I think I'll call it 'Warehouse.'" Oh yeah, he was going somewhere allright.

But wait, flash back to that same building, Sigma Nu, a few years earlier, where weekly bi-level coffehouse parties attracted radical cross-sections of off-beat musicians and people who just enjoyed good, wierd parties. Up the stairs in the back, forever lurking within arm's reach of anyone who could jam, was the ever-ready Boyd Tinsley-- the fiddle-sawing odd-ball black brother at Sigma Nu. Boyd Tinsley, who always looked to me like he just came from church or a catering gig, in his short-sleeve button-down white shirts-- like his mom dressed him or something-- a complete anomoly in a fraternity dominated by nouveau-hip narcotics consumers and the alterna-cool.

My band played Sigma Nu a bunch, and invariably we'd shoot the breeze with Boyd about jamming with us. He was always really nice about it, and we made a lot of verbal non-agreements to engage in said jamming, but they never materialized, and to this day, I still have never played with Boyd. I imagine he's a little busier now.

Then there was this one time-- later than the previously-mentioned Dave solo show-- when my band played a slot right before Boyd and his old partner in crime, Harry Faulkner. Sigma Nu was hot that night, and my band shredded. We felt like chieftans (imagine us arrogantly buffing our fingernails on our chests as we exit the stage), but we were about to be seriously out-rock-starred. Big time.

Instantly, everything changed. The sexy art-student coeds that had grooved so enchantingly as we played were quickly flushed out and the room filled with muscular, hat-wearing frat-boys. By the time Boyd and Harry (Down Boy Down, they called themselves) took the stage, the room had degenerated from an opium-lounge into a moshpit of Wahoo hysteria.

The duo rocked a bunch of Crosby, Stills, and Nash tunes and such (as was their way at the time), while the revelers-- obviously very hip to Boyd's work in DMB-- crowd-surfed like lunatic barbarians at a ritual wedding. It was-- I'm sure you can imagine-- a very wierd scene.

But not nearly as wierd as looking down into U.Va.'s Scott Stadium and seeing a four-story technicolor alien landscape decended a stone's throw from my very own house, manned by these same people that I actually know and hauling with it a peaceful congregation of thousands of bad-singing but very nice stoners. That's too wierd to describe.

Neil Young was there, for chrissakes! Neil Young-- the hippest slackard to ever conquer pop, proving once again that making real music is about doing what you and you alone can do. No more, no less. Neil Young, who's definitive Crazy Horse-scrawled "Down By The River," absolutely blew me away. Neil Young, who briefly commanded the DMB for a verse of "All Along the Watchtower" while Dave changed a broken string, saving the tune from rehash banality and succinctly demonstrating just how cool he really is. Younger DMB fans bristled in annoyance. I thought it was brilliant.

Also deeply appreciated were the arrangements around the "Lovely Ladies," as Dave continually referred to them, a trio of soulful female vocalists who worked some beautiful rounds during a retooled extended "Everyday" and provided lush vocal landscapes for many tunes.

It was a hoot, really. I suppose I'd have enjoyed some more older stuff-- you know, a few obscure goodies for the home-town crowd-- but the new material actually came off well live, and a few tunes from the new record that hadn't wowed me actually improved dramatically on the open stage. Too bad Dave didn't seem to be having nearly as much fun as that night down in Sigma Nu, back when it was all possibility and no responsibility. But even on this, a middling-to-rockin' show for the dominant rockstarship, the band shone confidently and surely, smoothly launching yet another world-coup cake-walk for their unity-vibe jamboree stadium roadshow and merchandising battleship.

I look up, and it's "Ant's Marching," and Boyd is out at the edge of the stage sawing his fiddle like to start a fire, and the crowd is howling-- screaming-- bow hairs and sweat are flying. He's a god now. This no longer a game put on for a hundred drunks, this is the real deal. A homecoming for kings.

A forty foot tall image of Boyd Tinsley-- that wierd dude at Sigma Nu who wore funny shirts and played the fiddle with anyone who wanted to-- is commanding me to cheer. I cheer. It is a good thing, indeed.

--Cripsy Duck

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