Even Natalie Merchant Catches A Cold Sometimes!

You know when you travel half way around the world and then borrow a car and drive 3.5 hours to see a Natalie Merchant concert - and find out she’s sick and the show gets cancelled? Yeah, that.

Dear Natalie Merchant,

I’ve been a fan since I saw your old group 10,000 Maniacs do the MTV Unplugged show. Well, I live in New Zealand, so I probably saw it a little after it was broadcast. For a while there, we got to see the best of those gigs, and I used to record them all onto VHS, I had a bunch of ‘em that were favourites (R.E.M., Crowded House, 10,000 Maniacs, and Sinead O’Connor - R.I.P.). And shortly after learning about the Maniacs I heard your debut solo album, Tigerlily - I was in my first year at university, had just moved from home. The song Carnival has been some strange sort of balm for me, of constant comfort. I love all of your albums, and you won’t know this - why would you? - but I recently reviewed your latest - and what a great treat that record is. I didn’t say much about it really, because I’m still processing it, still listening to it as if it’s the first time, still learning from it.

But I couldn’t believe my luck that you were doing a tour - your first in a decade? - that coincided with my holiday to America. I checked, and checked, but the dates weren’t really lining up. And then San Francisco was announced. It was a few days after my time there was finishing, but I was just up the road in Grass Valley (they grow weed here, huh, who knew?!) And I had this crazy idea I’d be able to get back easy enough. So I pestered my brother-in-law (who lives here) to get me a ticket, promised I was good for the money, even with forking out to get over here. He agreed, but pointed out that it might be an issue getting back to the gig. I said that’s all just logistics - easy. The main thing is having the ticket. He wrote to confirm he had one for me - and I didn’t tell too many people. Didn’t want to jinx it, but still told a few! I truly cannot convey how excited I was. I’ve seen a lot of shows. It was, briefly, an occupational hazard. And more than that, it has been a sort of lifestyle choice, a life enhancer. But the chance to see you sing your songs - old and new - was the thing I was most looking forward to. Up there for me with getting to see Brian Wilson perform SMiLE, and seeing Prince at the piano just a few months before he died, and, yeah, on that level really…

It’s been an amazing trip. When I was in San Francisco last week I got to see not only Tangerine Dream but also Dinosaur Jr - and as those links will tell you, not that you’ll have time to click on them, both shows were super great! So I can’t really complain.

But man, two days ago, I’m driving down to San Francisco from Grass Valley. My bro-in-law figured he’d just loan me his car. And I have driven a vehicle in Hawaii once before and everyone has Maps apps on their phones right? So I just plugged in the address and took off. I was armed with a few CDs for the car and I was on my way. Driving solo. The music guiding me. I was listening to this compilation album, and that sad, sad song In The Wee Small Hours came on. One of Sinatra’s best, right? I’m sure you’d agree. It was just me and the road, and that song. And though the sun was blazing in nicely, and it was the middle of the day, not the wee smalls at all, I have this thing about American music telling me American stories when I’m on American roads. The songs I’ve lived and loved all my life really do sound brand new to hear them travelling down the roads that inspired them. I was listening to Springsteen’s Nebraska later and though I was going nowhere near there, and nowhere near Atlantic City, those songs were super-resonating.

Anyway, there I am listening to Frank (“when your lonely heart has learned its lesson…”) and thinking about how when I get back to Grass Valley, and return to Booktown Books I’m going to buy a replacement copy of Gay Talese’s Frank Sinatra Has A Cold - because I used to have that book, and because I love that essay so much and because that’s how my mind flits from related-link to tangential-story and back and forth and all around since everything is connected…and then I get a call from a friend who has the inside scoop…

Bad News: Natalie Merchant is unwell. The show has been cancelled. Looking forward to seeing you still…

I’m crushed. Of course. The wind out of my sails, but still a while to go. No turning back either - because I’m on one of these big freeways and I don’t know the way, and re-routing requires stopping, and stopping requires indicating, and I’m just best in the middle of the road listening now to the soundtrack to Boomerang which is maybe an odd choice - but super great actually. And then it’s funny how Boyz II Men come on and End of the Road has never had such bittersweet attachment…

I’m thinking that it’s a total bummer, obviously. But I ain’t mad. I can’t be mad. That’s the wrong response. There’s nothing I can do. If I had Tigerlily or Ophelia or Motherland or Keep Your Courage on CD with me there in the car, I’d play one of those. Straightaway. And this is crass maybe, but kinda like when you hear the news that some musician you loved has just died. You reach for your favourite songs, right? Well, I didn’t have any Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs CDs in this borrowed car, I had a whole bunch of bargain-basement soundtrack albums I’d bought last week. So, um, I start listening to the score from The Crying Game - and maybe that was about as fitting as could be even.

I have an hour and a bit to go, and I’m just following the blue line of the map-app, and I’m going to go see my friend and have a hang. And we were both going to be going to your show, and now we’re not. So we just catch up on old stories, and go for a walk, and a bite, and I end up staying the night, since the adrenalin would have been there if I’d seen your show. I’d have hopped in that car and it would have bloody well driven itself all the way back to Grass Valley with me tunelessly shout-singing, “They say I must be one of the wonders, God's own creation…” over the top of whatever instrumental score I had on under…

But, like I said, the wind was out of my sails in the middle of the day. And I was also sad to hear that you were sick.

So I slept on the floor, got up early, and drove the three hours back - to some more mini musical epiphanies. I found the secret-stash of leftover burnt CDs in the glovebox. I put on Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks - because I haven’t listened to it that much lately. You won’t know this, because why would you, but I used to write a music blog called, er, Blog On The Tracks (geddit?) Some dunce-burger shit-stirrer tried to label me sexist and, um, “rock-ist” (?) for having that Dylan shout in the title to my blog. So, I guess it was just easier for him to do that than read about all the folk and jazz and hip-hop stuff I also covered; the female solo artists, the bands from around the world - the interview I did with Rokia Traore for instance. Or the time I just gushed about a single song of yours, Giving up Everything. My god, that song just sits with me forever!

Ah, where was I? Yeah, so anyway, I put Blood On The Tracks in the car’s CD player, first time in years and years but I know every twist and turn of it like it’s the most familiar road, I know every lyric and every barbed snarl from Bob when he delivers the album’s cruelest jabs (Idiot Wind). And there I am driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s early, the sun is just starting to rise, and, yes, you can spot this already of course, but Bob opens with Tangled Up In Blue, since albums always open with the right song, and it’s always the same song - duh! - once it’s been recorded, once it’s in place. “Early one morning the sun was shining…” sings Bob.

And I leave my heart in San Francisco just a little bit. Which, sure, is at the least musical fitting (and R.I.P. TB). And I drive on back to G/Valley. I have help this time from Bruce again (I know you’re a fan! I LOVED your cover of Because The Night). And also from Neil Young. I reckon one of his most underrated songs is Thrasher. But he has so many of those ones. Mercurial even after all the years. I mean, just what does that song even mean right? But some of its lines - “They had given all they had for something new/But the light of day was on them” / “And I was just getting up, hit the road before it’s light/Trying to catch an hour of the sun…” - were hitting me a little harder than they usually do.

Music’s so special that way, right? It gives us memories. It helps to make them. It places us inside its context.

I like to think this is the story of how I almost saw a Natalie Merchant concert - and how that’s maybe as good of a way to explain fandom as anything. I was ALMOST there has more of a story than just the usual: Yep, saw the gig, got the t-shirt, moving on…

But that’s also just me saving face a bit I guess. It happens. Gigs get cancelled. People get sick. I hope you return to the stage and knock the audience dead with those songs. If anyone can every time it’s you. I believe this was the likely setlist. Look at me, nerd that I am, making a playlist of the songs I didn’t get to hear! I’ll listen to this a lot when I’m ready.

Thank you Natalie, for all of your music. You haven’t lost a fan. I’ll be listening to your music forever.

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It’s a more awkward segue than most perhaps, but it is Friday (in New Zealand anyway) as I write this, and Friday is about music, and there’s always a playlist. So I have made one, A Little Something For The Weekend Vol. 136. The vibes for this are mostly indie/pop and I hope, as always, that there’s something here for you. Either an old favourite, or something brand new. Happy listening. And happy weekend. And thanks for reading.