On the Road in Search of Marah
By Eric Enders

JULY 2000– This will probably be the only review I ever write about a concert I didn’t see, but it was the best damn concert I never saw.

Well-known fact: Cooperstown, New York, home of the Hall of Fame, is famous for being the baseball capital of the world. Much lesser-known fact: Cooperstown also has one of the greatest concentrations of Marah fans in the world. You see, my buddy Jeremy and I are about the two biggest fans around, and since there are only 2,000 people living in this town, that means one out of every 1,000 Cooperstown residents is a hard-core, drooling, buy-two-copies-of-Kids-In-Philly-so-I-can-keep-one-in-the-car-at-all-times, Marah fan.

So Jeremy and I have spent the better part of the summer trying to get these guys to come play a show in Cooperstown. Since we both work at the Hall of Fame, and we know they’re big baseball fans (ever listen to “Rain Delay?”), we’ve even tried to entice ‘em with the offer of a behind-the-scenes tour of baseball fantasyland. But the closest they came this summer is Albany, which is more than an hour away. So off we go.

Now, the show is on a Friday, and as luck would have it, this is the only Friday all year where we know we can’t sneak out of work early without getting our asses put through the wringer. So we decide to leave right at 5, but we can’t get a straight answer on what time the show’s supposed to start. I’m calling all these people and some of ‘em say 5, some say 6:15, but most of ‘em say they have no clue and make it pretty clear that they don’t understand why these Marah guys are so important anyway. Fools. Finally, a radio DJ in Albany tells me that the show starts at 5, but Marah won’t come on ‘til 6:15. No problem, we’ll make it in plenty of time.

Then the fucking rain. Now, I like rain as much as the next guy, but this was a lot of rain. We’re talking Noah-type rain here. Almost as much rain as your average Dylan song. So much rain that it turns an hour’s drive (if you really haul ass) into an hour and 45 minutes. So we finally get to Albany, where the sun is miraculously shining, and make our way to the outdoor festival where the boys are playing. We’re only half an hour late, which is cool – we’ll still be able to see most of the set. We walk up and there’s a pretty big crowd, but nobody’s on stage. Okay, so either they played less than half an hour, or they haven’t even started yet. Now I’m wandering around next to the stage trying to figure all this stuff out when I look around and there’s something on the ground next to me. It kind of looks like a dead old guy laying on the ground. Then I look closer and it really is an old guy laying on the ground, only I don’t know if he’s dead or not. All I know is he shows no signs of moving, and people are stepping over him and chit-chatting like he’s not there. Now I’m really wondering what the hell’s going on. Did he pass out? Did somebody get pissed off and clock him one? Did he collapse from overexcitement during the drum solo on “Round Eye Blues?” Then some guy comes up to the mike and tells everybody to be calm (even though they already were) and the paramedics’ll be here in a minute. An ambulance pulls up (at first I thought the siren might have been a prelude to “Catfisherman”) and they take this guy away on a stretcher. I still don’t know what happened to him, but for some reason I felt like I was in a scene from the Wizard of Oz and all these munchkins were coming to carry the wicked witch away. (Don’t ask.)

Anyway, I’m kind of dazed trying to figure all this shit out when I look backstage and I see Serge (Marah’s vocalist/songwriter extraordinaire) carrying his guitar case out. Dammit, we missed it. Turns out the show started at 5 after all, and they played and we missed it. We’ve been salivating over this show all summer, which tells you a lot about how awesome Marah is, but also probably tells you a lot about what it’s like living in Cooperstown. And now we missed the damn thing. With my luck, there was probably even a great Springsteen cover in there somewhere. (I should probably mention here that Marah is my second-favorite band. Bruce and the E-Street Nation will always be the best, a sentiment that Serge and I share. The last Marah show I went to, in Woodstock, the boys played a kick-ass version of Bruce’s “She’s the One,” and they also did a great “State Trooper” with Steve Earle in Philly a while back. And as good as the music is, one of the coolest things about seeing Marah play is trading Springsteen stories with Serge after the show. Now if only they would record “Atlantic City”…)

So that’s how I missed the best concert of the summer. How would I know it’s the best, you ask, since I didn’t actually see the damn thing? Well, after seeing these guys play a few times, I just know. I saw ‘em play at the Basketball Hall of Fame, where Dr. J joined ‘em onstage for the encore. Drove six hours for that one. I saw ‘em play at Joyous Lake in Woodstock, where some crazy old hippie guy kept standing up and dancing and shouting weird stuff in front of the stage. (My favorite line: “I wanna die with a beer in my hand while watching a baseball game!”) Drove five hours for that one. So I know these guys are for real, and that’s why I was so pumped for this show. But dammit, I missed it, and now me and Jeremy are gonna have to wait who knows how long before we get to see ‘em again. Now they’re off to conquer the world – first the West Coast, then Europe. By the time they get back, they’ll probably be big stars with security guards and European chicks in tow, and they won’t spend their time after the shows shooting the shit with fans like me.

But they’ll still play kick-ass rock and roll.

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