Grenades in a Guitar Factory
Noise happens. Beautiful, ugly. In uplifting splendor, or dispiriting splatter. It happens. And like Forrest Gump’s proverbial box of chocolates, you never really know what you’re going to get.
September 10, 2007. We were in Toronto, front row at a Damien Rice concert at what was then known as the Sony Centre, ‘Canada’s largest soft-seat venue.’ We knew little about Damien beyond the earworm that was The Blower’s Daughter, the first single off O, his debut solo album. Honestly, we had yet to hear the album in its entirety. But the song, that soaring burst of heart-busting love, infiltrated our lives via the Big Screen -- specifically, the opening scene of the movie Closer that had blown us away. Picture: Natalie Portman and Jude Law filmed in slow motion walking down a crowded street in London, their natural screen presence only heightened by the music: Rice’s Irish lilt, the ballad’s wandering, soulful cello. On that, and that alone, we pounced all over Ticketmaster and secured two soft seats a coin toss away from an imposing column of speakers.
It had been a gloomy day in Toronto, a precursor to the gloomy autumn lying in wait. We were in those spongy chairs early -- the traffic from Moffat inexplicably lighter than usual -- sipping medicinal in anticipation of impending seasonal affective disorder and the common colds that were only beginning to give us uncommon anguish. Sniff, sniff, cough, cough. We needed anodynes. A little wine in plastic cups and a few hours of The Blower’s Daughter. On blissful repeat. Acoustic, soft as the seats on which we were sitting. Comfort for the soul.
Instead: Rice and his backing band unceremoniously took the stage – initially mistaken for roadies -- half-lit and shadowy. Then promptly assaulted us with noise. Greatly unexpected, gratingly unbearable, noise. Excruciating minute upon minute of unadulterated, seemingly purposeless noise. And don’t get me wrong, I love loud, I dig noise, back in the day with Damien and even now. My amps go to eleven. Hell, just the other day my smart phone advised me -- twice on one walk! -- to turn down the volume (the alert actually read something like, Deaf Much?)
But there must be a point to such sonic madness. I mean, anyone can make random noise. Toads, toddlers, teenagers. In his punk days, our middle son played in assorted bands. They jammed in our basement and created sounds that made speakers convulse, hounds howl, and adult heads explode. But there was a point to it all. Punk being the point! To boot, they were young, they were beginners, they were learning. Oh, and no one had doled out big bucks just to hear them. Rice, on the other hand...
Hands cupped over our ears we could still hear the noise, but not a single recognizable note. Nary a wandering, soulful cello in the mix. Down the road, in describing this event to music-mad friends, we were reduced to stupid similes:
It was like the unearthly screech a wild turkey makes in the night when it’s being shredded by coyotes.
It was like the musicians were discovering feedback for the first time.
It was like the band was intent on sending us scurrying back to the cave in Moffat.
It was like we went to see Damien Rice and Motorhead broke out.
As for the band playing practically in darkness, well that was like being bombarded in a brownout.
“They’ve got two minutes to get over themselves,” Kel shouted in my ear, “or we’re out of here. Like, what the f….”
Suddenly, stage lights blindingly flashed on, and the noise came to a crashing halt. And when our eyes adjusted, there stood Damien at the mic. Unshaven, a miserable smile on his face. He explained, as he stood tuning his guitar – hey, better late than never -- that this night was going to be different. That he’d been on the road for far too long doing the same thing over and over. He missed his homeland; he missed his life. Simply put, Rice was overcooked. Exhausted beyond belief and this, he said, was his final gig. Not only was he taking the band off the road, but he was also taking himself off the road, permanently. Permanently.
Damien was retiring and he was determined to take this opportunity to do things his way. Hence the jarring fifteen-minute grenades-in-a-guitar-factory opening.
As the concert unfolded, Rice told Toronto something that was not news to his true fan base, but news to us – that he wasn’t all quiet melancholy and catchy folk, not all The Blower’s Daughter. His roots, the music on which he cut his sizable chops, was U2-inspired rock with a group he co-founded back in Ireland called Juniper, and in which he played under the stage name Dodi Ma.
Led by Dodi, Juniper played it fast, sometimes loose, and always loud.
At some point in the performance, he dismissed his band. Sent them all off for tea while he performed an extended vaudeville act, solo. You read that right: vaudeville, solo. Eventually he brought the band and the concert back to the music, impressively, wonderfully. Honestly, it was all very unexpected, very weird, and hugely entertaining.
At the end of the night concertgoers spilled out of their soft seats and departed the venue with The Blower’s Daughter -- live version played in the encore -- undoubtedly running through their heads. And assorted bits of all the other things witnessed on the tips of their tongues.
Rice’s retirement would not stick, nor would his subsequent return to recording and touring. The pattern is for him to reappear and then once again disappear, never seeming wholly content to be here, or there, or anywhere. As the subject of interviews, he’s elusive, evasive, a reluctant subject pining to be with anyone other than the interviewer, to be doing anything other than being interviewed. Regularly giving the impression as he fields another question that fragile glass is at that very moment shattering inside his skull.
