“This part almost sounds like the Cure.” “I love watching drummers.” “My friend flew here from Minnnesota to come to this show. It’s his 40th Birthday.” “The last time I came here, it was to see the MC5.”
These are things that may sound commonplace, except that they were spoken into my ear last night by Sari Bacilla. I know her name has been Sari Flowers for years now, but I can’t help it. Among the most unchanged people I know, she is still, to me, the girl from Sebastopol who works at the downtown gas station—even though she’s a mom from San Leandro who’s married and has a 14-year-old daughter.
I was unaware Sari loved the Wedding Present. She says she discovered Seamonsters first, then backpedaled to Bizarro, which the Wedding was Presenting in its entirety. She says Bizarro is the record that inspired her to buy a drum set and try to learn. She didn’t learn, or at least very well. Drums are hard.
Bizarro is the record my friend Dan and I would listen to late at night, drinking Robotussin. One night, when the excitement of “Brassneck” wore off, I traded it to Matt Carrillo for a beer and forgot about it. Until finding it on cassette a few years ago. Twenty years later. With a whole new meaning and sense.
Bizarro is a record about betrayal, about kiss-offs, about demanding to know what went wrong, and every third song or so ends with a long, extended three-chord guitar vamp. Sometimes I hear these vamps as illustrating the repetitive motion and slow passage of time in the aftermath of a breakup. Moreso lately, though, I hear them as a triumph of the narrator, the incessant music of a cathartic joyride out on the town while looking for new opportunities.
No vamp is as long or as joyful as the end of “Take Me,” and I defend its core of contentment by the next, and last, song on Bizarro: “Be Honest,” a short afterthought that isn’t burdened by complications. “If we’re really, really going to be honest,” sings Gedge, “we might as well be brief.” After the ten-minute opus prior, “Be Honest” is a succinct two minutes that smoothly ends the album.
Here’s the best part. Last night, during all these songs about betrayal and disloyalty, Sari kept leaning over and saying things in my ear. Things that sounded exactly like the old Sari, or rather the Sari she’s always been, which is the great and wonderful Sari. David Gedge stood on stage, pleading to know how people could change. I considered myself lucky to know a few who haven’t.
.Live Review: The Wedding Present at the Independent
