🎟️ Concert Review: Black Midi 6/8/23
More review than concert, but there is a little bit of music in this
I am writing this on the notes app on my phone beside an overheated Greyhound bus parked on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Trying to make it to the J Fenimore Cooper service area, the electric blue sign informs the other passengers and me that it is five miles away and unfortunately closed.
A woman in all black is sobbing as she smokes a bummed cigarette, explaining that she just moved to Philly and was using this trip to prove to her bosses that she could feasibly make the commute back and forth daily to NYC, no problem. She makes a third call in the last 15 minutes, growing more hysterical each time she recounts her woes. The bus driver informs us that she legally can’t be towed from where she is, jesting that “This is how forest fires are started” to the woman as she sparks her own Swisher sweet. We wait for the next bus with the monochromatic dog emblem, continuously jumping forward but never landing its stride.
My sinuses are so full of snot a team of alchemists on standby, swirling vials, trying to turn my liquid green into gold. I do not remember what clean air tastes like, but I know the mucus lining my throat is salty.
Already delayed by 30 minutes before we boarded the now out-of-commission bus, the proverbial meter is ticking upward, showing no signs of me reaching the city in time to beat the rush hour crowd at Times Square next to the station hub.
At this point, I had already been walked in on while in a “compromised position” at a bathroom stall in the Philadelphia “Fashion District,” formerly a mall titled The Gallery (and then Gallery 2) that underwent the same fate most American malls have been facing since Amazon supremacy has reigned as lord of retail. They have been able to revitalize the mall space into what still looks like a dead mall but with walls announcing coming attractions instead of the previous gated stores with neon that stopped buzzing years ago. I entered the mall, after having already left early, to avoid the (I wish I were being dramatic) blood-covered stalls across the street at the Greyhound station. Even without the blood, other body fluids and floaters were letting me know that either the toilets were clogged, or that flushing is now passe in Philly.
After the rush of humiliation and avoiding putting my DNA into the mix at the crime scene stalls, I thought maybe it would actually, for once, be better to try pissing in the moving Greyhound’s bathroom. The toilet seat was wet, I realized too late. The toilet paper roll was as empty as my emotional rainwater indicator. Low to no reserve available for the typical optimist who believed that maybe the third time really was the charm. Forest fires seemed to make everything dry but the bathrooms. As the realist, I breathe forest fire flames with the smoke thick as fog covering the sun causing it to blaze a new shade of orange. As the pessimist, I light my own cigarette from my “last resort” pack that I have to stop keeping in arms reach.
I, myself, was using this trip as a test as well. For almost a year, I have been toying with the idea of making a series, exploring the music of Americana on the road, and tasting the culture of different towns through sounds, suds, and other forms of sustenance. If the test was to see if these trips would be worthy of stories, I am learning that the stories will write themselves on an iPhone mini, as long as I keep making the effort to write the reviews and sit on the seat of a bus with dampened cheeks.
The grass is poking my ass. I am wearing a turtleneck under a black corduroy dress, which is under the five-dollar sweater I bought from Target because the bus to Philly was too cold. It is 73 degrees now. I have a fever from the cold. I assume I caught it from my compromised immune system after breathing the air of the Canadian Wildfires that shrouded New York City over the past several days. I tell myself this bad luck is all because I forgot to wear my earplugs, something I haven’t done since I first started stretching my ears at 16. 13 years later, I know better than to ever let that happen again.
We are saved off of the interstate’s shoulder, riders bickering with one another over the new choices of seats. This bus has cooler air. I finally appreciate the cheap sweater that had just smothered me in the sweltering, but otherwise temperate air. People look over my shoulder, feverishly typing into my phone, assuming it is either a manifesto or festering at a man.
After finishing the cigarette, I pop a couple of “Smints” I got from the UK where I made a pilgrimage to the Windmill Brixton, the venue where Black Midi started. You can read about my trip abroad here. I consider cracking into the vodka I bought from the Reading Market for Bloody Marys.
I began the journey at the Reading Market. Everything that The Gallery 3 doesn’t offer, Reading Market does, and does it stupendously. Well, maybe not bathrooms, but everything else is much better. Reading Market is as good of a tourist locale spot to the bus stop as the mall, all of them within a few blocks of one another downtown. The market offers several food options, including multiple Philly Cheesesteak stands (unfortunately, none offering “wit whiz”), some florists, artisanal booze, homemade ice cream, confectioneries, and independently owned shops, each loaded with pantry stocking staples as well as beads, for when you need to make someone back-up jewelry as a gift in case the initial macaroni necklace doesn’t go over well.
This was the first time I have ever been on a trip where I didn’t have friends awaiting me at the destination. On all my trips previously I either had a place to stay or a person to see, and now I was alone in Philadelphia at a time many consider the city to be at its worst. Fortunately, I had been to Philly half a year earlier and knew the area well enough to book a hotel that was close to the venue for the show, as well as close to the market and bus terminal. Even with the proximity to the more luxurious part of town, I did notice the town was more impoverished than even the worst parts of New York that I had seen in recent days. New York will generally have a spread of people begging, sleeping, or doing whatever they need to to get by on each block. Yet Philly with less than 1/5th of the population seemed to have more of these out-of-luck people with even less shock at their appearance from the locals.
What it lacked in population, it made up for in air quality. The North East had just weathered the fallout of Canada’s wildfires, making New York City’s air the most toxic air to breathe in the world. Philadelphia was still in the affected area but with less severe air quality cautions. The day before the concert, Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep had been posting his videos and images of the wildfire footage from NYC, their first stop in America before the beginning of their North American Tour, kicking off in Philly.
While Black Midi is doing two shows in NYC near the beginning of the journey, I decided to start and end at the Philly one. Though their set at the Governors Ball and Irving Plaza are not only easier for me to access, they would also mean I did not need to buy bus tickets, an AirBnb or several Ubers. However, I went to Philly. I’ll say it was because it was the first show of their American tour, but truthfully, it was because I have never been a fan of festivals, and I assume that Governors Ball was like the rest of them. Overpriced tickets, overpriced food trucks, and overpopulated crowds. I didn’t go to the Irving Plaza show simply because that show was added after I had already bought the ticket and Airbnb for the show in Philadelphia. I took the bus less graveled, and that has made all the difference.
After visiting the market, I hobble to my Airbnb, Googling on the way where the closest CVS is so that I can buy socks to protect my Achilles heels from the a-little-too-formal-flats I chose to wear as my only pair for the trip.
The socks went on immediately. I took my bag full of cough syrup and ibuprofen to a modern brick bar by the venue to get a pre-show drink to avoid the show surcharge. It’s entrance was full of people, wearing what is best described as business casual (some more business, others much MUCH more casual) who greeted one another with pep and propriety at the entrance. I broke through the rigamarole and went straight to the bar, ordered an espresso martini and some water, where I whipped out the pills and cough syrup right at the counter, and began doing what looked more like debauchery than remedies. I asked what event was causing all this racket for the evening. The bartender let me know that it was a rehearsal dinner that I had crashed. With a nod, I tipped well, packed up my mobile apothecary and headed to Union Transfer.
The line of attendees wrapped around the rest of the block, and then back some, easily 100 patrons waiting for the doors to open. Small clusters of people from ages 15 to quote… 21 … unquote huddled together out front, some in merch from previous Black Midi shows in the US. With many mullets, each person looked more contemporary than the last. I prayed I had tucked my AARP card deep enough in my wallet that they wouldn’t see it when I flashed my ID to claim my tickets at the window of the building.
People closer to the back of the line looked more like me, or, more bluntly, had more wrinkles in their faces than their clothing. A wandering man in a t-shirt and basketball shorts kept yelping as he was scalping waters out for three dollars, telling everyone how mad he is that people give handouts to homeless people, because if someone is desperate enough they will find a way to make money, and it will be better for them in the long run. “I charge three out here because they charge five in there.” I bought a bottle, and he announced to the crowd that I was a model citizen and that more people should buy water. He was in a rush, as he needed to hit the hockey game crowd on the other side of town.
More people did buy water, and not long after the line started moving in. Typically at shows I am right at the stage, not only because I am normally at the front of the line, but I also normally have a press pass. This was a leisure show, so I was a bit later than usual to line up, but found refuge in a raised platform with guard rails that I could rest on that would keep the moshing away from me, all the while providing a great view for the zoo animals concertgoers turn into in the pit. Next to me was a chair with a reserved name plaque on it. I had wondered who was the guest of honor. Truly, this position in the crowd was preferable to me, I had the ability to lean on something, and I could properly hear each instrument, and each singer, and everything sounded as I had always dreamed it would. There was plenty of room on both sides of me, as to my right were two boys, in their preteens with a chauffeur. Before the show began, the seat to my left was taken by a woman, her boyfriend perched behind her.
Cold Court entering to the Law and Order theme, favoring chaos over either law or order. The band members looked as young as the rest of the crowd, and they sang of bugs, screamed like little girls, and gave more energy than a kid hopped up on that HFCSs (the street name for high-fructose corn syrup).
During Cold Court’s third or fourth song, the boyfriend of the woman in the chair fell backward and collapsed to the floor. I didn’t know if it was a seizure, or just him fainting. Everyone around us tried to help him after as he quickly came-to. He sat for a bit, recouping after the fall, his girlfriend watching over him, making sure he was doing fine as the party raced on in the crowd in front of us. After they seemed to be doing okay, the two of them left the venue. Cold Court continued to serve the riotous crowd as they performed several manic songs before leaving the playpen stage.
Enter Greep, through the door to the floor, parting the audience and muscling his 5’8 frame through the crowd of amazonian women and guy-liaths. He breaks through the audience, unable to make it in the locked backstage doors, crowded by noticing his fans, as he makes several attempts at the locked stage door by jumping up on the stage and running through the back.
Audience members held up printer papers with the image of Mario breakdancing, which is Greep’s Twitter profile photo. Greep not only has a band with a cult following, but he also has a cult following on Twitter. He has gotten into spars with J Brekkie, posted many recommendations in both literature and jazz, and in general posts like the timeless man he is, stuck in a timeline world. Immediately after the show, he began spamming the feed with different celebrity names, eventually descending a madness spiral into new spellings of names and tweeting cartoon characters as well. I can’t decode this one for you, I don’t have the slightest idea what that is about.
Black Midi’s entrance was delayed by nearly 15 minutes, until an announcer booms overhead, introducing our lightweight champions, a ceremonial introduction that is the custom at Black Midi shows. Band members Cameron Picton, Morgan Simpson, and tour-frequent friend “Shank” aka Seth Evans wear white shirts beside Greep in bright red, making him stick out like a burning match. Whether this is on purpose or accident, the cult figure for the band that sings of hellfire. The show begins with “Welcome to Hell” and twists the spiral staircase down into madness and moshing from there.
People consistently mosh and dance, even during the down-tempo songs. After a few hits, Greep tells the audience “Knock that off, you stupid mother fuckers” as they hold photos printed on thin sheets of paper of Mario doing a spin-kick with their other hands hoisted up into devil horns.
Black Midi plays more hits off of Hellfire and closed the show with my favorite song, which is called “Magician” and is unreleased as well as gorgeous and sticky with poetry. I was able to record it in its entirety at the link above. It is a 10-minute-long song, and maybe the best arm workout I have had.
After the show, I waited for a bit to give the band a zine I had made from the previous set I had seen of theirs in 2022 in New Jersey. I drank some water at the bar (free of charge) before I left a copy of the zine at the merch table when it seemed like they weren’t going to come to say hi to the audience members. Both people assured me that the zine was in safe hands. I bought a tote bag and two T-shirts. Still, to date, I haven’t heard anything about it. It seems like my only chance to give it to them may have been swarming Greep with the other hungry-hungry hyenas on the auditorium floor.
The last stop of the night was at a bar on the corner of the block my Airbnb was on, which was just down the street from Union Transfer. Typically I don’t take Ubers, especially with such a short distance, but I chose to this time.
The bar, clad with velvet paintings of skin-baring women, the place was aptly named the “Silk Room.” It seemed I had just missed a potential second live show, and the bar was going to close soon, but the bartender took pity on me and gave me a free Guinness on the house. I spent the rest of the night in my room, trying to find the buttons on the TV since the remote wasn’t working to no avail. A restful night, it is. But first! A Grubhub order from Gino’s to get a Philly wit wiz.
Belly bloated and lungs hocking, I awoke the next morning and wandered the Reading market again, spending my time between check out and bus departure in a few square blocks. I skimmed a bit through the Fashion District, which still feels like a dead mall in the way that a marionette comes alive when someone pulls on the chords on inanimate limbs.
Because I didn’t need anything from Forever 21 (I had recently turned finitely 29) and didn’t have enough time for a movie, I sat in some of the chairs provided at a clearing in the mall, one of the few places I saw signs of life that weren’t store associates.
An established woman, head to toe in Ralph Lauren, excuses herself before saying she loves my soon-to-be-stained white shirt from the concert with various red fonts, proclaiming “Black Midi Black Midi Black Midi” etc. She leans in close to me from 10 feet away, eager to discuss the band, whose audience was mostly males, all rank with dank, in an age bracket that thinks 401k means 401,000. “I can’t wait for the day that Black Midi comes to Philadelphia. I will be the FIRST in line.”
“I had good news and bad news.”
