A ROCK ODYSSEY BEGINS...
BY JACOB KRAMER-DUFFIELD 

Back in January, I got really excited about last week. Within several days, I found out that not only was U2 coming to Cleveland and Columbus, but Mark Knopfler was coming to Detroit, all of the shows within a week of one another. U2, well, it’s almost sick how much of a U2 fan I am. Almost half of my CD collection is U2, and I’ve got about 200 discs. No, that’s not “almost” sick, that is sick.
Mark Knopfler; I grew up with Dire Straits in the house. Only in recent years have I realized what a great thing that was. And his solo albums (Goldenheart from 1996 and last year’s Sailing to Philadelphia) are good in a way that music is rarely good these days. I grew up with Knopfler not by accident but as a result of my father’s Dire Straits fandom. Since he’s of the same generation as my father and hasn’t toured in North America in a decade, I realized that there was a very good chance I would never again be able to see Knopfler in concert.
So the Knopfler show, combined with the near-religious significance that U2 holds for me, teamed to make last week one of the most-looked-forward-to weeks in this young pup’s life. Then I learned earlier in the spring that immediately following those two life-peaks was to be Spring Fling, featuring They Might Be Giants. TMBG has, for me, been one of those bands I really like, but whose albums I never got around to obsessively collecting. In my social station (i.e., dork) especially, I always felt that my TMBG cred was lacking; but I always loved a few songs, and was really behind their approach, okay man? Pass me the di 4. 
What follows is, more or less, a love letter from me to music, in the form of dispatches and physical scraps from each of the shows I attended from Thursday to Saturday, May 3 to May 5.

Day One. Cleveland Rocks.

You have these moments of transcendent joy, and then they’re gone, and you’re almost worse off for having had them, since you know they only come once in a blue moon, and that your blue moon won’t shine again for some time. Such is the experience of U2 concerts for me.
It’s almost difficult for me to actually write about the concert, put it in words. “Last Thursday, May 3 at Gund Arena in Cleveland, U2 rocked the house so hard….” No, can’t quite do it like that. I neither make any aspersion to impartiality; U2 is my favorite band, always has been. First album that I bought? Achtung Baby. First concert I ever went to? U2 at RFK Stadium, Memorial Day weekend, 1997 on the PopMart tour. Opened with “I Will Follow.”
The jangling chords off the Edge’s guitar, the soulful soaring of Bono’s voice; these are things so ingrained into my permanent memory, through hundreds of repeated listenings, that they acquire the depth and breadth of immediate visceral sensations when conjured. 
That intimate knowledge almost becomes a problem after seeing a live show. Unable to listen to the tinny half-ness of music on tape filtered through a mediocre minivan stereo system, I determined to ride home in silence. By the expressway on-ramp, the ingrained recordings of previous live shows were already overpowering the excitement of that evening’s show. It was gone, then; it existed only in the moment I heard it, and then was gone. I talked to myself on the way home to not hear the fake versions of the night’s songs. Not in my head; talked, out loud, in a dialogue between two people that were both myself. It was a good conversation 
It becomes, really, more of a religious experience than anything else for me. I know, “just music,” say the nay-sayers, adding that U2 hasn’t done anything worthwhile since Achtung at least, or maybe Joshua Tree or War, depending how pretentious they are. Just music, for me, like the Grand Tetons are just a few million tons of rock. “Just music,” like baseball is “just a sport.” Over years, you let it become more, make it become more, invest in it, it becomes more. Yes, I invested in listening to music. Beef?
When I saw them for the first time, in 1997, I hadn’t listened to Pop all that much, so I didn’t fully appreciate all those songs yet. It was the same with the songs from All That You Can’t Leave Behind, even though I’ve listened to that album obsessively. A hundred times just has nothing on a thousand, I guess. 
See the set list; it was all great. I exploded first on “Until the End of the World,” and again on “I Will Follow,” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Hearing that drum intro just put me through the roof.
But it was the last five songs of the first set that were the real peak. There were great songs afterwards, with the energy of the encore, but the real oomph of the show was in those five. “Stay,” which as any U2 fan knows (and Bono noted), the band doesn’t play that often, was nearly worth the price of admission itself. Then they played “Bad,” and I almost cried, and after eking out about half of “40” (another one they don’t play too often,the low, soft organ started. I’d like to think I was the first in the arena to notice it; “it” of course being “Where the Streets Have No Name.” The opening minute of that song, so many nights down a long dark road alone in a fast car, so many days in my room depressed with the lights out. So much, almost too much, all in that song. Kept it up, almost, for the last two of the set. “The Fly” guitar solo off the walls of my skull. 
I am, though, an idiot. Had a ticket for Columbus –– Monday. Thought it was Tuesday; went on Tuesday to print up directions. Monday. Crap. Oh well; seeing them again in D.C. 

Sly Old Fox at the Old Fox Theatre

Sometimes, a rock concert doesn’t have to kick your ass to kick ass. Such was the case with Mark Knopfler last Friday, May 4 at Detroit’s Fox Theatre. The lead singer of Dire Straits, that’s who, dumbass. God it burns me when people don’t know that. The man leads one of the best rock bands in the world for 15 years, puts out two of the best solo albums in recent memory and nobody in this country can bother to learn the his name. But we all know the know the intimate details surrounding Puff Daddy’s (sorry, P.Diddy’s) legal strategy. 
He rocked. He cooked. He was, quite simply, awesome, in that old, non-surfer-tinged meaning of the word. 
The crowd was perhaps not surprisingly a little older than the U2 set was and especially than the TMBG set was to be. Show was in this grand old theatre, deserved the “re” spelling Plush seats, but progressively fewer butts in them for progressively shorter times as the night went on. No, not leaving, standing, cheering, dancing. Awed. 
Nothing stands out; it all does. Opened with the classic opening, a 10-minute “Calling Elvis” into “Walk of Life,” also about 10 minutes. One in four songs or so went the usual four or five minutes; every other was epic. Not wanking jam-band epic, either. I was pretty fortunate, really, in terms of Mark’s song selection. He played not only every song I loved from Sailing, but also every save one from Goldenheart. All the oldies were über-goodies. “Romeo and Juliet” into “Sultans of Swing” into “Done with Bonaparte” into “Prairie Wedding;” unbelievable.
Of course ended with “Telegraph Road.” Had to. Ended the first encore with “Money for Nothing;” also had to. Second encore, one song, perfect, “So Far Away.” I just couldn’t have asked for better. 

Home Again Home Again With TMBG

After so much rocking, a Saturday was definitely in order. Luckily enough for me, the calendar promised just that following my Friday adventures. Who’d’ve thunk it? And what a Saturday –– a Saturday to beat Saturdays. To beat the crap out of other Saturdays. 
Not only –– not only was I going to go out and play ultimate frisbee all morning with a beer in my hand, but I was to see They Might Be Giants that afternoon. Basically, I was in dork heaven, having seen U2 and Mark Knopfler the previous two nights; and oh yeah, in between the shows, having put out my pinnacle dork activity, this lovely newspaper. Then my dork sport –– with beer –– and a concert by the band that went a long way to making it socially acceptable to be a dork.
It started off perfectly enough. After a wonderfully productive morning and a lazy midday shower, I arrived just in time to catch “hot Baltimore pop-punk band SR-71” conclude their set of “catchy pop-punk radio hits, maybe you’ve heard this one before.” And just in time to sit down and watch the thoroughly TMBG crowd wave SR-71’s bus goodbye as it cruised out of the Philips parking lot.
The wind was a little harsher than one might have liked, but otherwise it was perfect concert weather. The sun was blazing, the grass inviting and the exhaustion blissful. Did I mention I was tired? I was tired; the field forgiving between sets and during TMBG’s opening band. God help me, I can’t remember their names. Nice guys, that rapping was hilarious at the end. 
I tossed the frisbee with my brother’s best friend’s eldest brother, in town for his younger (but not youngest) brother’s recital. My brother was out of town.
They Might Be Giants came on, and everyone was happy. Truly; for the next hour and a half or two hours, however long the set plus one lasted, everyone was smiling, bouncing, mouthing the lyrics. There were all the fan favorites (“Istanbul” was the encore, one song and out again), some new stuff and just enough talking from the two Johns. They made the crowd conga –– saying “Everybody conga;” “We’re not fucking kidding;”
“This is not a choice.” And they didn’t stop until almost the entire audience was, indeed conga-ing, or some approximation of it.
The set was well constructed, starting with the new and slower stuff, finishing off with several old poppy favorites in a row. The Johns said on more than one occasion that, other than the frigid on-stage conditions, they really loved being here. Sure, always say that, but one was inclined to believe them. Why wouldn’t one? Here is a pretty good place to be some times. Thought so, going home.