So I went to see Vapors of Morphine last night at the Bayside Bowl and they were fantastic. Dana Colley is a sublime sax player; his phrasing and dynamics are something to behold, and hearing him play live is well worth the price of admission, whatever it may be.
It was a helluva show. They did a deep dive into the Morphine back catalog, and they also featured a bunch of solid new material that picks up where Morphine left off and keeps right on going. I’m damn glad I was in the room to hear it.
Now, to be clear, VoM perform a lot of the Morphine catalog, but they’re not just some old nostalgia act. They’ve got a whole new body of work, as well as a carefully curated set of covers they dip into every now and then.They honor the Morphone legacy, but they also expand on it, digging deep into their influences, from African music to delta Blues and beyond.
But those subtleties seem to be lost on a few members of the audience
Almost from the moment VoM took the stage, some chucklehead starting heckling the band, yelling as loud as he could for Honey White in between songs.
To his credit, Colley ignored it at first. After the fourth or fifth time, though you could see that it was beginning to get to him. So he stepped to the mic and said, look, we’re not a Morphine juke box. I know all of this is coming from a place of love, because you love this band and that song, and we’re thankful for that. But I’m gonna tell you right now, we’re not gonna play it. We’re gonna do our set.”
And then some other shit-for-brains decided to get in on the game.
“Play something good,” he shouted.
Colley stopped the show.
“Who said that?” he asked, more disappointed than angry. “Whoever said that, I want you to step forward. Come on up here. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna hurt ya. I just want to show you something.”
Tentatively, the guy made his way toward the stage. Colley picked up the set list and showed it to him. From my vantage point halfway back, I couldn’t hear everything Colley said, but to me it sounded something like, hey, you see this? You see these tunes? They’re all good. And after a minute or so the loudmouth headed back to his spot toward the rear of the room, never to be hear from again.
Then they launched into Honey White, and they played the hell out of it.
If you ask me, though, the guy got off pretty easy. I’ve been to a lot of shows over the years, and I’ve seen some musicians who reacted a lot less, um, charitably in similar situations.
Warren Zevon and Paul Westerberg are two that come to mind, each in their own inimitable style, of course.
Back in the mid-90s, I saw Warren Zevon live at 1st Avenue in Minneapolis. This was right around the time Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill album came out and, that record was everywhere. You just couldn’t escape it.
(photo from warrenzevon.com)
Now, at that time, Zevon’s career was in a bit of a trough, and he was doing these low-budget solo shows to keep the overhead low, although he did have his partner in crime, Duncan Aldrich, on hand that night in Minneapolis. The room wasn’t exactly packed, but the people who were there were damn glad to be there.
And wouldn’t you know it, two or three songs in, some shithead starts yelling, “Play Werewolves! Play Werewolves!”
And he just wouldn’t shut up.
“Play Werewolves!”
Finally, Zevon couldn’t take it anymore. He stopped the show, grabbed the mic and looked out at the audience and said, “you know, someday Alanis Morrisette is going to be on the road, playing a show somewhere in small room like this that’s only half full, and someone’s gonna yell out, Play that blowjob song!’ And I really wish I could be there to see it.”
And the he played Werewolves.
The other time I saw a musician get seriously heckled was when Paul Westerberg was doing a few west coast dates in Virgin Megastores in April 2002 to promote his latest solo record, Stereo. I thought that one would end in blood.
Almost from the very beginning of the show, some chump started heckling, and he just wouldn’t let up.
Now, Westerberg is notorious for forgetting lyrics, and this show as no different. Sure enough, three or four tunes into the set, he muffed the lyrics to one of the tunes and this asshole yells, play something you know!
So Paul started playing a few bars of some obscure cover tune whose name escapes me, and this guy yells out, play something you know that’s good!
And it went downhill quickly from there. This guy wouldn’t shut up, making the stupidest comments in a loud voice at the most inappropriate moments. It got so bad, I thought someone in the audience might actually slug the guy.
A couple of tunes later, Paul went to pick up another guitar, but it was in the wrong tuning, so he handed it off to the roadie to get the right one.
And this guy yells: That’s a real Sonny Bono move.
And all of a sudden it was on. It was like something inside of Paul snapped. He threw down the guitar and growled, alright, that’s it, jumped off the stage and made a beeline straight for the offending asshole in the audience.
Westerberg was on him before his guy even knew what was happening, with both hands wrapped around his throat. I swear to Chist, I thought Paul was gonna give him a Belfast kiss right there, but he didn’t. Instead, he just slapped the dude lightly across the face, let him go, said, that’s it show’s over and headed up the escalator to where he was supposed to be set up to sign some records.
I thought for sure he’d blow off the signing, bu he didn’t. He took 15 or 20 minutes to get his shit together then sat down for an hour and made sure to personally speak with everyone who cared to wait in line.
When I finally got up to the table here he was sitting, I handed him my brand new copy of Stereo, along with my battered old copy of Let it Be. He signed Stereo, looked at Let It Be and said, what do you want me to write?
I said, shit, man, I don’t care. Whatever. Why don’t you write whatever it was you said that to that motherfucker who was hecking you during the show when you grabbed him by the neck? He chuckled to himself and wrote: I Love You! Paul Westerberg.
True story.
But hey, you don’t have to believe me. There’s a recording of the whole thing right here on the Internet Archive.
ThatPortlandSound 