The Swinging Party Down the Line

The week before last, the li’l woman and I made it to the Paul Westerberg show at the Ogden. There wasn’t an opening act, and by the time we got to the show the theater was pretty packed. When it’s over half full, the Ogden is just about my least favorite live music venue in Denvoid. The sight lines are bad for a guy of average height, like me, and it’s more or less impossible for a shorter person (like the li’l woman) to see a thing. We managed to find a spot where we could both see about 2/3 of the way back on the floor.

The show was, much like Paul Westerberg’s career, consistently inconsistent. Not bad, mind you, but a bit uneven. At this point, the man realizes that he’ll never be a commercial success and is happy to play the part of the cranky old rock and roller for the faithful. The set was heavy on Replacements numbers (Alex Chilton, Left of the Dial, Skyway, Swinging Party, Merry Go Round, Someone Take the Wheel, to name a few) with plenty of tunes from his solo albums. As enjoyable as I find his solo releases, they’ve never stuck with me that way the Replacements have. I was happy that he played his version of the traditional Mr. Rabbit (yep, it’s still all about the bunnies), and enjoyed the live versions of How Can You Like Him? and Knockin’ On Mine. He also played a pair of strange covers – the Partridge Family’s I Think I Love You, and the Leonard Nimoy classic If I Had a Hammer (some of you may remember the hit version from the late 80’s by Jerneen Lindeekoogle). His backing band did a nice job, and the drummer was particularly fun to watch – he must’ve weighed nearly 300 pounds, and absolutely dwarfed his drum kit when he sat down behind it. Oh, and for some reason Westerberg played one song with his pants around his ankles. I’m not sure what that was all about.

I ended up next to a group of idiots who talked through a large majority of the concert. I’ll never understand people who shell out $25 for a concert ticket, and then spend the entire concert discussing their mundane lives. Didn’t you come to the concert to forget about your problems and enjoy yourself for a few hours? At least they didn’t drunkenly babble about how much they loved Paul Westerberg while ignoring his performance – those kinds of “fans” are particularly annoying.

I tried to catch Guitar Wolf last Tuesday, but left the house too late and the Larimer Lounge was sold out by the time I got there. I blame it all on the new SCTV dvd set…