FEATURES
A thousand words: The Dismemberment Plan
By Kevin Clair
Here is a picture of a show I recently attended:
It is not one of my better pictures; from a technical standpoint, I would probably rate it among my worst. The exposure is all wrong, the lighting isn't any good, and it doesn't even begin to focus on anything. No one will list this among their Flickr favorites. And that's okay. The importance of this shot goes well beyond whether it turned out the way I wanted; in many ways, it captures a moment better than most pictures I have ever taken.
And thus begins the story of how I improbably saw the Dismemberment Plan last month.
I like to think every indie kid has a story of when and how they turned out the way they are. Mine takes place the summer after I graduated from high school. Having grown tired of the radio, and not as excited by all my old Beatles records as I used to be, I was both open-minded toward new sounds and vulnerable to falling for someone new. I had been turned on to electronic music by a friend of mine who lived downstairs, and while I respected all the old Orbital and Aphex Twin albums he had lent to me (The Richard D. James Album still rates among my favorites), nothing really dug their way into my heart the way Revolver had when I was thirteen.
It was while I was in this frame of mind that, walking into the Sam Goody store that may or may not still exist in the Peru Mall, I whimsically purchased a copy of If You're Feeling Sinister. I took it home, listened to it once, and then listened to it for the rest of the summer. This was it, you guys. This was what I'd been looking for. Those catchy melodies! Those hyper-literate lyrics! Those tortured, yet super-cool characters! Stuart Murdoch understood me. Nothing was ever going to be the same.
I haven't mentioned the Plan yet; you must understand, I am setting the stage. It was with this schoolboy enthusiasm for Matador Records that I enrolled at Carleton College in the fall of 2000, immediately taking on the radio show at KRLX that would be a once-weekly fixture of my life for the next four years. I started out simply, playing only the couple-dozen or so bands that I was passionately in love with at the time; there was a lot of Belle and Sebastian, a lot of Beatles, a lot of Pizzicato Five. And I listened; other people's shows taught me a great deal about what to play, what was good, what else I should be in love with.
I can't pinpoint an exact, "Stars of Track and Field"-esque moment at which I conclusively and unequivocally added the Dismemberment Plan to my list of Important Bands. Perhaps it was the first time I ever heard the guitar break at 2:50 of "A Life of Possibilities," or the nervous stuttering lyrics of "Girl O'Clock." Whenever it was, it stuck, and it stuck hard; by probably spring term of my first year at Carleton, I was playing the Plan every week. And when Change dropped, it only got more intense. They were more together as a band on this album, their lyrics hiding layers of emotional complexity behind the dancefloor arrangements; they were almost like the anti-Belle and Sebastian in that regard, at least until Belle and Sebastian released "Legal Man" and never looked back. I find more to love about the Plan with every passing year; they age incredibly well.
Fast forward to March 2002. The Dismemberment Plan are touring with Death Cab for Cutie on the infamous Death and Dismemberment tour, and they are rolling through Chicago during Carleton spring break. I get my ticket as soon as they go on sale. It is to be my first Metro show; every concert prior to this I have attended has been either at Carleton or at a festival at the New World Music Theater. It sets up to be one of the highlights of 2002 for me. Then, on the day of the show, we get a snowstorm. I can't get out of Ottawa to get to the show, and of course out in the sticks mass transit isn't an option. I never get the chance to see them again. A year later, they break up.
Life went on, as it has a tendency to do. Two months later, I hopped on a Greyhound bus to Chicago in the middle of the night to see Belle and Sebastian for the first time. Two years later, to celebrate my impending graduation from Carleton, I get in a car with my best friend and drive from Minnesota to California to see the Pixies open for Radiohead at Coachella 2004. I have had no shortage of absurd, ridiculous, and amazing concert experiences, for which I have been very privileged.
The Dismemberment Plan were always there, though; if anything, time had made me grow fonder of them. They were always first on the list of bands I would love to see reunite one day.
When the news came that they were, at least for one night in April, I found out the same way most people did; that is, concurrently with learning that it had sold out. I got through, as most folks did, on hopes of eBay sales and the prospect of a second show that weekend. Those prospects came through, as Pitchfork reported the second show on Monday, March 5th.
Incidentally, all this news came at the denouement of a very difficult stretch of my life. I'd finished a master's degree in library science nine months prior, and had spent all that time trying and failing to land any sort of permanent employment. The day the second show was announced was the same day I officially accepted my current job; I literally found out about it right after I hung up the phone upon accepting the position. Two days later, I found myself in possession of a ticket to the Dismemberment Plan's first show in four years.
It was a good 48 hours.
Which brings me back to this picture. Astute viewers will note that it was taken from the stage, during "The Ice of Boston." For years I had heard other people's stories about Dismemberment Plan shows, from all the other tales of on-stage "Ice of Boston" revelry to the time Eric Axelson came down into the crowd to high-five a friend of mine because he requested "The Face of the Earth" when no one else on that tour had. Hearing these stories, I had always cursed the fate and turns of events which had prevented me from having my own. Now, at last, I did.
This is the moment, and the feeling, that this picture so eloquently, in its fashion, addresses. It's the pathology of the New Internet Age, I think, that I even have this picture; I can only be so carried away in a moment, even one I've spent years waiting for, without some synapse flaring in my brain to tell me that I need a picture of it. Any old picture will do. And so we have this: indiscrimate reds and blues, Travis Morrison singing about Gladys somewhere behind a wall of arms waving back and forth. One moment among many.
I justify its imperfections with the knowledge that this is what the night was like. Somehow, I had landed a ticket to see a short-list band play a one-off reunion show in their hometown. Somehow, I had managed my way to the front of the stage. Somehow, I had found my way on stage, to rock out with a few dozen of my best friends I will never see again. And somehow, I have this picture of it. And I cherish it, for two reasons. First, it reflects what was going through my mind throughout this whole show; it was an avalanche of emotions, of "how did I get here"s and friends and music and joy. One can only focus on so much at a time like that. Moreover, I am an archivist at heart; it is important, for me, to have a document of what will doubtlessly stand as one of the best nights of my life. Many people have Dismemberment Plan stories. This picture, at last, is mine.