Beirut and the Lost Generation

Beirut

 and the 

Lost Generation
By 

Chance Willey

Beirut is an American band, originally the solo musical project of Santa Fe native Zachary Francis Condon, and later expanded into a band.  Beirut's music combines elements of indi-folk and world music. 

-Wikipedia, 2010 

The date is October 7th,2011, the night of the Beirut concert. In some circles, the homecoming of Zach Condon’s wanderlust band is a more greatly anticipated event than the reemergence of Jeff Mangum, next year’s Starfucker concert and the second coming of Jesus combined. Beirut is the nine man embodiment of Zach Condon’s high school dream and this show was to be a celebration of their new album called The Rip Tide. This event will attract a vast menagerie of viewers, varying in grit and taste. 

5:30pm... Pandemonium, but no one admits to it, every one is a rock. The cold-eyed boys and the haze-crazed girls, fully loaded, second hand soul sweaters and undertaker make up, are wandering from their shadowy corners of town, finding fixes on route, before baring witness to the greatest testament to their musical taste. This lackadaisical migration eased into movement at around 4:45pm. These were the true fans, the initial ripple of a frigid wave; the tsunami would would roll in around half way through the concert with all the aviators, the kids who took the extra time to get just a bit higher during the opening acts and who ditched school early. No one is ready yet though and those who aimed to be prepared were still scattered about town, too cool to wait. Those of us who have no fix to find wander aimlessly in and out of the down town scenes, many there are, all savage in nature.  

6:30...rain falls and tight circles are formed under hotel awnings and though these solemn boys and girls appear to be making nice over their black coffees and American Spirits, I am not fooled. This is Darwin, natural selection at it’s worst. Faces lit by iphones they snarl over Pitchfork.com (an independent music site). If the show doesn’t start soon, the pavement will be soft with unkempt beards and sink washed hair, head wounds bleeding hydrogen peroxide and industrial bleach. This is no night to mess around. Alternative or die.

Time passes in cigarettes, cell phone conversations and cups of coffee, a couple house parties cash their first boles and finnish their first six pack of PBR. By 8:00pm the initial ripple has permeated the thresh hold of the Santa Fe Convention Center. We will all enjoy a solid hour of good vibes before the mob comes bringing the high and the mighty and the fashionably late. 

The opening act had started their set just after 7:30pm when the majority of the concert attendees were still smoking pot outside, inconspicuously of course, and enjoying The Growlers on their mp3 players. Now, smoky and soothed, the kids are shuffling into the vortex that is the D Numbers experience. D Numbers, armed with Mack Computers, sound boards and traditional electric instruments, offer the perfect auditory warm up for the trance dancers and the perfect come on for the pre-show tokers. Those of the proper state of mind experience a novella worth of scenic bridges and angelic-techno hymns at the agile fingers of this up and coming band. As drummer appropriately change time the rippling audience shifts in tide and bends to each new current. Total control. Skilled puppeteers.

8:30pm, or so...A time capsule...A grim daughter of the early sixties folk revival has taken center stage, guitar in hand. Laetitia Sadier is what would happen if Joni Mitchell and the lead singer of St. Vincent had a child, a very acquired taste for the hardcore Beirut fans who were no longer in the mood for slow jams, they wanted a good march or a spirited waltz. Their patience wears thin, to the point of transparency, and by the second song the faces in the audience, again under lit by iphones, are floating out of the room. This is the cigarette set, a downer during which a vast majority of the concert attendees retire to the court yard again to burn their poisons and the trance kids move closer to the stage. In the middle of this set some miscalculations land a couple plane loads of aviators in the convention center too soon, unlucky for them. Their buzzes “harshed”, several spread out on the floor, waiting in sleep for the main attraction, some of them hand in hand.

The soothing sounds off passing cars have now morphed and swelled and now all I hear are biplane engines. They come on like the first strikes of a WW1 bombing raid, sputtering in and echoing back through the court yard the ominous words of Jim Morrison: “Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin.”

9:00pm...”Ladies and Gentlemen, Beirut”... Zach Condon takes the stage with a tousle of his dirty hair and a short speech. The music starts and the hall responds with a vocal kick that boots the courtyard, everyone who has not been alerted of Beirut’s on stage status are striding in. It is easy to pick out their new songs from their set, all you have to do is look for small facial tweaks on the people who look the least interested. These are the aficionados who had heard the songs leaked on Gorilla vs. Bear, (an obscure music blog stationed in Dallas,) weeks before. 

Half an hour passes in this highly anticipated spectacle with nothing happening. Dreamy currents of music are carrying sailboats of potential energy to and from the bar at the back of the hall. All around the kids are passing out, girls are screaming, good time guys are grinding up on them but where is that big wave to break down the hall? It is at this half way mark that those of my ilk reconcile smooth sailing, Condon’s trumpet rests on the stage and his uke is capoed in his hand, it is now that, with the crowd’s silent anticipation, us skeptics turn our heads as the sea rolls back. Seven eighth notes and one half note on B minor and the wave breaks on the hall... The crowd erupts but not in the way I had anticipated, no mobs, no grotesque scenes of bloody havoc, barley a power struggle between the fly boys and the aficionados. This was a brave new orgy in the good spirit of Aldus Huxley, during which the emotionally stripped bodies of a lost generation move in forced pleasure and intake of their ethers. The military drumming whips the kids into a hissing frenzy and through mustached mouths and lipstick lips you hear the moans in unison: “indie cred, indie cred”. For a moment, as the great wash rolls back, everyone grasps at what they came for, a masturbatory affirmation of their standing in this scene, a blast of blinding salt water in which they can know, without fear of contradiction, they are “hip”. The trumpet outro of “Elephant Gun” establishes the high water mark and as the music fades to nothing over a screaming anamorphic mass of people, the wave completes it’s recession. Our perceptions are cleansed now and all appears as it truly is. Zach Condon, our hipster homecoming king, replaced by a mass egoism figurine, bloated with enough fertility for hipster generations to come, stands surrounded by eight high priests sermonizing to the rabble below who writhe in the fashion of evangelical preachers, dazed by the technicolor christmas light display. This is what I’m here for.

Midnight strait up... One encore and the show is closed. The kids, their good vibes worn through like second hand shoes, head home, or head to after parties to regain their altitudes. Snow falls as the digital clocks change their suffixes and the last ripples move back to their shadowy corners of town. It would be nice to think that, for all their fussing and fixes, these boys and girls, soul sweaters worn and make up smeared, will recall this night and hang it in high regard, but to believe that(, in reference to the majority of them,) is absurd. As they head off, engines humming, oxfords clicking, their confidence slips on to the street, soon they must again prove themselves and make it stick. Many will, with masks of vacancy, meticulously arrange mixture after mixture of good time enhancers only to experience another brush with that nitrous burst of “cool” and a cold let down. Beirut is back stage, ragging off their sweat and changing their shirts under fluorescent lights, appearing as they truly are: nine talented men, nothing more, nothing less. Finally, the last lingering vibration knocks around the empty court yard of the Convention Center then flies frozen over Santa Fe.