Every once in a while, I take in a live show by myself and become soaked in this big cosmic cleansing of my head and soul. It's like grabbing a live wire and calmly sticking it's frothing sparky end to my face, and seeing this great big light that's gone dark on me in month's past. It's like opening up blind eyes. (Or face-melting, take your pick.)

Last Sunday April 13, was such an occasion.

I swung to The Trocadero in Philly to catch Nada Surf, and watching the exuberant trio exclamate around the stage with their fantastic servings of fuzzy altern-a-rock for a packed house, years after nearly tossing in the towel, was like taking a long deep look in the mirror at myself.

Although, we are quite different-Nada Surf and I; I'm not teetering on the verge of middle age, or regarded as a one-hit wonder casualty of the 90's grunge era (if you remember MTV's Buzz Bin, you remember "Popular"). Nor have I tracked a record with Ric Ocasek or turned around a fizzling out career into a successful bedrock of warm-hearted indie rock. But I can tell you that the notes banging out of their amps last night were synced with my brain waves, that everything made sense, that they spoke my native tongue.

Perhaps not so ironically, their main set props were 5 convex mirrors that faced out towards the crowd from behind the band. And sometimes, when angled just right, it made Nada's butts look twice as big. But it was during this headlining set, with these 3 elder statesmen of indie rock conducting their symphonic radness and their curved mirrors that I saw myself, and everything around the bend.

They punched through a tight set heavy on songs from their recent (and mediocre) release, "Lucky" and flipped past most of the ones I was oozing out of my head to hear, like "Slow Down" and a whole mess of staples off "The Weight Is A Gift" and "Let Go." No "Concrete Bed," no "Imaginary Friends," no "Mother's Day," no "The Way You Wear Your Head"... I hate to say it, but it was a whole lot of NADA...

(Although, in hindsight, if they had played "Your Legs Grow," I would have most certainly bawled in front of the girls I ended up sitting next to at the bar, which would have scored me a whole lot of lame points.)

But even though they cranked out only a small lunk of the songs I was dieing to hear, I can't give one slight of hand to any of the songs I did hear. And the rest of the packed house can't either. Everyone was very much into it.

Picture this. A full 2-floor venue of people on their feet shouting "Oh, f*ck it!" in pitch-perfect unison, along with singer/guitarist Matthew Caws as he and the band bashed out the chorus to "Blankest Year." "Oh f*ck it, we're gonna have a party!" we all thundered. And every time the happily f-bombed chorus came back around, we dropped it louder and louder.

Nada Surf - "Blankest Year"
from The Weight Is A Gift

Or picture this one. The entire venue swaying back and forth in 2-step rhythm to the melancholy beat of "Inside of Love," because Caws said he always envisioned the song as a Motown classic that needed a choreographed dance to go with it. So he showed us his 2-step dance, played the song, and we danced in perfect harmony with him and bassist Daniel Lorca through the entire song. A whole room of happy kids singing, moving back and forth together. It was amazing, in a word or two.

Nada Surf - "Inside of Love"
from Let Go

Or try a 25-minute encore on for size where Caws talked twice as quick between songs to make sure they squeezed in as many songs as possible. And when they reached deep into their bag of songs to play "Stalemate," an even older classic track reared it's head halfway through the song. One minute it's vintage Nada, the next I'm singing along to Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart?" What the! Precisely when I turned to the girl next to me and lit up like a stick of ignited dynamite in a field of gasoline. I may or may not have grabbed her shoulders and shouted a bit. "Holy what the heck is going on here! That's Joy Division!"

But it wasn't the special moments that made the night special for me. Most every concert has those. (Nor was it the drooling drunk girl who kicked me in the back for laughing at her when she shouted "You need groupies, I'll have sex with you!" across the entire venue from behind my frail ear drums.)

Caws remarked at one point, "I have a confession to make. Well's it's not a confession, but I have to say this. You are the biggest crowd we've ever played to in Philly. And I mean that. You seriously get bigger and better every time we come back." That's the special part, the mirror part, the wiping my face with a ruptured electrical wire part.

At this point in Nada's career, they should be burning out, fading away quietly. They had their quick dash of fame in 1996. Then they were nearly curbed when Elektra Records thought their follow up record, The Proximity Effect, totally blew because they "didn't hear a single." (Which is way dumb, because seriously, have you HEARD that album?) At that point they stopped being Nada Surf, got full time jobs, and almost succumbed to being real live grown ups.

A little later, they wrote 2 of the best records I've ever heard.

And here they were Sunday night, at the top of their game and arguably at the top of the world for a 2nd time. They've since become staples of the underground pop rock realm, crown princes of Sub-Pop rock.

And so how does this compare to me, at all? I had a lot of big dreams last year. I've always aimed high, but some things were really starting to feel really good. I was in the Buzz Bin, if you will. But then I got sidetracked. I got told I wasn't good enough. I ended up elsewhere, doing something else. It wasn't where I wanted to be, where I wanted to make noise. I ended up with a full time job here in the town I had always longed to leave behind.

That's not to say I'm not greatful for where I set my hat these days, or that I don't love the faces I see on a daily basis. If anything, it's taught me the importance of knowing who you are and where you come from. I'm very much a happy and thankful kid for the way the carpet has rolled out. And I'm learning to stop asking for seconds when I haven't even finished my firsts.

To see Nada Surf polishing off their old crowns in their 40s, a decade and some records after nearly Thelma and Louising their rock career, its a glimmer of hope for me. I'd like to think that if a wrecking ball came smashing through this wall here, I'd break apart into some Nada Surf songs. Their music isn't difficult or vital. But they continue to make warm-hearted accepting music of a unique language. It's like they're re-writing love, success, friendship, growing up, and life, for those like me who think they already have all that stuff figured out, those who think that stuff is simple. It isn't.

Like I said earlier, I think their most recent record "Lucky" pales in comparison to the rest of their work, but there isn't a song more appropriate to tie all of this together than "Beautiful Beat" which comes from said album. I'll leave you with you that.

Nada Surf - "Beautiful Beat"
--from Lucky

Bonus mp3s!
Nada Surf - "Concrete Bed (Acoustic)"
Nada Surf - "Hyperspeed"

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