The Gusters On Ice

Maybe you weren't thrilled with Keep It Together, or you bought into my buzzing about it being a sort of farewell to Guster as that secret nougat inside the hollow chocolate shell of sugary pop rock. Maybe we were right. Maybe an unlikely, masterful DVD manifestation of the Gusters proves the band was never lost or gone forever.

(this is long, and there are pictures, click below!)

But I began to doubt my own estimations of that album around the time I was trying to decide which my favorite records were of 2003. Even if it was too sweet at times, there were moments of the melancholy darkness that made Guster distinct in their past several albums.

Then again. Maybe I'm at a point in my life where I'm too old to be a serious music fan who likes Guster. I've known Guster was a hit with teenage girls on the East coast since I first grew enthralled with the group. This was always something I could accept. But, now, I'm 24. My guilty pleasures shouldn't really be guilty anymore. My guilty pleasures should be kitschy things; I should love Justin Timberlake because he is an MTV poster boy trying to sound like Michael Jackson, I should love Destiny's Child because they sing about being too booty-licious for me, baby; I should howl along with "Sk8er Boi" for the simple fact that "skate" is spelled with an 8. I shouldn't --even discreetly-- love Guster because their music entwines itself to my mortal walk.

If I were a frat boy or a girl who'd shop at Urban Outfitters if she wasn't just so goddang smiley all the time, Guster would be acceptable.

Guster on Ice is a CD/DVD combo whose place in your favorite music retailer tends to suggest I was right back in the day when I said Guster was making the break for the mainstream and leaving behind all of us who wanted our guilty pleasure kept within a close knit circle of friends watching videos on a Saturday night. These types of people do not get cute little CD/DVD live albums from their bands, much less prominently placed ones.

Despite it all, Guster on Ice captures the blistering energy of a live Guster show and, yes, forces me to write this piece questioning everything I thought about the direction of this band and the direction of my relationship with their music.

Even the most sugary tracks off Keep It Together have grown into furious, infinitely layered arrangements from where they were in the pre-album shows and on the album itself. I can listen to and be engaged by the college freshman anthem "Amsterdam", and I am stunned by this. What's possibly more important is that ye olde standard Guster songs have been immensely aided by the band's new instrumental explorations from Keep It Together. There is a drum kit, there is a bass guitar, and there is a lingering fourth Guster. I don't know if I could ever go back to that two acoustic plus bongo set up. This isn't something you could see happening with the album itself, and maybe that's why we have Guster on Ice.

Still, what's so successful about this CD/DVD/whatever is the way every part of the show comes together so effectively. The Gusters are on, their fourth Guster "Joe" brings them to a new level, the Portland crowd is simply ecstatic, the cameramen stay out of the way and still get shots that are constantly new and revealing, and the footage is brilliantly directed by Danny Clinch. I have to give Clinch and the footage crew an enormous amount of respect. Most concert DVD's I have seen become quickly tiring and never capture the live environment even when they document incredible musical moments... It is almost as if the standard video crew point their cameras at an oncoming train, giving you the feeling of the power of that vehicle rushing towards you. Still, there's a lot more to that train than its rumbling down the tracks, and that's what Clinch's crew manages to get to... They seem to be everywhere and nowhere at once. The photos I've scattered through here don't do the fluidity of the footage justice.

Now, what's important here is that, for maybe the first time, people who have never seen a live Guster show get to see a full Guster show. Those of us who have also get a splendid artifact of that (those) event.

I've actually seen a show at the State Theater in Portland, Maine, the setting for this particular concert. Guster on Ice takes me back to a weekend where Kristi and I drove from Boston to hang out for a few days and see Wilco and Califone. Hopefully, we all find moments in our lives of perfection, and I can't really tell you what those moments are "like" but you will simply know of what I speak if you have ever had one. My trip to Portland was one of those moments, and it still resonates (and, at the time, I could feel how it would resonate for years beyond) so much so that, in my mind, I have decided that if i ever find myself free of geographical restrictions or even with a fledgling oppurtunity there, I will undoubtedly make a home in Portland, ME. (I also feel that run-on sentences are the best indication that a person is f-ing serious.) From Portland, I will raise a bold middle finger to Boston quite often and to a truly obscene degree (but that is a different story altogether), and that will be a good enough thing to make me stay.

If Guster plays even one show like this one while I am there, I feel like my decision could never be proven wrong. And that's nothing to feel guilty about.

(When in Portland, ME, stay at the Percy Inn.)