Twenty sweet years

"Give me some place where I can go

Where I don't have to justify myself..."

Twenty years.

I realised that a day or two into the East Coast leg of the 2006 North American tour. It was twenty years ago, as a 16-year-old junior in high school, that someone gave me a crappy-sounding copy of a copy of a copy of New Model Army's "The Ghost of Cain" album. I was hooked, and soon replaced that tape with the real thing. New Model Army has been the most significant part of my musical life ever since -- but putting it that way undermines the band's importance. New Model Army has shaped me in many of the same ways that old friends shape one another. Justin Sullivan's lyrics have had deep personal meaning for me. They speak to me and to the way I view the world.

And of course New Model Army's songs hold the same significance for a few others as well. Once New Model Army started touring the US again after a decade-long absence, I found some of these people, and the experience has been profound.

*****

Boston, 6pm, 5 December 2006. First night of the East Coast leg of the tour. I had just arrived in Boston after driving down from my home in Vermont, arriving a bit earlier than expected. I walked into the Middle East and found it empty, except for the band sitting at a table in the middle of the restaurant. When they're minding their own business like that, I make a point of not bothering them, so I seated myself at another table and ordered a burger for dinner. Halfway through the burger, Justin Sullivan walked by my table, recognised me (from previous tours -- the man hadn't seen me in over a year, since the last tour, yet he remembered me immediately), and stopped to say hi and shake my hand.

But that's what this band is like. They're not rock stars. They're regular guys who happen to be in an amazing band that's changed people's lives. They don't go hide in the green room before and after shows -- they're out there in the bar, hanging out, and happy to talk to people. They're friendly and easy to get along with. And their fans are, by and large, the same.

New Model Army attracts a very specific group of people. The lyrical content and musical style speaks to a certain audience, so New Model Army fans tend to have a lot in common. We all seem to view the world similarly. Our politics might vary, our opinions on certain issues may diverge, but we still have an enormous amount of common ground. We call each other family, and in a very real sense, that's what we are.

Most of us have grown up as misfits, freaks, outcasts, rebels. We're punks and hooligans, geeks and artists. And now, as adults, our world is still shaped by our experiences. The world is a different place for us than it is for most. It doesn't matter if we're professionals or doctors or lawyers or whatever -- we're still a product of the deeper experiences that shaped us, and our world is still informed by them.

I first met some of the North American New Model Army family at the New York stop on the band's first tour in a decade on this side of the Atlantic, in 2003. I had driven down from Vermont with my friend Joe, and we ended up spending most of the evening hanging out with Beca and Watson, DC transplants (like me) who were living in New York, and with a guy named Rob who'd flown up from Florida for the show. Next tour, I decided to take a week off work and catch as many of the northeastern tour dates as I could. Beca and Watson were doing the same, as were a number of other people. And so it went each time the Army came over here. I met more and more of the North American family, and even some Army fans from Europe who came over to catch the band in the States. And each time, there was a feeling of closeness, of being connected, that was unlike everyday life.

But this year's tour brought that to a new level. Maybe it was because by this point I've gotten to know some of these people pretty well. The friendships have grown outside the scope of simply hanging out on tour together. It struck me, as I was driving back home to Vermont the day after the last show of the tour in Washington, DC, that the NMA family had become Family. For perhaps the first time in my life, I felt like I DO have some place where I can go, where I don't have to justify myself.

*****

Jeff and Jenn at the Middle East, pre-show, with Bane in the background. Click for bigger picture.

Louise at the Middle East, 5 December 2006.

Justin at North Six, Brooklyn, 6 December 2006.

Marshall and Dean at North Six, Brooklyn, 6 December 2006.

Ryan, Watson, Jen, Anthony, and Rich, pre-show at DBA, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Justin and Marshall, Mercury Lounge, Manhattan,
7 December 2006.

Justin, Mercury Lounge, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Ryan, Watson, Bane, and Jen, pre-show at DBA, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Marshall, Maxwell’s, Hoboken, 8 December 2006.

Ghostly Nelson (I like how you can see Dean through him), Mercury Lounge, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Nelson, Mercury Lounge, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

New York, 8pm, 8 December 2006. After spending a while hanging out and waiting for the DC contingent to show up, we all filed out of Beca's apartment and waited in the hallway as she came out last and locked the door. She turned toward us, saw us milling around, and said, "Oh my god, there are a hundred freaks in my hallway." We piled into the elevator (actually about ten of us). I wish I'd taken a picture of us all squeezed in there, a mass of black leather and New Model Army shirts.

Normally I avoid groups. I'm not a joiner, and I don't like masses of people. I'm not a city person. But it felt good to walk through the streets of New York with my friends, my Family, on our way to go see our favorite band. I learned something about myself. It's not that I'm antisocial or unable to function in groups -- I just don't really like most people enough. It's not that I DISlike them, I just don't have enough in common with them to form the groundwork for mutual respect and understanding. But Army fans have that groundwork automatically. We have a common perspective -- in fact, because New Model Army is so little-known in the US, it's almost like having a common cause. It's like we're all in on some amazing secret. I felt closer even to people I'd only just met than I do to most people I've known for years through everyday life.

*****

Ground Zero, 3am, 9 December 2006. Beca, Watson, Bane, Jen, Andrew, Ryan, Niki, the DC contingent, and I were on the PATH train coming back from Hoboken, post-show. We were chatting away as usual when the train emerged from the tunnel. Into Ground Zero itself. I never realised it, but the PATH actually runs along the edge of Ground Zero, with one side of the track open to the big, brightly lit hole. We all went dead silent and just looked out at the space that used to be two of the world's tallest buildings. The silence was eerie. I saw Beca composing herself to hold back tears. She was there, in New York, when it happened. She had to live with the aftermath.

The next day, in the car on the drive down to DC, Beca and Marc (who was also there, living downwind in Jersey City) talked about it. To them it's still an open wound. I saw the events live on TV, like much of the rest of the country, but that only gave us a glimpse. We didn't have to live with it. We didn't have to be there as the city went on lockdown. We didn't have to see the thousands of dead pigeons or the park filled with a giant pile of melted shoes, or live with the smell of burned concrete and human flesh in our noses for months afterward. Marc remarked that there should be a scratch-and-sniff at Ground Zero so all the gawking tourists can experience that smell that he'll never be able to forget. Beca explained how the first few days after 9/11, she was completely numb. She would open her window to smoke a cigarette, but the smell was so bad that she'd close the window again, but then the cigarette smoke would get too stuffy and she'd need to open the window again... back and forth, open and closed. At one point with the window open, her cat stepped into the dust on the window ledge, and Beca calmly said, "No, Critter, don't go out there, that's dead people." Suddenly she heard screaming, and didn't realise until a moment later that the screaming was coming from her own mouth. (continued below)

Beca moving too fast for the camera, pre-show at DBA, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Andrew, pre-show at DBA, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Marc, Max, and Beca, Mercury Lounge, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Bane celebrating the solstice (wreath courtesy of Dan Bailey), Mercury Lounge, Manhattan, 7 December 2006.

Justin, Maxwell’s, Hoboken, 8 December 2006.

Justin, Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington, DC, 9 December 2006.

Nelson, Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington, DC, 9 December 2006.

Justin and Marshall, Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington, DC, 9 December 2006.

Nelson, Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington, DC, 9 December 2006.

I can't even imagine what it was like. I can only listen to my friends' stories and try not to lose my shit. The healing process has only begun; it will continue for a long, long time. I felt a bit like I did when I visited Dresden a few years ago. Dresden was firebombed into oblivion on the night of February 13/14, 1945. What was formerly one of Europe's most beautiful, cultured cities was reduced to burned-out rubble overnight. After the war, the Russians took over control of eastern Germany, and Dresden was never really rebuilt. When I visited in June of 2003, over a decade after German reunification, Dresden was a city still healing from a war that had ended almost sixty years before. The sense of loss was palpable. There were still some burned-out ruins in the middle of the city. I had to stay on top of my emotions at all times to avoid randomly bursting into tears. And like Dresden, New York still bears a massive unhealed scar.

*****

Somehow, the 2006 New Model Army tour was defined, for me at least, by more emotional ups and downs than I would ever have expected. The ghosts of September 11 were only a part of it. Two members of the Family received horrific news, yet no bad news or unhealed wounds could overwhelm the sense of community and the good times. It was, in short, life in microcosm. I felt more alive, more human, for these five days than I have in a long time. I was reminded of what it's like to feel deeply, to love and be loved, to be simultaneously happy and sad, instead of just going through the motions of everyday humdrum life. It may sound sappy or melodramatic, but it's true. It was eye-opening, and potentially life-changing.

Thanks to all NMA Family (you know who you are) and to Nelson, Michael, Dean, Marshall, Daz, Paul, Tommy, and especially Justin for making this past week -- and the past 20 years -- incredible.

I hope with all my heart that this coming week will bring cause for relief and celebration. Some of you will know what I mean by that.

"These are the days that we'll recall..."

Mark Bock, Burlington, VT, 11 December 2006