I’ve mentioned previously that I have a nasty habit of buying tickets for shows that I end up not attending due to a lot of anticipatory anxiety. I had a ticket to see Belle and Sebastian at First Avenue on Wednesday, and a lot of those worries came rushing back as the concert date got closer.

I talked about this with my therapist the day before the show, and she helped me devise a plan to try and mitigate some of the issues. I tried to leave myself enough room to feel comfortable in a crowd. I knew what my exit plan was and when I would leave. And I would just try and focus on - and hopefully lose myself in - the performance.

Alas, this is Minneapolis. And the way everyone knows each other, it may as well be Mayberry.

I get Downtown and one of the first people I see outside the club is my ex-wife and her friends. Okay…that’s fine. I see her all the time because we share a child. She’s a little different person with her friends - more bubbly and social. More like the person I knew when we were married many years ago. Our relationship now is more transactional and business-like. Whatever. I carry on and go inside.

The opening act had just started. Drat. I got there too early and now my anxiety’s starting to kick into high gear. I start wringing my hands and pulling at my beard. And out of the corner of my, I catch a glance of yet another one of my exes. She and I split a little over a year ago, so things are still kind of raw. I mustered an awkward wave and ran off to find a spot among people I didn’t recognize.

Between acts, I decided to say hi to her. We haven’t talked much over the last year, and I hadn’t seen her in person since Christmas. She was there with her new partner, whom I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting. I apologized for being awkward and barely being able to put a string of words together. Then I made haste and tried to find a spot where NOBODY KNEW ME.

Did that work? Of course, not. Right after that conversation, I ran into another ex of mine. Do I have a type?

Small town shenanigans aside, I was fighting like hell to not let things - the awkwardness, the crowds, the noise, the exes - get to me. So when Belle and Sebastian finally came on, I tried to lose myself in what they were bringing. This was my fourth time seeing them, so I already had a good idea of what it would be like.

And it was yet another great performance. I sang along with the songs I knew. I closed my eyes for much of the set and just let my body move to the music. And I didn’t let the inebriated bros in backward ball caps yelling “WOOO!” get to me.

I finally wasn’t afraid to be there. But I couldn’t stay. I kept looking at my watch like my Honda was going to turn into a pumpkin. I bailed before the encore, which I’m embarrassed to say I do too often.

But for roughly 90 minutes, I was able to feel how only live music can make me feel: elated, alive, otherworldly. I was in the moment, something I otherwise fight to do on a daily basis. But when it comes to live music, it just happens. No matter how many obstacles are thrown in my face.

Vibes, as the kids are fond of saying.

The surest sign of spring around here is the reopening of the Phelps and Heffelfinger Fountains in Lyndale Park and Rose Gardens near Lake Harriet. This particular fountain (Phelps) has a unique history. It was installed in the old Gateway Park in Downtown Minneapolis and formally dedicated in 1915. It was named for Edmund Phelps, the park commissioner at the time who donated the fountain.

By the 1950s, the park was ground zero for vagrants, indigents, and other people afflicted by addiction and indifference. With the federal government practically giving away money in the name of “urban renewal”, Minneapolis thought it was high time that they raze the park and surrounding areas.

Today, the park is gone. But at least the city had some foresight to move the fountain a few miles south to Lyndale Park, where it still stands. I took this picture back in 2019, and often stop to admire it when I’m coming back from a run around the lake.

m u s i c b r e a k

Songs: Ohia - Farewell Transmission (2003)

Steve Albini died this week at 61, and I didn’t expect to take the news as hard as I did. The guy had his hand in just about everything that I love about music and how it’s made. Or who it’s made with. He was a curmudgeon, but not for curmudgeon’s sake. He knew there was always a better way to make music, and he didn’t want artists to sacrifice it or take shortcuts for the sake of music executives or popularity.

This song comes from the album The Magnolia Electric Co., the final album under Jason Molina’s Songs: Ohia moniker - or the first under the name The Magnolia Electric Co., which Albini engineered. Most of Molina’s work is anguished and heartbreaking, possibly a reflection of his personal life and struggles with alcoholism. Jason died in 2013 at 39 of multiple organ failure due to his drinking.

The album was recorded live in studio with Molina’s touring band, and Albini does an amazing job of capturing that live sound without making it too raw. His incredible talent for making music how it should sound will be terribly missed.

The real truth about it is, no one gets it right
The real truth about it is, we're all supposed to try

Take care,

AG