Phthursday Musings: Long Live The Bottle Rockets

The Bottle Rockets have retired.

The Hideout, 11/10/18:

To the extent that there is such a thing as an “active band” right now, I suppose the Bottle Rockets were as much my favorite active band as anyone.

There’s no deep back story. Brian decided it was time. He’s tired of being on the road. He turns 60 this year. You can’t argue with all that.

It’s been a long few days here and while on the one hand I want to write a lot about the Bottle Rockets themselves, I’ll just say a bit here and then offer a complicated thought about the new normal.

The Bottle Rockets released 24 Hours A Day in 1997. I think it was technically out of print a year later. I know this is a hard thing to understand, but this album was released on a major label, the band was dropped shortly thereafter, and the album has never been reissued in any format. And it is somewhere on the list of the ten greatest rock albums ever released.

Is that a controversial thing to say? Hardly. Where’s the controversy? Either you agree with me, or you have no opinion on the subject at all, because this is an album pretty much nobody heard. For there to be a controversy there has to actually be another side!

I’m not sure where exactly you’d place them. Somehow in the end they were considered outlaw country, but they were always a rock band.

They’re not from the South, exactly, but they’re from south of St. Louis, which is kind of like being from absolutely nowhere. Rock, country, Midwest, South… they’re all of those things at once. But it’s all natural. It doesn’t feel like a piece of this and a piece of that. It all feels… American. Fully formed.

I think I’ll write more about my experiences with them later. I think I have a lot to say on all this, it’s just hard organizing it right now.

When I read Brian’s retirement notice, about not wanting to be on the road, about wanting to stay home and be a good husband and a good dog dad and all that… it wasn’t just not being to argue with it all. It was recognizing something more in it.

I’m 15 years younger than he is. And I’m not going quite so far as to say I just want to pack it in. But the thought that I can’t go the Hideout or to Fitzgerald’s and see the Bottle Rockets again… logically leads me to thinking that I’m just not going to go back to these places much at all.

I don’t want to come off as super alarmist, but I don’t see live music rebounding. I think a lot more of these clubs are going to go under. I think the kind of live entertainment I’m interested in seeing will be harder to come by. Some niches will be okay, some clubs will endure. But when we’re collectively 90% back to normal, these places will still be like 25% back to normal, and at that point absolutely nobody is going to be there to help them.

Meanwhile, among other things, the pandemic has sort of trained me to never ever be out of the house after dark. Younger people will just flip that switch back on. I’m honestly having a hard time seeing how I’m going to do that.

I feel my relationship with music generally really slipping. I have to think others are feeling much the same way. I’m so used to a certain kind of sonic environment now that for a couple weeks I haven’t even been able to bring myself to put an album on.

I really hope I’m wrong. I hope that this is a deep pandemic-induced funk that can be snapped out of. But that’s not how it feels. This is feeling like one of things where I have changed the most over the last year.

With the likelihood of accessible vaccines within two months, it opens up the thinking about what new normal might actually look like. It’s in that context that I’m pessimistic about live music.

I’m less pessimistic about outdoor activities. I’m trying to convince myself that in a couple weeks here I’m going to get back to running. I’m hoping there will even be a softball season this year. And I get to be an assistant coach, maybe for two sports. And we should be able to get back out to stadiums. I’m looking forward to being outside. So that’s something.

And I’m less pessimistic about certain kinds of travel. I’ve got to admit that the thought of dealing with an airplace is incredibly unappealing. But driving off to South Dakota? I’m pretty keen on that right now. Maybe that’s even the ticket to getting back to a better place with music. The car seems to be the one place where I’m not out of sorts that way.

The other thing is that there are people I really want to not just see but actually spend quality time with. Dinner every two years isn’t what I mean. I’m not sure exactly what I do mean, but I’m tired of cramming little visits into schedules or whatnot. I want to spend a day or two with people. Maybe have a real conversation! I guess that’s part of what the pandemic has done, it’s triggered these kinds of reassessments.

I know for some people it’s going to be quite a bit different. For me I think I hate the idea of talking on the phone more than ever. For you, maybe the pandemic has actually been the opportunity you needed to have those conversations, because the phone is no issue to you! Who knows!

It’s weird to me how little it seems we all talk about some of this stuff. What else do we really have to talk about anyway? But truly I’m sick of biding time. I want to get vaccinated, I want the pandemic to fade away, and I want to stop feeling so damn trapped, not just by a virus, but by whatever all else it is which traps me, traps us.

I mean, hell, my job can be mobile. Maybe I’ll tell the wifey she can quit her job and we just head out on the road this summer. By day I’ll scrum or be agile or whatever the hell work means anymore, but I’ll do it from Nevada or New Hampshire or Nebraska.

What about you all? What are you going to do? How do we hold each other to what we’re saying? Do I have to buy a minivan and throw you in there with us? Are we meeting up in Boise or Albuquerque? YOLO? Bueller?

I went looking for a good live recording of “Kit Kat Clock”. The best one I found isn’t quite what I had in mind. On the album it’s an opener, a bright, tight rocker. This is… almost mournful! And maybe that makes it more appropriate.

I sure will miss these guys.