This past weekend, very suddenly, I found myself in Boston -- Chickadees, I cannot tell you how giddy I was, when I stepped out of the airport, to have that Northern chill hit me. More awake than I'd been in months. So, I went because my dear dear friend Tom Johnston curated a really great event to tie up the Boston Book Festival titled The Book Revue, a great mix of writers who rock & rockers who write - but wait, first I should tell you about the concert we went to on Friday night, where Dean & Britta opened for Belle & Sebastian. Chris Colbourn (Buffalo Tom) was so kind as to give me one of his comp tickets (THANK YOU), which happened to be in something like the 10th row, center. AND he shared his junior mints. Belle & Sebastian were fabulous, but what's in my head is this song from Dean & Britta.
By the way, if you think you don't know who Buffalo Tom is, you do, maybe you just don't know that you know:
Belle & Sebastian put on a ridiculously fun show - I never would've guessed that B&S fans are...how shall I put it... headbangers? But apparently they are. Everybody dances like crazy.
Saturday was spent zipping around, Mike's Diner in the South End for breakfast, then to the Boston Public Library where our friend Nick Flynn was on a memoir panel along with Marianne Leone, and Jerald Walker. Afternoon, again, a flurry of running, and eventually getting over to John Hancock Hall in Back Bay, to basically hang around while some of the performers - Dean Wareham, Kristen Hersh, Joe Pernice, Steve Almond - got ready. Fast forward to Au Bon Pain, split pea soup, a nice BU professor whose name I forget reciting Hopkins, Steve Almond vaguely discussing truth through a story about Steven Elliot's expression of love. Spent half of the show backstage, watching next to Nick Zinner (guitarist of YYYs) and his book friends, and half in the audience.
Jumping into Tom's life is always wildly energizing, or, really, simply full of a crazed energy. It's so out of my hermetic, interior life, all that banging around, meeting rockers, running from venue to venue, staying up too late, eating meals in groups of eight or nine. There's more to tell, Chickadees, (about a great, great play called The Method Gun.. about how excited I am for New Year's Eve) but I have to go read some Wordsworth. More later perhaps...
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2 comments:
I am SO BUMMED I couldn't go to Nick Flynn's panel. I thought I could, and my mom was going to take me, and then the PSATs popped out of nowhere and I had to take those instead.
I am also very bummed you saw B&S. I was SO BUMMED I couldn't go to that either.
I love Boston. I am totally going to take you up on that lunch offer whenever you are around next.
Chickadee, I predict lots of readings & concerts in your future. We'll make a lunch plan closer to December :)
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