Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

I don't think I can go to a show in NYC without falling in love with the last song in the set. I went to the Baggot Inn on West 3rd St. a while back to see Galvin's brother's band (the Jellybricks) rock out at a power-pop festival. ("Festival" maybe inappropriate; this was at a bar.) The show ran late as usual, so we watched the conclusion of the previous band, which had a chick singing and playing guitar, another chick on keyboards, a guy on bass and a guy on drums. Power pop is a great form of music: you take a great melody, and you play it really fast and really loud. This band, which I would later discover was the Trouble Dolls, put on a pretty good act, closing with a song that was just unbelievable. After days of research (finding out the name of the band, emailing the band, actually hearing back) I discovered the song was a cover of a pre-rock 1960s French song called "Sacre Charlemagne." I have since found the original, which is slow, and some faster covers, which are awesome. I can't, alas, find a way to reproduce the fantastic experience of hearing the Trouble Dolls tear it up live: lots of vocals, lots of guitars, lots of keyboards, and the melodies all jumping back and forth between instrument and voice so quickly you had no idea what was going on. It was a thrill. I spent most of Thanksgiving break humming the melody, and I annoyed everyone.

See, then the Jellybricks did their part too. Their set was awesome, and they took their stuff down to walk off stage. The host of the event came out and begged them all to come on for one last song, they start playing, it's a great melody, it sounds like something I know, it's the kind of opening that you know is really going to go somewhere ... and oh shit, it's "Baba O'Riley." Is there any better song than "Baba O'Riley"? I submit there is not. That was the only song on which Galvin's brother sang lead, and it rocked. So, it looks like these bands know how to close a set.

That brings us to the instant case. Funny enough, currently the last band I've seen is also the first band I ever saw. In 1995 I went to see They Might Be Giants for the first time at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, with the Candy Butchers opening. TMBG is transcendent live, which merits its own discussion, but the Candy Butchers weren't bad either: they have Mike Viola on acoustic guitar, some other guy (sorry) playing on a single drum, and they played "Crazy Train." (Not as good as "Baba O'Riley" but close.) Monday night I was at the Living Room on Ludlow St. with future rock star Siobhan O'Malley, expecting to see only Mike Viola, but the other guy showed up too. The Candy Butchers were on!

As with the previous two shows in this discussion, they played an excellent show, with good songs and solid melodies, and for the third time the closing song was the highlight. This time might have been the best. As the show drew to a close, Mike decides he wants to play piano, and agrees with his partner to play a Beatles song. He starts banging on the keys, and again I think I recognize it, and soon enough I grasp that we've got on our hands a slightly faster-paced version of "Your Mother Should Know," which is awesome. It sounds much better with a just a little kick in the tempo, plus my own mommy and I were both fans of the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" inr our respective teenage years. Despite that not being a hit before my mother was born, it's the same idea. Good times: as we will now see, I am a sucker for sweet songs.

It was three or four minutes in that I realized that Mike Viola had shifted songs. At first I thought he was just putting in his own variations on the lyrics (the Beatles song in question is not my most familiar), and soon enough I realized he wasn't going back to the Beatles at all. This song he played was fantastic: the piano melody sounds just like a McCartney song, and the lyrics are sweet and well said. Then I asked Siobhan after the show what the story was, and it turns out this song was called "What To Do With Michael," off Hang On Mike, the album Mike Viola wrote to himself after his wife died. This song is about how they met and got together, and it's beautiful, heart-wrenching and a classic. It's the story of the girl who got it right. I immediately went home and downloaded it off iTunes, and I've been listening to it ever since. I copied down the lyrics after the jump. The music has the bounce of true love, the words speak only of beauty, and yet it all had to end. This song just tears me apart.