By: Charlie Vaughan
The black winter night wraps completely around my three-season porch. The only light is a pale stare from an idle monitor. It’s late and things are going poorly. And it’s very cold, too cold to bear for any real length of time.
This is the fourth season, and the little porch cannot hold it back. The only protection is from the wind; otherwise it’s the same as sitting outside on the concrete steps—including the thick coat and stocking cap. It’s not an ideal setting for writer’s block. Fingers grow stiff and awkward over the span of a cigarette… and still nothing happens.
So here I am, uncomfortably cold and dumb with panic, trying to write about Sean Lennon at First Avenue and wondering where it all went wrong. Where indeed? How is it there is absolutely nothing worthwhile to write about Sean Lennon’s performance Monday night? The man himself is something of a walking topic, but his show was… Sweet Jesus what was it?
It wasn’t great.
It wasn’t interesting.
There is no way to describe it as emotional.
The sun is coming up over the neighbor’s house. The show photographer will come by in a few hours with pictures from the show and an editor will begin aiming her cannon. The time has come for high-speed wisdom:
Sean Lennon stopped off at First Avenue on Monday night in support of his second album Friendly Fire. It was an unusually warm December evening with thin drizzle that wetted the streets enough to reflect traffic lights in a strange hypnotic bleed. I stood on the damp sidewalk and watched the rain bead on the shuttered windows of a large tour bus parked next to the club. I couldn’t help thinking if this was the father’s tour bus, it would’ve had to been surround by gang of policemen in riot gear. As it was, it just sat unassumingly under the yellow arc of the streetlights collecting raindrops, a sort of fitting analogy to the way Sean Lennon goes about the family business.
Of all The Beatles’ children, Sean Lennon is easily the best known and most respected in the music community. Although much of the general public still sees him in the image of “Beautiful Boy,” Sean Lennon has been quietly growing toward middle age. A full eight years ago he released Into the Sun, a magnificent album full of off-kilter beats and blushing wordplay. It seemed aptly titled for the rash of comparisons that followed. The album announced his presence in the indie-rock scene. Despite modest sales and meek persona, Sean became the Lennon torchbearer. And then he disappeared.
But now Sean Lennon is back behind a guitar. After almost a decade working in avant-garde film and a stint playing bass in the band Cibo Matto, he is touring behind a second album and bushy beard. Sean Lennon still keeps a boyish quality about him—in the way he speaks and moves awkwardly on stage—but his new material speaks from an older vantage. The days of “Two Young Lovers” and “Bathtub” are long past, and sadly, most of his appeal is too.
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A little after 10:30 p.m., Sean Lennon, now with familiar unmistakable features aged into his face, strolled onto the Main Room stage dressed in a drab suit and necktie. Born to a giant, raised in an empire, and marred by tragedy, the curious man spent almost an hour laying a golden egg. The whole affair can only be described as forgettable.
The show was just a few short nights ago, but almost no detail comes to mind. I’m going over and over my notes for something striking about the show… and finding nothing. The thing that jumps outs is an audio recording of a random audience member saying, “This shit is whack.” The notes say he is speaking to a middle-aged woman who might be his mother. It’s halfway through Sean Lennon’s set and we were outside the club trying to shake off a case of the blahs. The show photographer is in the process of leaving early—really early.
“It’s pretty boring up front,” he says. “There isn’t much to photograph.”
“What about Sean Lennon?”
“They’re all the same,” he replies. “He just standing behind the microphone with the same expression.”
“But he’s only been on for twenty minutes,” I counter.
“Hey, you’re out here too.”
Touché.
Two hours ago inside First Avenue, a small group of fans was camped around stage front waiting for the show to begin. It was a quiet group of fresh-faced girls and their boyfriends. The girls had a bookish quality, and their boyfriends sat beside them with disheveled haircuts and serious expressions. They, like myself, had come early to get an advantageous view and to catch some of the anticipation. What we caught was the blahs.
All of us could have shown up at the last minute and still gotten front row seats. At the height of the show there was plenty of room to spare. The stage floor was about half full and along the upper landings people were comfortably spaced. Many of the later arrivals were in their forties, probably Beatle junkies, with a smattering of young ineffectual hipsters tossed in for good measure. There was no wait at the bar and twice I had the long trough urinal all to myself. This is not to say there weren’t a fair number of people in attendance, it’s that they had no real presence. It mirrored the aura rolling off stage: flat, subdued, and listless.
The opening act was Robert Skoro. Light thumb strumming on a hushed electric guitar and songs that almost always ended with some brokenhearted turn of phrase characterized his set. Jim Noir was billed as the opener, but a plain sign taped to the entrance informed ticket-buyers there had been a last minute line-up change. The four-piece band of drums, keyboard, bass, and Skoro on vocals and guitar was uninspiring at best, and watery at its worst.
According to the photographer, Skoro should have stayed with Mason Jennings. Try as they did, nothing they did even stubbed its toe near my soul. I suppose I could call it pretty, in a sisterly sort of way, and Skoro has a terrific voice, but how much longing can one band muster before they go completely limp?
After watching Sean Lennon, I have a better idea of the tipping point when bands become white noise. Lennon’s performance was filled with casual ballads that, following one after another, stripped the music of any edge. The result was a shapeless performance that passed through me like a ghost. All of the songs were from Friendly Fire—except the closer “Mystery Juice”—and while the album is sometimes beautiful, live the songs evaporated three seconds after they finished. Their disappearance didn’t even register until the band came out for the preordained encore. All of the sudden it dawned on me that already I couldn’t remember half the performance. The show came and went like a passing car.
Lennon’s backing band, professionals recruited from the four-corners of the globe, left the impression that they mailed their parts in from distant places. Keyboardist Yuka Honda was a lovely Japanese woman as domineering as a butterfly. The Italian bass player didn’t speak English and stood transfixed like a wax statue at the back of the stage. The drummer’s distant relatives invented the Dobro and his style was oddly mechanical, like someone wound him up back stage. Only the lead guitarist didn’t have some interesting heritage revealed, and his guitar work was so minimal that he might as well not have been on stage. Whenever the songs called for a slight riff or inch of flair, Sean Lennon easily handled them himself. The actual musicianship had little bearing on the lackluster show. There was nothing wrong with their ability. Then again, it was nothing special either.
The problem was in the songwriting. The new material is plain chord-driven melodies on matters of the heart, but with no meat on the bones. You couldn’t sink your teeth into them and stay engaged. And Sean Lennon is not going to force you to pay attention. He stands at the microphone and throws the songs out in a really bare manner. It’s like he is trying not to attract too much attention to himself.
The liveliest parts of the show were the bits of stage banter, when the crowd became their most genuine in response. Lennon chatted politely between songs about his warm reception and playing at the “legendary” venue, about the obvious irony in a few members of the audience raising their hands in the devil horn salute and, of course, the vile holiday season. He also made it clear that he wanted a star of his own painted on the First Avenue exterior. Cheers rose up with ten times the enthusiasm after each of these rambles than it did after the songs. It was during these brief exchanges when Sean Lennon took any ownership of the stage. The audience was taken in by Sean Lennon the man, not by Sean Lennon the musician. I doubt if anyone would’ve complained had he just put down his guitar and spoke his mind for an hour while finishing his glass of red wine.
Look… I want to make it clear: I am a fan of Sean Lennon. It pains me to savage him in print. I like the way he handles himself and I like his music. Into the Sun brings back some very fine memories. And I understand the balls it takes to step out from the kind of shadow he’s dealing with, but his show at First Avenue was a bummer.
If First Avenue doles out those stars merited on worthy performances, Sean Lennon will have to take a better run at it next time.
Photos by David Markley.
Location Info:
First Avenue
Artist Info: Robert Skoro, Sean Lennon
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