Not so Terrible Love

Like probably a majority of the attendees at Hole’s show at Terminal 5 Monday night, I fully anticipated the evening to be a point-and-laugh spectacle, a game of “What drug cocktail is Courtney Love on tonight?” with maybe a few off-key songs thrown in for good measure. Let’s face it, the fact that the concert happened at all is in itself a minor miracle. 

Suffice it to say, Courtney (and her new bandmates) didn’t just defy my expectations. She chewed them up, swallowed them, and regurgitated them over all the naysayers who’ve doubted her over the years.  

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an audience so engaged with the performers on stage. Even at the most hyped rock shows nowadays, most of the crowd seems to be awkwardly shuffling in cardigans and horn-rimmed glasses.  

Well, apparently Monday night’s crowd is not privy to the fact that it’s no longer considered cool to get sweaty and excited about music. (And I’m not talking about an adolescent, hormone-driven, performance-canceling Justin Bieber level of excitement.) There was a perceptible sense of community as fans pounded their feet, raised their fists and shouted along to every lyric with teenage abandon — despite the fact that no one at the show appeared to be under the age of 25.  

The decision to insert truncated Rolling Stones covers into both the main set and encore —“Sympathy for the Devil” and “Play With Fire,” respectively — was probably no coincidence. Longevity and drugs, anyone? But it was during the opening chords of “Miss World” (the second full song of the evening), which segued into “Violet,” that the audience erupted and my jaw fell to the floor. 

Even now, 24 hours later, I’m completely at a loss to explain the mood inside the venue and the feeling that everyone inside had been holding their breath for more than a decade and finally found, or rediscovered, something they could connect to.  

It can’t just be the nostalgia factor. I’ve seen plenty of performances by artists past their prime — including Bon Jovi two weeks ago — where audience members spend at least half the time looking bored or sitting down. And Monday night, while fan favorites like “Celebrity Skin” were clearly what drove the crowd into a frenzy, new material like “Pacific Coast Highway” was greeted with impressive fervor.  

It can’t be the fact that everyone loves a comeback story. Anyone who follows her Twitter feed knows Courtney still has a whole host of issues to work through. 

At some point, it dawned on me that Hole is from a different era – before iTunes, Facebook and Twitter were even in existence, let alone major players in the music industry – when fans actually had to give a shit and take some initiative to discover good music, rather than just clicking a few keys on the computer. Maybe that’s what we were all reaching out for. Personally, I missed out on the grunge movement when it was happening, having been born about five years too late, but over the years I’ve heard from so many people who lived through it that it was and is impossible fully appreciate or “get” bands like Nirvana and Hole until you’ve seen them live. I finally understood that.

So forget Courtney’s meltdowns in person and online. Forget the verbal diarrhea interviews. Forget the child custody issues. Could it be possible that all that is just a red herring, a way to set people’s expectations so low that it’s impossible not to surpass them? Unlikely, but Monday night made me wonder. 

And though the set lasted a mere 45 minutes, I didn’t feel cheated. It was quick and rough and dirty. There were no crotch shots, tears or faceplants courtesy of Ms. Love. There was no cringe-worthy stage banter. Hell, there was hardly any banter at all.  

I went in expecting a train wreck. What I got was nothing less than the best rock show I’ve seen in recent memory, and a feeling I’m not quite sure how to recapture.