Black Rebel Magic

Oh my god.

I just got back from the most incredible Black Rebel Motorcycle Club acoustic show at the Great American. Effing amazing. I've been to a lot of shows and it takes something to get me really worked up, but holy shit. To think I almost didn't go.

So the show starts with Bob Dylan singing Everybody Must Get Stoned and the first guy walks out smoking a cigarette, which he tosses into the waterbottle on his little prop table. He plugs in his acoustic guitar and it begins. With just the one dude out there, they have a spotlight on him, and there's something surreal about him. Maybe his greased back hair. Maybe his wrinkled black shirt. Maybe his long sideburns contrasted with the absolute lack of chest or arm hair. All of it just works. And it doesn't look like he's trying.

As he sings and wails into the harmonica he has this way of rolling his head and shoulders like water, like waves are running through him. And he shakes his head when he plays little riffs between chords so you can tell what his hands are doing just by looking at his face. It is magic. I feel like I'm at a show. As though he's a character in a play that's performing these songs. Everything is perfect. Even when strings come undone or the amps turn off, everything is slow and easy.

He trades between the most beautiful Gibson guitars. And I've never been that excited about guitars, but the way they made love to them tonight, it just made sense. The second guy who joins in to sing harmony halfway through a song, like another character joining the play, could have been kissing his guitar at one point the way his head was resting on it. And where the first guy could have been plucked out of A Streetcar Named Desire, the second one could be your classic Brit rocker. He's got the fluffy hair and draws out his vowels like a Brit when he sings even though I know they're both American.

This was the sexiest show I've been to in a long, long time. And it wasn't just that the musicians were sexy or that there was sexual tension on stage à la Blonde Redhead - the music was sexy. They didn't say much. Just nodded here and there. Smiled occasionally. They played for over two hours. And they played every song I love. Every last one of them. Almost all of Howl. They played some realllly old stuff, one new song, a handful in between. It was perfect. Perfect.

Men singing together is one of the most beautiful things. I love the deepness of it all. Like dark on dark. I secretly love to sing. (You have no idea). And as I walked home I would have given anything to sing with a nice deep voiced man.