(A belated post because I went out of town shortly after the Mellencamp concert)
I have been a fan of John Cougar Mellencamp for a long time. It had been quite a while since I last went to one of his live shows, so I was excited to see he would be performing at Iowa State University in Ames, where my youngest goes to school. I got online soon after the tickets went on sale and scored a great seat. Although it was labeled Row 4 it turned out not to be 4 rows from the stage because there were a few rows of seats in the pit that had not been included in the count, but still - a good seat. I was surprised after purchasing my ticket to receive an email from the Mellencamp crew with a free download of his most recent album! At least I think it was free - I didn’t notice any indication that I was also buying the album when I bought my ticket. More about the album in a minute.
ISU is about 90 minutes from home. I arrived in time to stop for some Thai food before the show. I didn’t notice until shortly before showtime that my ticket said “Movie: 7:00; Concert 8:30”! Apparently John was showing a movie first!
If you aren’t familiar with Mellencamp’s newest (and 21st!!) album, No Better Than This, it is quite a departure from most of his earlier music and was approached in a fascinating way. It was recorded old style - with a single microphone which the small band clustered around, and taped on an old mono reel-to-reel tape recorder, giving it a very distinctive old school sound. Not only that, all the songs were recorded in historic spots for bluesy music - Sun Studios (standing in the same spot where Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis had each recorded), the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio (where Robert Johnson recorded), and the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, one of the oldest African-American parishes in the country. John’s songs on the album are bluesy, folksy pieces and they sound like John is singing in your living room. Other arrangements and instrumentation sound like they could have been played on the Grand Ol’ Opry years ago. The hour-long film, it turned out, mostly documented the making of this album in these unique locations, with some concert footage and interesting clips of John during the year they were traveling and recording. The process of making the album was really interesting, but I also really enjoyed the little peeks into Mellencamp’s life - like he and his wife both being baptized while they were at the First African Baptist Church - a full body baptism - no little dribble of holy water on the head. Many in the audience did not exactly welcome the idea of an hour long film and retreated to the lobby to drink or wandered in and out, chattering with their neighbors. The movie took the place of an opening act.
Interestingly, the music that John played to announce the concert was about to begin was Johnny Cash’s The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer - a hint about many of the folksy, story-telling songs that we would be hearing during the evening. John was in a suit, looked quite formal for the first half of the show and chewed gum throughout the night (Nicorette perhaps? It was clear from the movie that John is still smoking after all these years). Then he finally took off his suit jacket and performed for a while in a short sleeved black shirt. By the final songs of the evening that shirt was completely unbuttoned, revealing an undershirt underneath. Definitely old school! : )
It was obvious that the crowd was hungry for Mellencamp classics and there were frequent shouts of one request or another. Although he started out with an oldie (The Authority Song), John asked us to be patient - we’d be getting to those favorites, but of course he was anxious to perform many tracks off the new album as well. He played my very favorite of these - Save Some Time to Dream . I so liked the lyrics of this song that I tried to figure out a way to send it to all of my graduating seniors this semester (but our university system blocks most music-sharing). Another powerful song from the new album, The West End, was, to me, John's equivalent to Johnny's John Henry.
We had to wait until the end of the evening for Small Town, Jack and Diane, Rockin’ in the USA,
Pink Houses, and, the closing song, Hurt So Good. There was no encore, but we all left singing or humming
the music of this man who has become an American classic.
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