When are you done being a fan? When have you had your fill of swooning over the new album, crying over the heartfelt new songs, singing the lyrics as if they mean something personal, requesting the vacation time from work, planning the roadtrip, lining up the series of tour dates you’re gonna catch?
I’m sitting at a table in the “supper club” of the Mystic. I’m rushing to the front of the floor after Hand Habits (solo) finishes at the Great American Music Hall. I’m taking up residence behind the first string of early birds at the Lodge Room. I’m deliberating over which balcony row to choose at the Troubadour. At each place I’m holding the line, I’m dancing, I’m hooting and hollering, I’m singing along and sometimes talking back to our auteur on stage. He has to know we like the music and his performance, so I am animated in my response even though afterwards I feel ashamed to have expressed my fanaticism so openly in front of the insiders who are friends with people in the band and who barely respond to the performance. These people don’t suffer the delusion of the songs being written for them: a reference to the invitation to view the Mission Santa Clara Manuscripts, Bubba being thrown away but coming back to me someday.
I meet up with other fans, my friends, see other rockers, share notes, express wishes for songs he’s going to do, recount Meg’s glass slide on the electric guitar (definitely in SF the first time), the french horn accompaniment on the encore in Petaluma, the violin addition at the two LA dates, count which number show this is. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. “Would you count it as seeing Cass McCombs if you saw him in the Skiffle Players? What about if you saw him jam with Phil Lesh?” I plan my trips to the merch table — to buy a shirt, to buy the split 7”, to buy another shirt, to pass along a stack of zines I made at work, hoping CM gets one and maybe recognizes the name of the person that gave him an artist book 15 years ago. I am imprisoned by my fanaticism, frozen and separate from the reality of those who play with him, collaborate with him, call him a friend. This isn’t the reach of eros, this is the spasm of mortifying obsession. The October Santa Cruz poster with the guy collapsed amongst newspapers is not a reference to the magazines and newspapers librarian. It’s a coincidence.
I annotate the set-lists we grab off the stage — this is when Mike Bones’s string broke, so they played Missionary Bell with bass and acoustic rather than Home At Last with the full band. I meticulously record from the balcony to catch Cass’s hands on the keyboards — such a unique sight — if only I had yelled out, “We gotta get you on a grand piano!” (And I have a funny persistent feeling I’m watching AI hands do the gesture of playing keys due to the pixelation of the digital video under the blue stage lights). (Not to mention the fuckers yapping away during I Never Dream of Trains.)
The performer gives something visceral and spiritual to their audience, suspends us in an alternate existence where we can agree on the sense making of the songs, the lyrics, the synergy of everyone playing instruments on stage. This creation of a third realm protects us from all that caterwauls outside the doors of the venue and makes space for imagination — yes, nothing was as heavy as the missionary bells of Mission Santa Clara and the great responsibility of guiding those students and researchers through the artifactual evidence in the archives — of the mission manuscripts, of the provenance of the bells (gifts from the King of Spain), the proof of the abuse and love for the natives. And something about being seen in the lyrics of a junkie on Leavenworth and what he said… I saw that junkie in the library.
But now I’m heading north on the line back to my home and I spend an hour in the passenger seat looking up European tour dates, price out transatlantic flights, ponder taking two weeks unpaid from work — if it will even be approved. I’m the junkie jonsing for the next hit, yet I feel empty and full of pretense — I’ll never be his friend and no matter how inspiring the songs, they will never make me achieve the creative success I can’t shake craving. What part of my soul does it feed to worship at the base of an idol, when the idol doesn’t want to be a star or a hero or famous? He knows he needs his fans to do what he does, but he doesn’t want fandom.