"He Grinned As Only A Teenager Can"
I heard the quote "he grinned as only a teenager can" on NPR's All Things Considered. And I think that I understood what was meant. But tonight I attended a concert by Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band at Town Hall, sitting in a center loge seat, and politely have to disagree. Josh Ritter is 33 but he not only grins like a teenager he can make his voice grin. His concert tonight was the best I have heard at Town Hall, even better than the two Judy Collins concerts I've heard there.
His latest album So Runs the World Away (from a line in Hamlet) is his most literate album to date, according to reviews. He did several of the songs from that album tonight.
At one point the band left the stage and Josh asked that all the light be turned down except for some sconces on the balcony. He then did several solo number on an acoustic guitar, one of which he performed at the stage edge with no mic and with his guitar unplugged, which is possible in Town Hall. He really connected with the audience which sang along with the song Lantern.
At one point actor Mike Shannon, who was not a band member, came on stage and, with no explanation, read Edgar Allen Poe's last poem Annabel Lee with some musical accompaniment and percussion by the band.
Annabel Lee - Edgar Allen Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
The context of the Poe poem became clearer when the next number the band performed was Another New World from the new album about an explorer and his ship called the Annabel Lee:
Another New World (Annabel Lee) Lyrics - Josh Ritter
The leading lights of the age all wondered among themselves what I would do next,
After all that I'd found, in my travels around the world, was there anything left?
"Gentlemen," I said, "I've studied the maps, and if what I am thinking is right,
There's another new world, at the top of the world, for whoever can break through the ice,"
I looked 'round the room, in that way I once had, and I saw that they wanted belief,
So I said, "All I've got are my guts and my God," then I paused, "and the Annabel Lee."
Oh, the Annabel Lee, I saw their eyes shine, the most beautiful ship in the sea,
My Nina, my Pinta, my Santa María, my beautiful Annabel Lee...
That spring we set sail, and the crowd waved from shore, and on board the sailors waved caps,
But I'd never had family, just the Annabel Lee, so I never had cause to look back.
I set the course north, and I studied the charts, and towards dark I drifted toward sleep,
And I dreamed of the fine, deep harbor I'd find past the ice, for my Annabel Lee.
After that it got colder, and the world got quiet. It was never quite day or quite night.
And the sea turned the color of sky turned the color of sea turned the color of ice.
After that all around us was vastness, one glassy desert of arsenic white,
And the waves that once lifted us, shifted instead into drifts against Annabel's sides.
And the crew gathered closer, at first for the comfort, but each morning would bring a new set
Of tracks in the snow, leading over the edge of the world, 'til I was the only one left.
After that it gets cloudy, but it feels like I laid there for days, or maybe for months
But Annabel held me, the two of us happy, just to think back on all we had done...
We talked of the other new worlds we'd discover as she gave up her body to me,
As I chopped up her mainsail for timber, I told her of all that we still had to see.
As the frost turned her moorings to nine-tails and the wind lashed her sides in the cold,
I burned her to keep me alive every night in the loving embrace of her hold.
I won't call it rescue, what brought me back here to this old world to drink and decline,
Pretend that the search for another new world was well worth the burning of mine.
But sometimes at night, in my dreams, comes the singing of some unheard tropical bird,
And I smile in my sleep, thinking Annabel Lee's finally made it to another new world.
Yeah, sometimes at night in my dreams comes the singing of some unheard tropical bird,
And I smile in my sleep, thinking Annabel Lee's finally made it to another new world.
Towards the end of the song Harrisburg, the bass player took the lead and intertwined the lyrics of Chris Isaak's Wicked Game, which was a bit of a
surprise.
It is pretty easy yo see why John Ritter is ranked as one of the top living songwriters. As an Oberlin graduate who originally planned to become a neurosurgeon like both his parents he certainly made a wise choice to become a singer-songwriter!
From his website (JoshRitter.com) I learned of a free concert download of a concert on May 8, 2010 in Washington, DC. The content is very much like the concert last night except that one of his solo acoustic numbers was Bruce Springsteen's The River. (A version recorded earlier in Berlin was posted on Springsteen's own site, which says a lot.) The DC download can be found here:
http://www.thefrontloader.com/2010/05/13/josh-ritter-live-at-930-club-5-8-10/
Other recent Josh Ritter interviews can be found here:
Literary Influences: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=01s3f79qeb1
PBS News Hour: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2010/05/josh-ritter.html#more
World Cafe: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833547
The opening band tonight was Dawes, from North Hills, California. There was some tight harmony between the lead singer/guitarist, the drummer (his younger brother), and the keyboard player. I enjoyed them so much that I bought their CD North Hills for $10.
I just checked about a ticket for tomorrow night's performance at Town Hall and found an aisle seat in row D with my name on it, so I am going back tomorrow night. The tickets were pretty cheap at $29 for the best seats. I've paid more for one concert than for the two nights of Josh Ritter, and not received as much value!
Iron Man 2
Earlier yesterday I saw Iron Man 2 and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. There are certainly worse ways to spend your movie cash!
