Somewhere during Jahn’s too short if anything 90 minute record release Yes, You, set at Arlene’s Grocery Saturday night he performs a magical, succinct guitar solo on “I Still Yearn”, puts down the mic and sings directly to the audience twice, plays a cover song and snippets of another two cover songs, performs the entire Yes, You album, and all this without unbuttoning his jacket. By the end of the set Jahn is on the dance floor singing, with bassist Charles Roth and drummer Tom Curiano holding things down Jahn joins friends and fans for a rock and roll benediction on the Stones “Shine A Light”.
Coming after the brutal, waterlogged self-condemnation of “The Crest” with its devastating “It’s murder by my hands, I say” denouement, it is all the more beautiful and sharing. On Yes, You, Jahn closes the album with “The Crest” a crunched, defensive and defiant close, a song with no exit except to close the album down. It reminds me a little (not musically) of the way “The Late Great Johnny Ace” closes out Paul Simon’s Heart And Bones. It isn’t that Jahn pours his heart and soul into it, he gives every song every thing he’s got, it is that he gives it to a losing cause. All you can do with Hurricane Katrina -the song’s subject matter, is scream into the pitch black. It throws Yes, You for a loop but it would have been all wrong to end the show with. Instead Jahn sings to us and with us, “May the good Lord shine a light on you, make every song your favorite tune” feels like a prayer and a promise from Xavier to me but also to you, he adds “every song you sing your favorite” for just that reason: it is returned back to us.
If Jahn’s show is even better than it sounds, if it digs deeper than this, it is because of the affection between the audience and the band. Jahn is the punk eminence of your dreams. In the late 1970s, early 1980s, he nearly broke right throw as bassist with Richard Hell And The Voidoids and later the leader with the Nitecaps, but decades can chase by you and while remaining a fixture on the downtown music scene, he stopped recording and so Yes, You is exciting for him and his extended family. But that isn’t exactly the reason for the turn out. The reason is because Yes, You ended up being his masterpiece and people wanted to hear it live as well.
They made a great decision. Opening, oddly enough, with “Five Years Old” when it was self-evidently “Walk The Other Way”‘s pride of place, it was one of Jahn’s only mistep. Not a bad song at all, just more of a deep album track. We get to “Walk The Other Way” next and the trio is playing on all cylinders and it is immediately clear why this concert is going to work. The rhythm section is killer. Charlie Roth, who has the dead coolness only years as a road warrior can give you holds the center with Tom Curiano, but also sidles close to rhythm guitarist, leaving Jahn plenty of room to maneuver. Which Jahn takes care to take care of; Jahn’s solo on “Jesus De Milo” and “I Still Yearn” are amazing and he pulls the strings on “I Can Dream, Can’t I”, his fingers plucking strings up and down the fret.
There are, however, missteps, and none bigger than “Under The Moon”, a song that begs for a piano. But he will make up with one of the sets highlights, saving ” Black Water Blues” from deep album track to album highlight. Jahn sings it without a mic and he just gets it all, it is absolutely the melodic highlight and it feels like a song to be cherished by all Jahn fans.
Though the set doesn’t sink at any point, the intense knee buckling first five songs tonight can’t be maintained. Jahn sweating up a storm and using that baritone to pound the songs into our brains, he reminds me of Marissa Paternoster (of punk rock band Screaming Females), the voice just takes over the show for the first five songs, Jahn just roars them, he starts strong and ends like a gale force on “Bad Behavior”. Maybe 30 minutes and it has been so sensational you are worried they are all gonna have a heart attack. Normalcy returns till “Black Water Blues” and then the last two songs find the band back at full throttle before the encore.
I think anybody who knows New York rock and roll history, anybody with a true sense of where we have been and where we are going, would have been floored by tonight’s performance. It isn’t the greatest concert I’ve ever seen, the first song is in the wrong place, Jahn doesn’t have his pacing and has to slow himself down towards the middle. But I think it is one of my favorite shows. There was such a feeling of friendship and sharing and concern and love and pride between the band and the audience, the songs were so great and the emotions so real. It wasn’t like a performance, it wasn’t like they are here playing and you are there cheering but like we are somewhere in the middle. Sharing. I managed to meet two Facebook friends, Lisa Jane Cordella, who is prettier and more delicate in person, and the great Manhattan Rob Walsh who is absolutely gorgeous! J.B. Moore who produced Yes, You, and also produced Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks”, was selling CDs right next to me but I was too shy to introduce myself.
Jahn told me how he regretted explaining the meanings behind the songs because he wanted the songs to belong to the listeners, yes, us, if you will. This community has always been at the heart of the Lower East Side, from the beatniks, jazzmen and blues in the 1950s, through the folkies and hippies in the 1960s, to the early 1970s revival of rock and roll that lead to punk, all the way to the Alt-rockers at hip hop stars of today, the Lower East Side is a Libertarian conclave inside a Libertarian dream. It is its own world.. What Jahn Xavier did on Saturday night, by bringing out his own friends and fans… I mean his own family, and playing to them with every thing he has, is maintain and renewed the vision he has personified all his life.
If you weren’t there, lie and say you were.
Grade: A-
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