Stephen Malkmus, the Jicks and the rain: Prospect Park, Brooklyn, July 18, 2003 Jul 23 '03 (Updated Jul 25 '03)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 Mai by Eri Sugai From $4 The Bottom Line A rain-soaked Brooklyn crowd was treated to some divine moments of rock-and-roll majesty -- but did they get much more than their three bucks' worth? One of the greatest things about living in New York City is that you get lots of chances to see some damn good music for free, or close to it. The White Stripes played in Union Square last year, totally gratis. A few weeks ago, Sonic Youth and Wilco played Central Park for a three-buck cover charge. A recent club show taped for MTV2 by Radiohead had a cover charge of just $2. Here in my home of Brooklyn -- easily the coolest borough in the city – we get our own near-free shows ($3 cover charge), right in Prospect Park, a couple of blocks from my house. Not all of them are household names, but we saw Blackalicious, in their first-ever Brooklyn appearance, a couple of months ago, and this past weekend we saw Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. I took notes on the Blackalicious show and will some day write a review about it, but I'm admittedly not familiar enough with their music yet to really do it justice. I'm catching up, though. In the meantime, Malkmus: I’ve approached both the live shows I’ve seen involving Stephen Malkmus with some trepidation, since his first band, Pavement, had a reputation for being a sloppy live act. After seeing Pavement in one of their last shows in 1999 and Malkmus with his new band, the Jicks, this past weekend, I still can’t decide whether or not that reputation is deserved. Malkmus himself is as low-key as it gets. He and his bandmates set their own gear up and did their own sound checks. Forgoing a big, goofy rock-and-roll entrance, Malkmus walked onstage and sat on a bucket or something, waiting for the Prospect Park people to introduce him. After they did, he and the rest of the band ambled to the front of the stage. There were some sloppy moments early. The first thing Malkmus did was throw a couple of t-shirts into the audience. His second throw landed weakly in the first few rows, inspiring some good-natured boos. But Malkmus recovered nicely, with snark, saying: “I could make a Mets joke right now…” The band then ripped quickly through a couple of unrecognizable blues numbers – “I Need Your Love” and “All Right Now,” according to the Jicks message board – leaving the audience, who were expecting the band to actually play Stephen Malkmus songs, a little confused. Then bassist Joanna Bolme called to somebody offstage, "Can we get those setlists?" Setlists were procured, and the show began in earnest. A day-long threat of rain began turning, at that moment, into a full-blown storm. That eventually came to suck a great deal, since all but certain “friends” of the park, who had paid some kind of membership fee, were excluded from the covered section of the bandshell. Early in the show, however, the weather enhanced the show’s mood, delivering a crowd-pleasing lightning bolt right in the middle of the second, mammoth guitar solo in Animal Midnight, and infusing the rather small audience with a loopy energy. Some of the energy might have been mean-spirited: at one point, somebody yelled, “What’s up with the Jicks?” I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but Malkmus responded by saying, “That always gets me: ‘What's up with the Jicks.’” If Malkmus or the band were offended by anything anybody in the audience said, it certainly didn’t turn up in their playing. I always admire bands that are willing to mix up their studio music live, and the Jicks certainly did that. They delivered the Seventies-influenced, melodious, indie rock the crowd expected, but scrupulously avoided note-for-note rehashes of their instrumental passages and added a few unexpected flourishes, such as the slow section tacked to the end of Vanessa From Queens. They did all this despite the puddles that began to form onstage under the leaky bandshell, which got some nervous glances from Bolme, who at one point tried to make the audience feel better by remarking, “I’m getting wet, too.” Sorry, Joanna, but you don’t know wet. About 30 minutes into the set, the rain was coming down in sheets, and it was like standing fully clothed in an icy shower. And, after cranking out six well-played favorites from Malkmus’s solo albums, the band launched into three unfamiliar songs in a row –- I still don’t know what they were, the band offered no explanation, and nobody on the Jicks message board had any clue what they were. They were all decent songs -- particularly the third one, which followed the Pig Lib formula of mixing engaging, dark melodies with expert jam sessions -– but, when I happen to be standing in a drenching rain, risking pneumonia and the slow destruction of the contents of my wallet, I have little patience for a band’s desire to explore its new material. At the end of this prolonged, three-song cycle, they launched into Us, the happy, poppy, uninteresting (to me) song that ends Pig Lib, and Lisa and I decided this would be our last song of the night, come hell or high water (no pun intended). But then a funny thing happened: A few people, here and there, starting climbing over the barricades that separated the rabble from the “Prospect Park friends” under the shelter of the bandshell. By the time “Us” had ended and Vague Space, from Malkmus’s self-titled solo debut, had begun, there was a certifiable bum-rush going on, and Lisa and I were a part of it. My first bum-rush! I was so thrilled. With most of the crowd suddenly clambering toward them, the band looked a smidgen apprehensive at first. But nobody got trampled, and most of the crowd ended up in the shelter of the bandshell, basking in the warm glow of the stage lights, smiling beatifically, occasionally roaring with delight for no apparent reason, and the band relaxed. Alas, they only played two more songs before leaving the stage. They came back quickly for the encore – a few band members moonwalking through the massive onstage puddles on the way -– and dove into the noodle-fest One Percent of One. They played that expertly and took their time doing it, but with that song they apparently had shot their wad. While the other band members milled about, Malkmus conferred for a long time with drummer John Moen and then finally climbed behind the drum kit, while Moen strapped on a guitar. Keyboardist Mike Clark teased the audience for a moment, playing the opening piano notes of 5 – 4 = Unity, from Pavement’s Crooked Rain Crooked Rain. Bolme explained to the audience, “We thought you guys would have left by now. We don’t know what to do.” I’m not sure what she was talking about -– there were still plenty of songs from both of Malkmus’s solo albums they could have played. Instead, they played an unknown cover, with the crowd-pleasing Moen singing and Malkmus playing competent drums … and that was it. Moen sang a few bars of the Van Halen standard Dance the Night Away, then the band left the stage -- with the exception of Moen and Clark, who lingered for a while to play a bit of a dance song –- Kylie Minogue, according to the message board -- complete with spinning disco lights. But that was it. Including sessions of t-shirt throwing, pog-flinging, break-taking, indecisive milling-about and amusing-cover-playing, the total show lasted an hour and twenty minutes. I know we only paid three bucks for it, so I’m grateful for what we did get. The high points were certainly high, and the band was unquestionably tight when they wanted to be. But I kept thinking about the poor folks who had to ride home soaking wet on the icy subway -– Lisa and I, fortunately, were just a short walk from home -– and I wondered if they’d have thought the show was worth the effort. I’m not sure they would. For your further reading pleasure: My review of Malkmus's latest album, 'Pig Lib'

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