Beat a Go Go

I used to go to a lot of concerts back in the day. Big venues, small clubs, neighborhood dives, national headliners, obscure curiosities, my friends' bands... I spent more than my fair share of time crowded with the masses, or dancing by myself, or sitting quietly in sparsely populated rooms listening to quite a diverse catalogue. At a Bowie show outside on a hot, humid Toronto day, jostled by fellow concertgoers enduring the opening act, I watched in dismay as the guy next to me was trying his best to ignore his dehydrated girlfriend who had almost passed out, not wanting to lose his position near the stage. I embarrassed him into helping her find some air and water. After Bowie made eye contact and smiled at me (oh, yes, he smiled at me) I retreated to the sidelines where I could dance in peace without getting elbowed in the kidneys, and vowed that I would never go to a large-venue concert again.

When I moved to Chicago, I tried the summer festivals, the classical music in the park, the local clubs. Too many tinny sound systems, bar patrons who talked over the music, and all-ages shows where I felt like the chaperone at a high school dance, and I started spending a lot more time at home, listening to CDs. I was tired of paying too much money to go out, ostensibly to hear some music, and end up getting really annoyed and not having any fun. Not that it was all bad. I did hear some very good music and have lots of fun on occasion, usually listening to a band from somewhere outside the US. Patti Smith and Television made a strong case for not completely abandoning my countrymen, but I was growing old and jaded and getting really tired of running into people I either didn't want to talk to, or people who gave me air kisses while they frantically looked around for someone cooler to be seen with. I was so burnt out from work and the local "scene" that I didn't even go hear Joe Strummer the last time he played in Chicago. More regrets for missed opportunities.

Fast forward and I'm living in Denver, suddenly free from repressive work schedules and living the relatively free life of a student, with a comfortable savings account thanks to my years as a catering drone. My friend calls one day from Chicago and says that his friend in Helsinki has informed him that CMX are playing a gig on May Day Eve. Do I want to have him try to get me a ticket for the show, too? He points out that they're playing in a relatively small club, and it's likely that the show is sold out. I immediately say, "Sure," figuring that we won't be able to get tickets, so I won't have to figure how to go and not clean out my bank account. The next night he calls back, and suddenly we're making plans to fly to Helsinki in about a month. We decide to go by way of Iceland, to spend a couple of days in Reykjavik before we head on. Why not? For the first time since I can remember, I don't have to beg for time off knowing that I'll pay the price by working insanely hard before and after the trip.

For the month before the trip, I'm having a really hard time wrapping my self-denying, workaholic guilt around the whole idea. Why am I flying all the way to Helsinki to see this band? I live within walking distance of three clubs with very good booking agents, and I generally can't be bothered to walk a few blocks to see a show. I discovered CMX on my first, and only other, trip to Finland, where I bought one of their CDs, quite honestly, because I was reading about various Finnish bands, and they sounded the hippest. Or, rather, it sounded like listening to them would somehow make me hipper. Whatever the initial motivation, I liked the CD a lot. I'd say that they spoke to me, except I didn't understand a word they were saying. Later, armed with two dictionaries, a very sketchy knowledge of Finnish grammar, and the help of my elderly Finnish teacher, I still only have the vaguest idea of what they're singing about. And yet, there's something about this band that I really like, enough to spend about a month and a half's rent on airfare to see them play live.

Although the CMX show was the impetus for the trip, it wasn't just about CMX. The concert was a convenient excuse to take another trip to Finland, something I'd wanted to do for a long time, but never seemed to have the time to do. Well, it wasn't really that I didn't have the time; in theory, I did get two weeks' vacation per year at my last job. But once I got caught up in the catering game, especially once I became management, my time off was very difficult to plan. And my overly-heightened sense of responsibility and self-importance made me hesitant to make any sorts of plans at all. I had left that job months ago, moved west, started taking classes at a natural cooking school, and was still having a really hard time adjusting to the altitude and the freedom of my new life. I really needed to lighten up a bit.

I had compiled a list of restaurants, cafés, bars, and shopping destinations to check out in Reykjavik and Helsinki. Our Finnish friends had offered to take us bar-hopping before the concert. (I might accidentally stumble upon some culture somewhere on this trip, but the creature comforts were my priorities.) The weather was pretty decent when we arrived in Reykjavik at 6 a.m. local time, and we spent the day eating, shopping, and sightseeing. At about midnight, a stop to check out what they were spinning at Sirkus on the way back to the hotel sealed the deal. The Velvet Underground were singing "Sweet Jane" as we walked in, and we parked ourselves at the last available table and settled in for the duration. Almost. When we rolled out of there at 4-ish, the sun was shining brightly and people were still lined up waiting to get in.

The DJ kept the place hopping with a great mix of reggae, R&B, new wave, ska, you name it. We spent hours watching the kids dance and go through their mating rituals, and just when I was thinking that I was glad I wasn't in my 20s any more, I realized that this was mostly music I had listened to when I was in my 20s. Plus ça change ... Though I was never as beautiful or self-confident as these young women were. The poor guys looked, for the most part, like a bunch of puppies confusedly trying to follow the women's leads. Pretty much everyone in the place was drinking Budweiser brewed in the Czech Republic; though it was tastier than US-brewed Bud, we stuck to Viking, endlessly amusing ourselves with jokes about picking up a couple more Vikings. As the night progressed and we recognized some of the patrons -- there's the woman who had eaten dinner at the same restaurant we had (she's now lost her dinner companion), there are the women we saw arguing about where to go outside the window of the last bar we were in, there's the guy from 12 Tonàr who sold us CDs -- we knew we were in the right place. And it really felt like home.

Home. I grew up in New Jersey, but that never felt like home; I left as soon as I could, and I rarely go back. I had never been away from Jersey much, but the first time I went to Montréal, to check out McGill, where I was considering attending school, something clicked for me. It felt very much like home, so much so that my mother kept looking suspiciously at me, noticing that something seemed .... different ... about me. I had that same feeling the first time I went to Helsinki, and I certainly felt the same way about Reykjavik. I've tried to explain it, to analyze it, as a way to explain to other people why I inexplicably want to move to any of these places. But I can't. It's like trying to explain any object of your desire -- you can list qualities, perhaps, but you can't explain the attraction of the subtle smell of the sea in the air, the taste and texture of a favorite dish, the feel of Icelandic wool on your skin, the rhythm of a language you don't really understand.

Or the sound of your favorite band. I can read music, I've played guitar, and I can pick out a few tunes on the piano. I can write or speak quite analytically about film, and maybe about some other visual arts, if you push me hard enough. But my opinions about music would barely get me a spot on Rate-a-Record. I used to think that lyrics were very important to me, but I listen to a lot of music sung in languages that I don't speak. What makes my heart melt every time I hear the Jackson Five, why was I dangerously close to becoming a groupie for Gang of Four, and why do Les Colocs make me smile in an alarmingly optimistic way? Damned if I know, and I don't really think I want to know. Because the bottom line is that, for me, truly, having a good beat and being easy to dance to are pretty much how I determine what I consider good music.

It occurs to me that I chose film as an art form because it combines the elements of image and sound and time. When I was in film school, I had numerous ridiculous arguments with photography students about which art form was more complex. As if that was even a point to be argued. I suppose I do like some music just for its own sake, but I've always been more interested in music and movement. I remember seeing Pina Bausch's dance troupe many, many years ago, sitting in my seat at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during intermission, weeping, after the performance of a piece whose name I forget, but whose music and movement I can still feel. I have, on happy occasion, reached a sort of trance state while dancing, and I like it a lot. Virtuoso musical performances, astonishing vocal ranges, complex chord progressions. All very nice. But give me some cute boys who play music I can dance to, and I'm a really happy camper.

After a couple of pretty intense and exhausting days in Reykjavik, I was referring less and less to the list and was submitting passively to Helsinki's charms, although I made sure I got a good night's sleep the night before the concert in anticipation of bar-hopping with the Finns. I pretty much spent concert day happily following my friends from café to shopping to bars (ho-hum, another typical Helsinki day). By the time we got to Tavastia, I had completely surrendered my will. We hung out in the bar area, whcih felt kind of like someone's basement (if their basement had a large coat-check room and bar), until I was dragged upstairs at showtime. I promptly lost half our party. Not that it really mattered. As soon as the music started, I was on my own. I had been preoccupied with finding my friends, and the start of the show took me by surprise. It was, literally, like the first time I had ever gone to a concert. I think I gasped. Or screamed. Or both. I was a lot closer to the stage than I had realized, and there they were, life-sized. I had luckily been let go of in front of lead singer A. W. Yrjänä's side of the stage, and I spent much of my time there screaming and jumping up and down. I never scream. But I was screaming and dancing, and, I believe, singing along, in Finnish, during the encore. I was kind of glad I had lost my friends, and feeling somewhat sheepish around the one I hadn't lost.

I can't remember the last time I danced that much at a concert. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun (well, maybe 4 days earlier in Reykjavik). Have I really become so old and jaded that I can't ever stop thinking about work, can't ever stop worrying about the million stupid things I worry about all day long? How many times do I go to a concert or a movie or a game, where my attention falters and I find myself missing large chunks of the action because I'm wondering about how late this is going to end and how I'm going to get home, or trying to figure out when I'll have time to do the laundry, or dreading going to work the next day? I've spent a lot of time lately obsessing about my career, and wishing that I could live more in the moment. For a few hours that day, I was in the moment. And it felt really good. After finally locating my misplaced coat check claim ticket, I floated home through the May Day crowds with my best buddy, drunk on Finnish neljä beer and high on life. Since I've been back, people have been telling me that I look...different. I was joking after the concert that it had made me feel young again. But that wasn't it. It wasn't so much my youth that I recaptured, but that joie de vivre I had when I was young. The ability to thoroughly enjoy an experience while it was happening, before that ceaseless and tiresome inner dialogue drowned out everything else. Even when music reminds me of a particular place and time, it feels like it connects me, not to the past, but to the future. No matter how often I've heard a piece before, if I can get into that space, it's like discovering it for the first time, following it wherever it is going. I can now cross seeing CMX off the list of things I want to do before I die. And add "See CMX again" to the list. Or, maybe, just maybe, I'll be really daring and not cross anything off, and just write the word, "again".

CMX official website, including videos: http://www.cmx.fi (in Finnish) and http://www.cmx.fi/en/ (in English)