I wish I'd seen Elliot Smith live in concert, but he got away too early, and I arrived too late. But I'm here now, city of dreamers and hopeless card hands, and I'm trying to make the best of it. I saw Emily Wells in concert at The Echo last Thursday night .I find myself meditating more and more on her music of late, and really, the concert was what got me going. This is emphatically not a concert review. I'm not a journalist and I don't take notes. This is, like everything else here, a ramble about a set of moments, a ramble with some sort of fuzzy goal.
I hadn't heard of Mademoiselle Wells till a week before the concert, and my friend Sholto will own bits of my soul forever for the introduction. I ran through her Symphonies once before I got to The Echo, and I remember Symphony 6 stirring something within me, the way the songs which go on to my permanent playlist first do. But I was in a hurry, and left to see Emily Wells at the theater down Sunset Boulevard, still very much a stranger to her music. The queues weren't too long, neither were they very minuscule. We waited in line, watching the Los Angeles skies turn gently red in preparation for the falling evening. Concert demographics are interesting. Glimpses of why this is indeed different (and in the best possible way) from home, from other places too. Freedom, not alienation. A couple kissing in front of me. Both so pretty. All the pretty girls are taken. Los Angeles isn't kind that way.
Time passed. I filed in with the rest, had conversations with strangers, saw a few women I'd never have the opportunity to get to know, and took in the neon arc lamps and the unfamiliar playlist of the DJ, Jeremy Sole, who had kicked off the evening. More idle conversation, till finally, at about 9 pm, there was a girl up on stage, dancing to Jeremy Sole. Dancing so free, with bangles on her hands, and a top that's almost, but not quite, slipping off her shoulder. I'd never seen her before, so I knew it was Emily Wells only when she took centrestage with an acoustic guitar, as the evening's first act made his way off the little stage crossed by neon rainbows.
Freeform alternation between the tenses:
Grammar is Kerouacgrammar after all. Not pretence, it's just easier to express things that way sometimes. Without constrictions, allowances for what is allowable within the bounds of "proper" writing.
She looks pretty, in the spotlights, with a guitar for company. She talks about geography and how it informs her music. She talks about singing a roadmap, of the places she's been, and grown up in and taken with her, and left behind. I'm paraphrasing her. I don't take notes, though sometimes I wish I did. She talks about Los Angeles being home, home wonsaponatime, home now too, though she lives elsewhere. And she gives a shoutout to her friends in the audience, and a minor irrational part of me feels bothered that I am just a stranger, just another listener in the crowd. But that feeling passes soon enough, it passes when she starts to sing. It passes when I enter her world, and see places through her eyes, see the colour of the afternoon sunlight which she sings about.
Mt. Washington. I can't stop listening to the song. I've lost track of how many times I've heard it in the past few days. Still haven't been there.
She starts off with an acoustic set. "Come on over to the dark side", she sings, and it is one of the most inviting lines I have ever heard. And I am reminded of geography in relation to me, places and events, and people left behind with the cities we move on from. Because we grow and change. And, for me, Los Angeles is the next step, logical or otherwise. For her, it is old memories, and rekindlings, and a sense of belonging. I'm here, and I can identify, even if a little bit, with others' memories of the place, of the certain kind of falling evening, of this feeling of being in the middle of something far greater and innately tenebrous than you could ever comprehend.
The roadmap proceeds, and she sips from a glass of (quite possibly) scotch between songs. She is free, and very very talented. The acoustic set has a majesty to it. Her Mama Acoustic Recordings just released and she does some stuff off of that. She does Los Angeles of course, about burning for the city, a metaphor of the city, people and places and happenings and bits of filtered light all aggregating into one entity worth writing songs to. Worth writing songs about. Which is why I started this post writing about Elliot Smith. I heard Angeles, and I wondered what it would have been like to see him in concert, on stage, with his heart and his guitar and his razor sharp perceptions of the dream machine. But he took a stage left exit a long time ago, and I was back in Calcutta then, forming perceptions, still am, just in a different place, just a few years older.
Emily Wells continues her mesmeric trip through the heart of the west. She moves on to her 'full band set', which is just her again, but with a violin, a drum set, a melodica, and electronic loops. She harmonizes with herself, plays drums over repeating violin requiems and generally performs an incredible set. None of it seems gimmicky. It's all good. It feels like it all belongs there. As does she. The stage is her own little dance floor. And she owns it.
People watching at concerts:
Couple in front of me. The woman getting more inebriated as the concert progresses. Something like a Long Island Iced Tea. The guy seems less inclined to the dancing that his concert partner obviously wants to do, more and more as the night rolls on, beneath rainbow lamps and musical roadmap reveries. The freedom of movement afforded by alcohol, as opposed to the innate restrictions that we impose on ourselves. I wonder what their story is, and where they will end up.
The Symphonies, 2 and 6, follow, along with other songs I'm not very familiar with. The crowd is one, the faceless eyes and ears, and Emily's still up on stage, more and more familiar. No longer a stranger. Almost a friend. There is a moment when I close my eyes and feel like the music and the lights are enveloping me, taking me in, surrounding me, filling me like clear mountain air, talking to me alone. The lights hum softly to her tune, blinking through a wide spectrum of emotions. The night ends and I am a fan, I am a follower. I am also, probably, a little bit in love. Whatever that is. I file out the way I came in, into the Los Angeles night. Pizza tastes good after the concert, but the Led Zeppelin playing at the pizza place seems somewhat strident after the last two hours. Not the best music for quiet memory gathering. There are a few women outside the venue teaching each other dance moves; I catch the word "Bollywood" as I walk past them. The couple I noticed inside stand on the sidewalk talking. Sunset Boulevard is getting quieter. I owe someone my soul for this introduction, but I owe myself more time to take in this music. It breathes and lives and becomes colours that we couldn't ordinarily discern. It speaks of places and life. It genuinely moves me. I wish I could use adequate words to describe this deep sense of unrealistic identification that Emily's music (Yes, it's easy to be on first name terms now) gives me. Sunset Boulevard was quiet as we walked back to the car. My friend told me that Emily often comes out after concerts and interacts with the audience. That wouldn't surprise me, the concert felt like a personal thing, between friends. But we didn't wait long enough to see if that would happen. Maybe it's for the best that I didn't meet her. This is Los Angeles after all. All the pretty girls are taken.
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