Coming Right Along
Sixteen years ago I owned a bicycle, a Phillips portable cassette player, and not much else. I played “Frosting on the beater” by the Posies until I knew the words, or my phonetic Englutch interpretation, back to front. Coming right along, the epic finale to what is still one of my favorite records of all time, would fall somewhere in the middle of bike rides hither and tither, and I remember being unable to flip the tape and listen from the start lest I arrive at whatever destination in the middle of the album. Catholic of upbringing, I knew a thing or two about sacrilege.
The Posies played Zwemdock Rock, the first of many festivals I attended. They played, as the cliché goes, lead guitar on my life’s soundtrack. I saw them at Pukkelpop in the year… the hell if I know- tearing up the marquee in orange jump suits. “Amazing Disgrace” was about the crux of their career. I didn’t hear of them since, or perhaps I simply had other things on my mind. Somehow, undeservedly, the flavor of the month melted in the mouth.
“Please return it.” Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer have already begun as I walk into the Bellevue brewery in Brussels. Ex-brewery. Mr. Stringfellow called it a Bermuda Triangle. “A failed brewery? In Belgium? How does that happen….” I feel more than a casual nod to their own story. Brilliant band. From Seattle. Two to three era-defining albums to their name, and here they are, in the capital of Europe which deigned to delegate no more than fifty odd fans for a stripped-down acoustic tour. With no backstage to repair to before the encores, Mr. Stringfellow and Mr. Auer have no choice but to venture into the small crowd, hover for an awkward twenty seconds, and head back to the spotlights. “There’s an upside. There has to be an upside,” they sing.
And there is. It’s not called money. It’s an ode to human emotion, the perfecting of skill. “Don’t waste your time.” The Posies are on a mission, celebrating twenty years of time well spent. Theirs is a legacy. Finally, yet way too early, the set resonates to an end with coming right along. The defense rests.
Tom Kenis 