A Night in Lyon with Thee Oh Sees

I let myself get frustrated on the way to the hostel. I'd come in unprepared, not the first or last time this will happen. I got off at the wrong metro stop unaware there was a magnificent hill between the stop and my destination. It was closer on the map, but only as the crow flies, and what I would give to sprout tattered black wings.

I huffed and sweated and labored under my overstuffed bag and castigated myself, mostly internally, but some escaped my mouth.

"You're a fucking piece of garbage, Monte."

"This is your punishment for..."

I forget what. I worked my way down a long, serpentine road, the sort where you stay angled over balls of your feet. I eventually found the river. I could navigate from the river. Faced with a decision, right or left,  I saw a bus stop certain to be equipped with another vague map. I trudged on and as I arrived at the stop, I realized it wasn't a stop at all, but an advertisement kiosk situated just so. As my heart fell, I looked up and saw it. I had stumbled onto the street where my hostel is located. Quai Arloing. Total, unexpected elation.

The hostel was nice. I chatted with a Chinese girl in my room for a while. She recommended a restaurant called La Cuisine. Why am I here? I'm here to see Thee Oh Sees play tonight. Everything else in Lyon would just be a pleasant surprise. 

I showered, shaved, put on clean clothes, and donned  my "going out" shoes, an ego driven supplement to my clunky walking shoes. This was the first night in my travels I was leaving the hostel with nothing but cash in my pocket. Flying blind. I had thoroughly Googled my destinations and committed their spots on the map to my internal camera roll, so I hit the streets.

Lyon is beautiful, if a little cold and grey. It seems one of those towns best cloaked in a cool slate mantle. A couple of brown rivers shuttle the history of industry out to shore.  Rich green trees interrupted by the occasional purple aberration dot the banks. Contrasting houses--shoulder to shoulder--cast in pastel hues partition the water from the woods. Lyon is staid, but her personality would probably surprise you after a couple of bottles of wine.

One thing I didn't know was Lyon is one of the gastronomic capitals of not just France, but the world. Paul Bocuse, legend of French cuisine and Lyon's native son, has raised the food community along with his expansive profile. Quiet brasseries line the streets with discreet menus boasting eye popping, sumptuous cuisine.

I worked my way to La Cuisine, an unassuming red building on a grimy street with an external door, a red curtain, and another door leading inside. I was received by the staff with Bonjour and Bonsoir. I haven't learned how to say, "I'm eating alone," yet in French, so I just motioned to myself and said, "solo," in my phony French accent. I'm not sure if 'solo' is a word in French.

I was seated, brought a menu, which the waitress, in her limited English, explained was only in French. I assured her it was okay. She brought me a small cup of marinated black and green olives. I flipped through the menu. I recognized "calamars" and "canard confit" and they had an "entree + plat" offer for €18.50. 

I ordered and my server poured me a glass of cheap red wine. Between sips the calamari came out of the kitchen. Whole pieces of calamari lightly pan seared with a balsamic reduction, the tendrils cooked down to crunchy withers, and a simple salad on the side. It wasn't the first bite, not entirely. It was as the second bite hit my lips and the first bite committed to my belly told his story. My mind reeled. The rains had returned.

My first plate was cleared. I had a window to meditate on the flavors still coating the back side of my teeth and esophagus. Time lapsed, wine drained from the glass, and the appropriate anticipation surrounded the arrival of my duck confit. Arrogant and enticing, the quarter of drip from the bone meat sat under a banner of beautifully crisped skin. Dusted with red peppercorns and chives, laid on a bed of sautéed squash and mushrooms, fjords of brown and red runoff curling toward the edge of the plate, I was reminded art seldom exists in the galleries and museums where it's sent to decay. No pictures, please.

My pupils dilated. Was my heart a flutter, or was my blood stream just grateful for the work? Good work, honest work. I tried to contain my animal tendencies. Stop, breathe, savor. Their piped in music, a mix of American soul and jazz--Nina Simone, Al Green, The Emotions--eventually cycled through to "You Can Call Me Al," by Paul Simon.

I'm not a man who looks for symbols in his life, but this is one of the three songs designated for this trip. The triumvirate of tracks mirroring highs and lows alike.

"He doesn't speak the language.

 He holds no currency.

He is a foreign man.

He is surrounded by the sound"

...

"He looks around, around

He sees angels in the architecture 

Spinning in infinity

He says Amen! and Hallelujah!"

And for a moment I was full. My heart, my stomach, the overwhelming feeling behind my eyes, for a moment I remembered how fortunate I am to be here, right in this moment. The empty seat across from me, the entire restaurant, filled with the menagerie of those things I carry with me. People I know and memories and imagination, my protecting aura, was made tangible, shimmering above the votive candles placed on each table.

"How are you, glass of wine?" I said aloud. 

I finished my dinner and could never pay the sum owed, but I did pay my bill. I tipped, too. It was about a 40 minute walk to the concert if my internal Google map was correct, which was rather ideal. I needed to stave off the itis, and I wanted to take in a darkening Lyon. 

Streets intersected with other streets in improbable ways, avenues fracturing into veins of asphalt and cobblestone. Trams clicked by brought to life by mechanical arms strung on wires. French girls with their dark overcoats and dark hair and cobalt eyes were walking to places where their presence was eagerly awaited. An occasional bus stop map would reassure my direction. I passed a metro stop, a critical guide post on my journey. A car full of boys with their crooked caps and down stuffed jackets rolled past bumping "Superfreak."

Then, suddenly, I was lost. 

Night had settled in like piles of falling ash, and the world looked different. On the map it was a straight shot down a narrowing peninsula surrounded on either side by two rivers. "If you've gotten to the river, you've gone too far," was the mantra, but what about the huge train station in the way? What about the small inlet harbor? What about the enormous shopping mall, glittering in a way no respectable garage rock venue could be near by?

I re-routed and turned around and doubled back and time crept forward like the rising feeling in my stomach. Finally I crossed some iron tracks laid into the cobblestone. The tram. If I could find the tram, I could navigate from there. I checked the vague tram stop map and followed the line until it came to a stop. It was after the last tram stop, right?

Dim streets beckoned like strangers in overcoats with upturned collars. I looked for any light and color. I passed a prostitute who was a stunning beauty by any standard. I chewed on her circumstances. The chain of events leading up to her sliding into the black stockings turned over and over in my mind. We don't know anyone's story.

Narrower, darker, it's as though the streets knew they were soon to vanish into the black river. I passed more women of the night, they cooed at me in French I didn't understand. A car came to a stop, a woman crawled in, rebuffed by his headlights, I didn't look at their faces. A breaker of colored lights crested and receded in the distance. Dance music rolled out in far off tremors of bass. Dance music, seems weird, but this is Europe. I turned in to the source and it was a pop-up carnival with all semblance of day washed out. The place where seedy waking dreams turn into convulsing nightmares. 

Eerie lights cast their lot with burnt out bulbs and flickering neon. Carnival workers emptied various games of their crooked earnings. A bumper car galley filled with rough young boys collided while they threw a mini souvenir basketball at each others heads. I walked the length and quickly turned out. A police car streaked by with a smear of blue light.

I have no idea where I am. Those feelings, the feelings I hate, began to percolate through my wilting confidence. This concert was the only reason you came to Lyon. You couldn't bring a map you...

I turned down the volume.

I made my way back to the tram, checked the map at the stop, looked at the point pinned in my mind's eye, and went a little further up the line. I turned down one last street, and there are lots of last streets, but I was soon to relegate this misadventure to "good travel story someday." I was walking behind a family with two small children--tow headed girls misplaced in the callow dark of city night--and crossed the street. I craned my neck around a corner, certain it'd be the one, and nothing but shuttered store fronts and lampposts. The end of the line.

But, as these stories go, as they must unfold, I turned on my heels, and there it was. A dimly lit two-story building with a few young go hards standing out front. It was my destination, Marche Gare. 

I crossed the street. There was no victory, too many variables still out there. Are they sold out? Is it too late? I don't think they'd sell out this venue in the states. Is this the right place?

A security guard greeted me at the door and said something in French. I pointed at the poster hung in the window, like welcoming hobo code, at knee level. "Thee Oh Sees?" The poster was of Greek Woman, supine, with a greyhound's neck and face.

"Do you have a ticket?"

"No."

He motioned to a table where a young man with a mop of curly hair sat next to a small lock box and a stack of Vice magazines. This must be the place.

"Bonsoir," he said.

"Bonjour," I replied.

He said something else, conversational or informational, I have no idea. I held up a finger and meted out a mangled, "Un ticket, si'l vous plait."

He chuckled, "One ticket, please."

"Has the first band played?" I asked.

"There is only one band and they are playing right now."

I was a little crestfallen, but we'd come too far. I laid down my €16 and charged up the stairs. In the stairwell all I could hear was the snap of the snare over and over again. I turned into the concert hall, a small black room packed full with a small stage up front, and it was Thee Oh Sees. I've never been so moved by a soundcheck before. I pushed my way into the thick, and as I cut out my post, the front man looked up and said, "Thank you, sound guy. Are we ready?"

The crowd cheered, and he said, "We're Thee Oh Sees from San Francisco," in French.

The first two tracks the crowd was noncommittal. Even when track two was, "Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster," a cavernous, fuzzy saunter from the new album the crowd remained still. I was already squirming and hopping and shaking out my hair like the black and white images of my psychedelic forebears. A little surprised I thought to myself, "I don't know who taught you pussies how to rock and roll, but it wasn't the US of A."

Then, song three. "Block Of Ice." A two minute burner on the album, they opened up the valve and dropped a seven minute payload of grinding rapture. Immediately heads were bobbing and bodies were crashing and one young kid there with his mom was spinning the tendrils out from under his stocking cap. 

I have to believe--in some typically French way--the crowd wanted to make sure this band was worth their emotional energy. Once earned, it was full bore. 

The pit expanded. More people left their feet. The room got sweaty.

The Oh Sees ignited. The front man's mop of hair he pushed either direction dripped from underneath. The six string bass player--with his high water jeans and tucked in shirt and skinny leather suspenders and blue ink tattoos and bald head and perfect drop of sweat hanging, never falling, catching the light, on the tip of his nose--began to pace back and forth with his lines. They both wear their guitars strapped under their necks like Herman's Hermits. The drummer, front and center hammered the anvil. The keyboard player conjured glowing lines inches from her keys. The venue was a glass elevator and the stratosphere was far below us.

It's all so simple: a riff, a chorus, maybe a bridge, maybe not, tom, tom, snare, cymbal crash, definable lyrics, but they are more like chants. Songs can be as tight as a coil, or expand to the width and density of Jupiter's eye, all the colors intact. The structure vanishes and ripples into horizonless seas of inward falling echoes. Melodic lines and slashes of feedback rattle through the turbulence. Churning, frothing, desperate to fly apart into sonic shrapnel, persistent rhythm keeps the infernal machine intact. Everything rises, tension consumes oxygen, and in a booming flourish the maelstrom disappears back into the discreet magic box of verse-chorus-verse

The front man, John Dwyer, is one of those almost extinct rock and rollers cut from my purest idealism. His clear Gibson SG with no vibrato tail piece and custom headstock is his only tool. He tunes down or up between tracks. Busted string, which there were two, he just restrings on stage--one while the band stayed in the pocket and then seamlessly picked up at the chorus. Back up guitars are not how this band operates. 

He kept saying, "Merci beaucop," in an increasingly growly and strange array of voices. His tongue hangs out of his face. He fingers out texture and staid embellishments with a tedious, almost frantic diligence. The way the keyboard player watches him and anticipates his cues is something far more important than love.

As all concerts do, they eventually delivered us from the seance. The crowd went ape shit. They cheered and whooped and whistled--loud, sharp whistles--with no loss of momentum until the house lights went down and the band came back on stage. They played a two song encore, and when Thee Oh Sees finished they waived and smiled and seemed genuinely moved by the outpouring.

The crowd kept going. Insatiable, people kept yelling and clapping their hands above their heads. The venue had to turn on all the lights and filter in music before the crowd even showed a fleck of dispersal. 

In the chilly, wet Lyon night air, a girl on her way to the tram mimicked the bass lines and short bursts of "WOO," Thee Oh Sees have somehow made their own. Sweat cooled on my neck. I cinched my scarf tight and pulled my hood over my head. 

Now to find my way back.