A real schyster (or so says my mother)... I thought punk was dead. I thought surely, after the atrocities of Green Day and Blink 182, whatever punk actually once was, had been, once and for all, incinerated and the ashes snorted up by a bunch of trendy ingrates like Fall Out Boy and Ashley Simpson. Punk was done for…Dead. Gone.
…until Thursday night.
By all intents and purposes, Jon Dee Graham and his band had no business at all being the last act to close out Austin-based GameCock.com's all-night video game fest down at Stubb’s BBQ, crawling with the usual parade: gamer types, computer junkies, media hounds and jackals, and whatever other subterranean demographics bubble up to the surface in the computer gaming social brew.
It was an afternoon that roared into the night and early morning on the flailing coattails of circus conductors, rock and roll mariachis, martini-soaked burlesque routines, a bucking-bull of a giant cock (poultry, that is), and flowing alcohol unmeasured, and no place for a middle-aged man, in a dark suit and tilted fedora, with his middle-aged band to close down the bar tabs. No place and no time for a final hour of introspective, melodic tunes, and a few harder, quicker pace-changers, that dig deep in the human soul and ask the kinds of existential questions, I’d wager, don’t too often cross a mind that’s more preoccupied with combating the forces of digital Mushroom Men or pegging the cat-like speed and reflexes of a wily ninja with a computerized dodge ball (via a Wii remote) than finding a “Place in the Shade”.
Sometimes, in the logistics of these sorts of events, booking goes horribly wrong. Sometimes the lineup of bands that gets haphazardly thrown together on a piece of paper inadvertently concocts a potent formula for disaster. Thursday night at Stubb's, more or less, was one of those times. In a perfect world, Jon Dee Graham and his band would’ve taken the early slot, before the sun went down, during that soft spot in the evening when everyone is warming up, having a good time still, but resting up for the long haul into the AM.
This world is not perfect.
They didn’t get that slot. No, the powers-that-be fit Jon Dee Graham right after two white kids (one faux mustachioed) hopped, dropped, and pumped out a verbal tirade of rhymes covering themes ranging from “jacking off” and “vaginas” to (of course) “video games”.
At that point (12:30AM), the crowd had been drinking, playing the latest games, and enjoying a great lineup of music for the better part of a Thursday afternoon and evening. It might have been appropriate at such a late hour for everyone to call it a night.
No such luck.
Jon Dee Graham stepped up onto the indoor stage at Stubb’s in front of an inebriated crowd of forty-five (at the most) folks who were not going home.
I felt awkward. This show should have never happened. The band started into their first number, and the crowd couldn’t have cared less. The whole thing just felt wrong. The band was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the crowd was in the wrong mood - the wrong mood and the wrong shape (at that hour in the night) to handle the weight of the sorts of songs that John Dee Graham perfects.
However, there are rare occasions in our space-time continuum when two opposing forces, two completely wrong forces collide together to create something so right. Thursday night and early (or late) into Friday morning at Stubb’s BBQ, with Jon Dee Graham and his band in front of a dwindling and very drunk audience, was one of those singular, priceless moments when a band just doesn't “give a fuck,” because the crowd doesn’t either, and we're blessed with just one more reason to still believe in the power of Rock and Roll.
I stayed and I watched. Somehow, to my amazement, the distorted clanging of Jon Dee Graham's electric guitar and the dogged-nonchalance of his faithful band began to serve as a soundtrack for drunken wheelbarrow runs and hurried dashes for the lady's room. At one point, I turned to see a man slide through, what looked and smelled to be, a puddle of vomit and booze before he slammed into the back of my knee.
The show went on, whether it should have or not, whether we wanted it to or not, and the band kept playing. Stubborn brutes! Was I living The Stooges Metallic K.O.? At the sound of a beer bottle shattering on floor, I could have sworn I was. I turned to see a man instantly sobered by the bleeding gash the glass shards had cut into the back of his forearm.
Was this really happening? Unbelievable!
In these strange, dark days of The Surreal Life, Girls Gone Wild, The Moment of Truth, where debauchery and shameless exhibitionism is the norm and shock-value is common currency, the principled, optimistic, hopeful words and lyrics of Jon Dee Graham sound almost controversial, marginal…(dare I say) defiant.
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Jon Dee Graham shouted to a congregation-under-the-influence with no ears to hear, “What if everything you do matters? What if your life matters!”
The band kept the beat, a slide guitar sang softly through the bridge. They closed the night with a number dedicated to Mohammad Ali, and appropriately so. This had been a fight, no question about that. One of those fights when the gloves come off and the band, with bare knuckles, plays against whatever gets in their way, through the blood and the mud and the beer.
Jon Dee Graham put out his last cigarette on the stage. We went home…finally.
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I drove home in a daze. What had just happened?
Punk is NOT dead.
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