<– These little scraps of paper were found scattered backstage while Cursive played last night, ascertained as the proposed end of a set list that had apparently been scrapped. “Hey,” a friend of mine said, “can you believe they wouldn’t play these songs?!” I checked it out, saw some damn great songs consigned to the the backstage cutting floor, and I agreed that no, I could not believe it.
Cursive showcased a lot of new material last night, and even apologized for it (the band’s recording soon and they’re “road-testing” new material), although a number of vintage crowd-pleasers made their way into the set: “Sierra,” “Art is Hard,” and the never-fail one-two punch of “The Casualty” and “The Martyr” from what’s still their greatest album, Domestica. Thusly teased, the crowd heavily laid on the applause at the end.
Backstage, someone in the band must have found one of the scraps of paper with the jettisoned songs, because for their encore, not only did they play them—hell yeah—but for “Big Bang” Tim Kasher brought the microphone out into the middle of the Phoenix Theater’s floor and sang amongst a circular flock of hyped-up fans. It ruled. The song rules. I felt the magnetic pull and joined in.
And then, good god, Kasher started playing the unimposing guitar intro to “Sink to the Beat”—tossing out a “We miss you, Clint” to the ex-drummer who practically defined the song—and plowed into the jam of all jams: “I’d like to make this perfectly clear…” It was mayhem out on the floor: a sweet unification of a great song, a cluster of strangers all singing the great song, and directly in the eye of the storm, weathering the busy tides of excited bodies on all sides, the guy who wrote it.
Kasher grabbed the mic stand, hopped back up on stage, finished the song, and called it a night. Crazy to think that what was originally ripped from the bottom of the set list turned into the awesomest part of the show.
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Lookin’ Good: How ’bout those new curtains at the Phoenix on the stage and side walls? And the fresh paint job on the ceiling and balcony? As someone remarked last night, “It looks like a real theater again.” I mentioned it to Tom Gaffey and he was pretty stoked about it too, pointing out that more interior painting is on the way but no, they’re not going to do away with the graffiti murals.
Also: Tim Kasher seemed pretty happy after the show, hanging out and chatting about Omaha, the on-stage patter mastery of Neva Dinova, and how triumphant it felt to perform “Big Bang” in Colorado Springs, a bastion of Christian fundamentalism. Somehow the conversation turned to Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, and Tim recalled being a student in Lawrence, Kansas and reading about the funerals that Phelps and his lower-than-shit organization picket. “And I distinctly remember fantasizing,” he said, “in my more-angsty youth, about being the one, you know, that bought the gun…” Right on, brother.
.Cursive at the Phoenix Theater
