Afghan Whigs

The strongest strands to the past are sometime the most tenuous, the thinnest, and the most unlikely.

The best band of the 1990’s is making a comeback in NYC and I’m going to be angling for the best view from the very front of the stage. Seems like an odd, maybe out of place thing for me to do. I’m of an age that should secede such a precious vantage point to a younger version of myself. Fuck that.

I saw the Afghan Whigs in April, 1994 on the day it was announced that Kurt Cobain had shredded his skull with a shotgun. The Whigs were then Sub Pop label mates of Nirvana.

The lead singer, a dude named Greg Dulli, walked his band to the stage and launched with arrogance and passion into the first few songs from his band’s album Gentleman before most of us could finish our first few beers. I had been stoned for a good hour already, having busted out a phatty with fellow passengers on 1-95 en route.

A few weird things happened in that hour, including memorizing my way to the venue via meta-popcorn kernels left behind three years past. We were so fucking baked that time altered and the band took the stage before the hot bartender girl gave me a few drinks prior to the start of the concert.

Greg Dulli stopped the show and confirmed to the uninformed that Kurt was indeed dead. The audience roared in mourning with his then breaking news disclosure. He cued the band, and they blistered into the song Fountain and Fairfax with meaning that brought tears to his eyes.

The music? It was a bastard hybrid of grunge and soul. Not James Brown soul. More like Otis Redding fronting the Screaming Trees. A double-barreled guitar attack backed by blistering keyboards, drums like cannons across the bow and a voice that howled like a growling wolf in fits of anguish, anger and passion. There was a bass player, too.  

I could tell a thousand stories about that show. Like the one about the pretty girl who was offering to make out with guys for a dollar of beer money. One dude, one dollar at a time. Kinda nasty, but she was Eastern-European-model hot. (I just gave her a dollar. No kiss. To this day I am herpes-free). Or on the drive to the show, when I busted out the blunt and Kenny Cos came to life and I subsequently forgot how to park. Wait. I already told that one—or at least part of it. Or how I stood next to the PA and permanently lost hearing in my right ear.

This is a thin thread to the past. This is a fiber of a thread to a memory. This is a quantum electron to any point in time it lands me. This is a lifesaver thrown off the Titanic. This is a zygote borne into the past to return self-aware. This is a chance to go ape shit.

This is ago, a go, fuck this, no?

This is the Afghan Whigs at the Bowery Ballroom in a few weeks.

TBC

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