Reading: What's that?

Moving: walked to the Fillmore and back--four miles altogether, at least.

House: nada

31 May 2000: Cowboy Junkies

I am glad I don't have to be Lola. As Jenn, Kevin, RDC, and I sat down at Tommy's Thai, Kevin sat on the left side because he's left-handed. This reminded me of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret when she goes out to dinner with her friend's family and the boy she has a crush on is next to her and because she's left-handed, their arms touch sometimes. I wouldn't be twelve again: I might not feel as intensely about everything anymore, but I'm also not feeling intensely miserable about almost everything anymore either. Jenn remembers wondering why the girls were all worked up about metal, because she was reading "brass" for "bras," and I didn't know what the big deal about punctuation was. This reminded me of something, and I pelted home. RDC actually asked why I had to go home. He's never been a girl. I ran six blocks altogether, and if I had been Lola my boyfriend would've been dead all three times. I can run in sandals, but not the way she could run in Doc Martens.

Off to the Fillmore. It's newly painted inside and out and looked spandy. I didn't prowl it as is my wont, because I'd already lost RDC once, and he was prone to getting lost that night. Lots of space, but maybe because few enough people in Denver have the taste to love the Junkies and it wasn't a sell-out crowd. Kevin proposed the soundboard as the place to be, and so we watched and listened from there. The only disadvantage to that spot was that I saw a setlist, which is anathema to RDC. The Dead never had a setlist but would innovate and play off the crowd and riff and ya ya ya. Whatever. The first time I watched "Moonlighting" was in BHM's room when CLH was a junior at BU. I opened my mouth and BHM's roommate cut me off: "No talking during God." That's how I am about the Junkies. He mostly shut up.

There are three songs that put me in a concert hall without fail: "A Question of Balance," which the Moody Blues opened with in Jones Beach in 1986; "Where the Streets Have No Name," which U2 opened with in May 1987 in Hartford; and "Seven Years," which the Junkies opened with at Toad's Place in 1993. I'd seen the Moody Blues the week before, but I don't remember what they opened with; I saw U2 twice that May and three times since, but that's the only opener I remember; and I've seen Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd (minus Roger Waters) and a bunch of others, but I couldn't tell you another opening song, not even for either of my Peter Gabriel concerts.

This night they opened with

• Crescent Moon from Pale Sun Crescent Moon, then
• Come calling (his song) (Lay It Down)
• Miles from Our Home (Miles from Our Home)
• 200 More Miles (Trinity Session)
• Oregon Hill (Black-Eyed Man)
• Small Words (?) from their upcoming album in 2001
• Still (?) from the new album
• Good Friday (Miles from Our Home)
• Five-room Love Story (Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes)
• A Few Silly Words (Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes)
• I Saw Your Shoes (Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes)
• White Sail (Pale Sun Crescent Moon)
• Hollow as a Bone (Miles from Our Home)
• I'm So Open (?) from the new album
• Southern Rain (Black-Eyed Man)
• If You Gotta Go, Go Now (a Bob Dylan song covered on Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes)
• Something More Besides You (Lay It Down)
• A Rolling Stones cover

I don't like Miles from Our Home much, but the stuff from the upcoming album sounds like a return to the sound of Pale Sun Crescent Moon, which is a very good thing indeed. Nothing from Caution Horses, but when I saw them in 1993 and Margo began "Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning," and I sang along, she grinned and nodded at me and I nearly swooned. And only one song from Trinity Session, but they did "Misguided Angel" at Lilith Fair in 1998. Nothing from White Off Earth Now, which is okay. And no "Angel Mine" for Jenn and Kevin.

At Toad's Place, I barely danced, but that was because I was happily squashed against the stage. I had extracted a promise to RDC to dance with me to "Anniversary Song," but he was squashed alongside me and neither of us wanted to move an inch. Instead we danced to that song in a private setting but with many more eyes upon us at our wedding. At the Fillmore, I didn't move much beyond the white man's overbite (which is what Billy Crystal calls it in "When Harry Met Sally" and it's the most appropriate description). Also, maybe because RDC was wearing tie-dye, I found myself doing that rhythmless Peanuts shakes that is the low-key Dead dance--high-key is spinning. Five Dead shows, the last one five years ago, and I, ever the fabulous dancer (koff koff), am corrupted.

Margo. She can sing. She can sing hard, as she did with "I Saw Your Shoes" and "If You Gotta Go, Go Now," and she can sing low, as she did with "White Sail," when she and brother Michael with an acoustic guitar were alone on stage. She still forgets words: "What I desire's your love to inspire this love for you which grows in me..." That first "love" should be "trust." I wasn't close enough to see if she blushed, as she did in New Haven when she forgot the words to "Black-Eyed Man."

There. Jerry Garcia missed notes all the time. That's a Dead thing for RDC to admire in the Junkies (whom he likes quite a bit, if not as much as I do, I who am a fanatic).