By Berlinda Recacho
Ah, the trouble we go through to attend a live show. There are the tickets, the fees, the transit, the traffic, the parking, the food (and drink), and the waiting -- so much waiting in lines -- queuing early outside the club in the rain, hoping to get up front to the stage barrier (I'm short). Then more waiting for the opening act, listening to people prove their musical knowledge out loud. Then more standing around on concrete floors waiting for the headliner. When all is said and done, you've been on your feet for four hours. Is it worth it? When you’re seeing Aimee Mann for the first time ever, the answer is "YES!", though she completely understands the griping. "I'm impressed," she marveled in her deadpan way to the crowd at the 9:30 Club on February 22, "that it's 9:00 on a Thursday night and you're all still up."
During the Pandemic, I put Aimee Mann at the top of my list of artists to see, if live music ever returned from the brink. I was excited to get tickets to this long-anticipated show as a birthday present (Thanks, Robert!) but as someone who is a little claustrophobic I was also a bit perplexed to learn that the 1,200 capacity venue was sold out. On the day of the concert, when we approached the 9:30 Club's marquee-less exterior, how on earth were there people already lined up ahead of us outside the venue? Once inside, we were stage barrier-adjacent, but not close enough to lean against the grille. The crowd buzz grew to a low roar. I overheard people broadcasting trivia, bragging that they had gone to multiple Aimee Mann shows, and boy, were we in for a treat! It felt odd to share my appreciation and awe with a bunch of strangers. I forgot that while Mann has long been under-appreciated by the system, she is beloved by her fans, of which I am only one. I guess these strange thoughts cross your mind when you wait so long to see a favorite musician perform.
As one of Mann's most reliable musical partners Jonathan Coulton opened the show in great form. I spent many Saturday mornings listening to the NPR quiz show "Ask Me Another", for which Coulton wrote clever parodies of hits and played them live on the guitar as befuddled contestants tried to guess the title or artist. He dedicated his first song to a special lady in the audience: "She's my Millionaire Girlfriend and she's my life/once I finally find her/I'll get permission from the wife..." Who else would follow that with an ode to IKEA as a furniture source for college students and divorced men, and a cautionary tale about being haunted by "a Creepy Doll/with a ruined eye/that's always/open." I expected mordant humor from Coulton, but discovering that Aimee Mann is funny was like a bonus prize. Coulton and Mann supported each other's sets with the slapstick rapport of frequent collaborators. When an A.I. search for the most likely Aimee Mann song titles suggested the phrase "Melancholy Melodies", the two crafted a lovely pseudo-ballad about the gluten-sensitive Mann gazing longingly at the forbidden contents of a bakery case.
Aimee Mann is herself an outlier. She has spent most of her career figuring out how to work outside the studio system, away from the pressure of marketable singles. When creativity and innovation are supposed to plateau with age and skew in favor of wisdom and history, she defies the odds. She is a clever wordsmith and a skilled musician. Somehow her work just keeps getting better. On stage, she was gracious and affable, her voice spanning an enviable range and dimension, thanking the audience after every song. Her rapport with her excellent four-piece band showcased a partnership between peers. Guitarist and self-professed history buff Adam Tressler was lauded at one of the National Monuments for wearing the John Quincy Adams hat (gifted to him by Mann) on the day before the sixth President's Birthday. She gave credit to bassist Paul Bryan for persevering with the idea to make something of the songs based on Susanna Kaysen's memoir Girl, Interrupted. Originally intended for a musical, they became her most recent album, the lovely Queens of the Summer Hotel (2021), which Bryan also produced.
The set included three songs from Queens: "Suicide is Murder" (which she prefaced, as not her opinion, but rather the sentiment of a character in the book), "Burn it Out", and the haunting "You Fall", which might also accurately describe what it's like to survive in the music business:
"They don't give you a lot/But you're sure it's enough
'Cause god help you if not/You're not calling that bluff
You're strong, but lord, who's really that tough?
You're not made of such unbreakable stuff"
Mann largely dipped in and out of four of her previous records: 2017's Mental Illness ("Lies of Summer","You Never Loved Me Patient Zero", "Rollercoasters"), 2008's @#%&*! Smilers ("Freeway"), 2005's The Forgotten Arm ("Little Bombs", "I Can't Help You Anymore", "Video", "King of the Jailhouse") and 2002's Lost in Space ("The Moth"). Her biggest solo hit, the Oscar-nominated "Save Me" (included on the deluxe Record Store Day re-pressing of 2000's Bachelor No. 2 (Or the Last Remains of the Dodo) is a song that she has admitted that she still likes and enjoys playing live. It was a crowd pleaser as well, a spell to guard against "the ranks of the freaks/who suspect/that they could never love anyone."
The band returned to the stage for an encore of two songs from Mann's second solo LP, I'm With Stupid (1995), including one of my favorites, the elegiac waltz "Amateur". Mann, who had played acoustic guitar on all other songs, borrowed Bryan's instrument quipping, "Let a real Mann play the bass." The bridge offers this pensive sentiment: "So I wasn't thinking clearly/so you didn't think at all/I thought that was protocol". Mann closed the show with "Long Shot" singing, "And all that stuff/I knew before/Just turned into/Please love me more" before the flourish of a guitarist's leap into the air.
The night felt more like an intimate club gig for a singer-songwriter than the concert of an artist with an almost 40-year music career. I admired Mann even more for this extraordinary ordinariness. As we shuffled out, people quoted lyrics, wishing they could have been up on stage because they knew how to sing the harmonies and would have loved to back her up. It struck me then that Aimee Mann is more of a storyteller than a rock star. She has railed against major labels, persevered using her amazing voice and perspective, and prevailed on her own terms. I left the show happy that she was the connection between all these random people, including me.
NOTE: I first heard the song "Voices Carry" by Mann's band Til Tuesday on the radio in the spring of 1985. I was 13, and it was one of those few pure moments when something feels completely new. My best friend Donna was obsessed with its iconic video, describing its plot of oppression and comeuppance with such play-by-play precision that I basically saw it before I saw it. But when we sat down one day to write fan letters to our favorite bands, she insisted she didn't really like Til Tuesday (just that one song), which sent me spiraling into an indignant rage that tried our bonds of friendship for that afternoon at least. I never did write that letter. Consider this my 29-year overdue makeup session!
[Photos: Berlinda Recacho, 2024]
