the first time i saw him was when he opened for marah for their christmas show a few years ago. at that point i was already a fan of everything of his i had heard. seeing him live just confirmed what i already thought about him. he's great.
in 2010 he put out an album with his band, the st. marks social, called love it to life. seriously, what a fantastic record.
now to completely kill the mood, in january of 2011, i found out a friend who was very important to me had passed away. he had moved back to australia the previous summer, and i didn't even find out about him dying until a week after it happened, and i couldn't get to australia for the funeral, and every time it hit me that i was never going to speak to him again, i nearly lost my mind. i don't really want to go into it too much or relive the whole thing because that is a one way trip to depression town, but at this time, i was an absolute mess and couldn't make it through a day without crying for a really, really long time.
i listen to music pretty much constantly, but when i was sad, i found i couldn't listen to most things without getting angry or feeling sick. if it was something that my friend had also liked, forget about it. but there were a handful of albums that i could listen to which had the opposite reaction: soothing, with an underlying feeling that everything was going to be ok. one of those happened to be the jesse malin record.
love it to life has this positive energy to it, but instead of annoying me (like everything else), it made me feel happy to be alive for once. in fact, i think the first show i found myself able to go to that year was jesse malin at johnny brenda's later in january. yeah; that night he left the stage, and while the band still played he got up on the bar and walked around, and then came up through the crowd, getting everyone to clap. i'm not much of a clapper. i just feel weird clapping along to things, ok? well, he came up right behind me, only i didn't see him. i just heard his voice right in my ear: "are you too cool for me?" ah, what a precious moment. but anyway: this dude is really important to me.
he played at johnhy brenda's again last night. i knew i had to go. and i told myself i had to talk to him afterwards and tell him what his music means to me. why? well, if you were an artist and something you created helped someone that much, wouldn't you want to know?
the band played one of the best sets i've ever heard, and when they opened with "burning the bowery" which is the opening track off love it to life, i thought my heart was going to explode. in a good way. he also blew through a bunch of other songs of his that i love, such as "queen of the underworld," "wendy," "mona lisa," "all the way from moscow," and he even closed the show with "death or glory," my favorite clash song. well, one of my favorites. how do you just pick one anyway?
anyway, so after the show, he came out and was talking to people and i couldn't bring myself to say anything because, hello, i'm awkward. i went over to the merch table and bought a copy of the fine art of self destruction on vinyl, and the guy said it was the last copy they had. score! then i saw jesse go into the backstage room and thought "well, you fucked up and missed your chance. good job, dummy."
some guy saw me standing there and commented on the record, so i showed it to him and we got to talking, and he asked if i had talked to jesse. i said no, i got too nervous. he said "aw, he's just a regular guy! i'm sure he would love to sign that for you!" and he went over to one of the band members and said something to him, so then he came up to me and said "he'll be back out, he just went to get the van. i'll let him know you're waiting though," and he disappeared backstage. then one of the roadies came up and introduced himself and shook my hand and said jesse would be back out. i was so happy, i felt like crying.
so jesse comes out, he sees me standing there and comes right over to say hello. he pulls a pen out to sign the record and says "what's your name?"
"it's chloe."
"is that c-l-o-e?"
"it's c-h-l-o-e. but you can spell it wrong if you want." (seriously, did you just say that? what the fuck?)
"there's an elton john song called "chloe," do you know it?"
"i don't think i do, but now i'll have to listen to it."
"you should, it's a good song." (check. it's awesome.)
then he was like "is this 180 gram? yeah it looks like it," and i'm sure i said something stupid in return. i can't remember if he said something else here or not, but then i said, "i um, i really wanted to tell you this..."
and then i paused for what felt like too long of a time, as i was trying to get my thoughts together, but i wasn't going to let myself walk away without telling him.
"my friend died a couple of years ago..."
"oh, i'm so sorry."
another lengthy pause...get your shit together, now, come on!
"it was really hard to listen to any music for a while but one of the only records i could listen to at the time was yours, love it to life. so, i just wanted you to know that, and to say thank you, because it really helped me."
"wow," he said and nodded. i was kind of embarrassed and was like, why did you have to do that? now you made everything weird and he's never going to come to philly again...
"that's one of the really great things about music, i think, is that it can be very healing." oh. wait. he was talking to me again. and he continued to say really nice things to me, so i know that he understood. it felt nice to tell one of the people responsible for my "recovery" that they had such an impact on me. how many other people out there have had similar experiences with his music? maybe he's wondering that too.
don't stop doing what you're doing, jesse. some of us are really counting on you.
ps - thanks for not remembering me as the girl you yelled at 2 years ago.
pps - the guy that i was talking to before snapped a picture of jesse signing the record for me so i thought i would include it here, because you can see that he captured a moment of absolute happiness for me. here it is:
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