DAY 3: SUNDAY
I wake up to my phone buzzing and beeping at me. It’s an email.
From: The Governors Ball Music…
Subject: Sunday Cancellation
Sunday, June 5th of Gov Ball 2016 has officially been cancelled, due to severe weather and a high likelihood of lightning in the area. The safety of fans, artist and crew and on and on etc.
Allyson is laughing. “I’m writing a review,” I tell her. “First of all, your security sucks. It's more about intimidation than muscle; no follow through. Anyone who wouldn't gladly get hit by lightning listening to Rage Against The Machine or Kanye West does not deserve to be at GovBall.”
The mere possibility of Kanye getting struck by lightning while performing "I Am A God" supersedes the threat of any injury to non-Kanye persons. Anyone who isn't a fan of watching Kanye West in a lightning storm of hellish gusts and torrential downpour is not a fan of music or of life.
I check Facebook, and Rage has posted “The Governors Ball Music Festival has been cancelled due to weather. Stay tuned for more info…” The “stay tuned” bit convinces me to stay in the city for another hour or two on the off chance they announce a make-up show for tonight. I download twitter and make an account solely to follow Rage and Kanye, setting both to alert my phone any time they tweet. Allyson goes for a walk or something and I sit on the air mattress too depressed to move for about an hour, knowing that I should charge my phone in case a show is announced, but not finding any motivation in myself to do anything.
Suddenly, a tweet pops up about Rage playing The Warsaw. I put the address in Google maps, jam the sink faucet all the way to the right and fill up my water bottle so quickly I spill water all over myself, and I leave. I don’t remember if I closed the door or not. Too late now. D to the E to the G. D to the E to the G. Easy. No need to look at my phone again.
I jump on the D. I get off to transfer to the E. I walk to the E platform and, no way. The whole platform is blocked off by pink tape that stretches from pillar to pillar. A paper sign of gibberish says: “No E trains at this station Take the D. E trains are rerouted via the F in both directions between W 4 St. and Roosevelt Av”
Days later I would finally fully comprehend what this was probably trying to tell me, that the E train was avoiding this stop by using the line designated for the F train, but what I read it as now, in my frantic ‘I need to get to this club before 500 other people do’ headspace, is that the F is now taking the route of the E. Even though I believe that’s what the sign is telling me, I still don’t believe that it could possibly be true. Luckily, an MTA cop is walking by just outside of the gate. “Excuse me! Excuse me!”
He turns around slowly and obviously wholly uninterested in any words I could possibly throw at him. “Do you know what’s going on with the E train?”
He shrugs.
“Do you know who does know?”
“No.” He says as he turns back around and walks away.
There’s an MTA help desk about twenty feet outside the turnstile, wholly encased in glass with those shower head talk-holes, making sure I can’t get any help from any MTA workers while actively inside of the MTA subway system. I would have to leave, talk to people who probably still wouldn’t know what’s going on or even be able to hear me, and then surrender more cash to this mean-hearted uncaring police state monopoly in order to get back in.
I just took the D, so I decide to hop on an F. I switch to the Q and then to an L, and a half hour subway ride turns into two hours. I could have gone all the way home and gotten here faster. I have never been so upset at the police and The System, never been so ready to Rage Against The Machine. When I arrive to the venue, the line is around the block.
I find out Courtney Barnett announced a free show a couple blocks away, and I figure when I don’t get Rage tickets I’ll just walk over to that. Allyson arrives and we await the inevitable. “It’s really nice out,” someone says, “perfect weather for a music festival.”
We make it. I get a ticket to Prophets of Rage in a small club in Brooklyn for $10. My ticket is a purple wristband that says only “IRVING PLAZA.” I’m told immediately to leave and come back later for the show, but Rage is starting their soundcheck. “What if I walk around in circles?” I ask the security man.
He’s not having any of it today. “What if we give you your money back and you don’t get to see the show, how about that?”
“I was kidding, sorry, have a good day.” We stand in an alley where we can still hear the soundcheck. It suddenly starts raining heavily and we take refuge in a bar. An hour later, the rain dies down a bit and we go back to the venue. No one is there except for two guys trying to explain to the nice foreign security lady that they work with Chuck D and should therefore be allowed in. The woman tells them they have to wait in line with everyone else. “I’m calling his manager,” says one of them.
“I, too, know Chuck D,” I say. They are not amused.
Suddenly all the other wrist-band owners arrive for the concert, and we’re at the very front of a line of hundreds. I stand on the raised semicircle in front of the door so that I can be under the corresponding semi-circle awning and protected from the rain. That same security guard that I pissed off earlier yells at me to get off. “You’ll still be first, don’t worry,” he says with a scowl.
Doors open. We’re front and center. A sign on the wall states “Occupancy by more than 400 persons is dangerous and unlawful.” "You might get kicked in the head,” I inform my sheltered and classically trained companion. “The taller you are, the more likely you are to get kicked in the head." She laughs. Public Enemy’s turntablist DJ Lord opens with a mesmerizing set of old school record scratching.
The lights go dark and Rage walks on stage. The band kicks off with a mashup of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn” and Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power.” Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me. The crowd as a whole is ecstatic and throbbing and it feels like there is a bulldozer pressing against my back. Allyson is unable to hold her own and is swept back and replaced by more enthusiastic fans. Rolling Stone Magazine’s 40th Best Guitarist Of All Time stands ten feet away from me, wrangling his effects pedals and playing his guitar with his teeth. I can’t believe this is happening. This is a band that sells out arenas and hasn’t really played since 2011. What better place than here? What better time than now?
They launch into a new song dedicated to Donald Trump, titled “The Party’s Over,” which comes across as just as good, just as hard-rocking and immediate, as any Rage Against The Machine song. The middle of the set consists of Rageified covers and mashups of Public Enemy and Cypress Hill songs. Whenever Chuck D isn’t rapping, he Cha-Cha’s back and forth on the stage. Forward: left, right, left, hold. Backward: left, right, left, hold. Looks totally natural if you aren’t watching closely, and totally hilarious if you are. When they get to the last line of the first verse of “Bulls On Parade,” “The trigger’s cold; empty your purse,” I stick my hand out like a gun at Chuck D, who then puts his hand out for me to high-five. I high-five Chuck D.
After the show ends, I collect Allyson. She is in shock, and keeps saying, “Why were there so many flying people?” We take the correct and working subways back to her apartment, and I plug my phone in. At 1:39am my phone turns back on with a text from Bongo. Kanye West is playing Webster Hall at 2am. If I had charged my phone before instead of just sitting on the air mattress like an idiot, I would have been right there. He texted me just after Rage ended. I check twitter and Kanye said the show is sold out. I missed a shot at the de facto Best Night Of My Life because I was too loaded with my brand of ennui to just plug my phone into the wall. This once incredible night now seems like a loss and a failure. I collapse onto that godless air mattress and wait to become unconscious.
PROLOGUE: MONDAY
I wake up early the next morning to find the Kanye show was shut down by the police anyway. Way too many people showed up; it was described as a “near-riot.” I flip through pictures and videos posted online to visions of lunacy, of mayhem. People blocking the entire street, standing on cars. There weren’t actually any tickets sold, so whoever could shove their way into Webster Hall would get to see him. I feel disappointed in humanity and in New York that one of my favorite artists couldn’t play a barely-announced, last-minute, non-arena venue gig at two in the morning without it being overrun by criminal belligerence. Especially compared to Rage Against The Machine’s fanbase peacefully and obediently waiting in line. I worried for a second that Kanye might truly be the Donald Trump of music, but Bongo told me it wasn’t true.
I take the train home, walk to my car, drive to the doctor, and he tells me, based on my x-rays and MRIs, not only is my lateral meniscus completely torn, but I definitely have arthritis. Constant and permanent bone pain that will only get worse. I have a couple of options: I can drill a hole in my stomach and pop an aneurysm with a daily aspirin, or I can get a stroke and a heart attack with a much more effective daily Advil. If that doesn't work, there are steroids and opiates.
Well. No point in dwelling on that. I can't work a full shift because of the pain, which means I qualify for disability. I can even get worker's comp; the problem was probably caused and definitely exacerbated by waiting tables, running around all the time to fix people’s salads and refill their unsweetened iced teas. You’re not really allowed to sit when you’re a waiter. I can park right in front of every building with that little blue tag hanging off my rear view mirror. People will let me scam them out of pity. I'll be invincible. I'll be on top of the world. I’ll be fine.
