On the upside...

Share the good things

Well the world’s in a right fucking mess, isn’t it.

Yes, the UK’s managed to do something sensible — kicking out the lying, mendacious, incompetent shitheads who’ve spent the last fourteen years fucking up the country: I get the sense things feel calmer and more positive there after a decade and a half of grey grind. And yes, Macron’s edgy election bet in France seems to have paid off in holding back the tide of far-right assholery, for a while at least.

But the situations in Ukraine and Gaza are no better, and don’t even start me about what’s going on in the US right now. No seriously, don’t start me. You’re either living it here with me or watching with a raised eyebrow from afar, wondering if the country has merely embarked upon some kind of weird performance art or if it’s really going to let democracy blow up in its own face, like a drunk teenager playing with fireworks. This and other crises have swollen to become a constant backbeat of national anxiety, to the point where if anybody mentions Biden’s age to me — while continuing to give Trump a pass on everything, up to and very definitely including his deeply suspicious alleged ear injury — just one more time, I’m likely to run screaming into the ocean.

Yes, the problems in Gaza and Ukraine are bigger issues because people are dying. But if the US doesn’t get its shit together it’ll cause the return of a “president” who’ll make both those conflicts unfathomably worse. And that’ll only be the beginning.

But you know all this. So instead I’m going to invite everybody to share something good instead. Some event — minor or major — that cheered you up. Some cool piece of software or surprisingly good TV show or meal, or just… anything.

I’ll start, with…

The Rolling Stones in concert

You may recall from previous posts that I’ve been a firm — if not obsessive — fan of the Stones for a long time, including spending many teenage hours trying to figure out how to play Honky Tonk Women and Brown Sugar before the days of YouTube, where I could have learned far more quickly that they were in Open G.

I’d never seen the band live, however. Though I’ve been to a bunch of gigs, including some great ones — Malcolm’s last tour with AC/DC, Clapton’s first residency at the Royal Albert Hall, Dire Straits at their height, playing Wembley on the celebrated Alchemy tour — live music has never been my thing, in the way it is for some people. Partly that’s because my eardrums have always been sternly defensive and shut down and so without earplugs any PA-driven show is going to leave me half-deaf for two or three days, also because… I dunno: after about fifty minutes of a concert I generally think “Okay, this is all very nice and it’s been cool to see you in person, but I’ve maybe had enough now”… and then it all keeps going for another hour and a half.

But my good friend Michael (thank you!) pointed out that the Stones were playing Santa Clara, in Silicon Valley just over the mountain from us, and I thought… what the hell. So he and Paula and I and three of our other friends went.

Honestly, I wasn’t setting my hopes high. Keith and Mick are in their eighties and Ronnie’s not far behind. I was expecting to sit through a professional but low-key jukebox set of hits and to come out thinking “Well, that was a bit meh, but at least I saw them.” From what I’ve seen of videos of the current AC/DC tour, for example, I’m sad to say it now presents like a tribute band: no Malcolm, Williams, or Rudd, and while Angus is still out there doggedly giving it his best he can’t fly so high without that ever-dependable rhythm section, and Brian’s voice is basically shot.

That was absolutely not the experience with the Stones on Wednesday night. From the moment they strolled on to kick off with Start Me Up, it was clear that — non-young though they are — the band was here to do business. Sure, they (apart from Mick) weren’t exactly bouncing around the stage, but very well-done roving camera work for the big screens helped the performance pop. They played a bunch of big hits but also a couple of deep cuts and also tore through a pair of songs from the new album, and it was not just the same old arrangements, either. Mick’s voice sounds no different to thirty years ago: he’s never really been a singer, or dancer… he simply stands there and Mick Jaggers at you, and the Jaggering is still there in force. Keith rocked Honky Tonk — it was amazing to finally see that played live by the guy who wrote it, four decades after sitting hunched furrow-browed over a guitar, trying to figure it out — and the performance and crowd response to the build of You Can’t Always Get What You Want was transcendent.

What was most engaging of all was the band’s vibe. We’re currently watching an interesting doc series on Hulu about the band scene in Camden, London, in the eighties and beyond — with murky, handheld footage of what are now stadium-filling bands, back then getting their start in scrotty little muso pubs. The Stones somehow still bring that energy with them, even after six decades of being so famous that towns have to partially shut down to accommodate the influx of people to their gigs (as happened in Santa Clara last night): attacking songs like a rowdy crew of young hopefuls playing an early gig, when chaotic commitment and having a laugh and making rock and roll happen are far more important than getting all the notes right.

Or, as someone described the Stones in a reply to me on Twitter:

I’m not going to go on about it further, because other people’s gig experiences are like their vacations or dreams: if you weren’t there, it’s very hard to care. But it was a good night, and — in the light of everything else going on — I am very grateful for it.

So: what about you? What’s good? What’s nice? What’s the upside?