The $389 Joseph Arthur Show
by: Matthew Ralph

Like your hometown paper or your hometown sports team, it's sometimes easy to find fault with your local city, especially if you live on the outside and are forced to drive in from time to time.

Parking, risk of getting mugged, parking, bums hassling you for spare change, parking. Did I mention parking? There are plenty of gripes about driving into the city from the suburbs, not to mention in my case, driving from work in way South Jersey to West Philadelphia for a Thursday evening show. But when Joseph Arthur is on the bill and you've been sweating his music, even attempting to play some of it where people can hear none the less (how embarassing), since the first time you heard and nearly cried to him singing the words "May God's love be with you always," it kind of becomes a priority.

So I crossed my fingers and hoped that nothing would explode during work that day that I would have to cover so that I could get to the show on time and finally see Mr. Arthur in person. Fortunately, it was a slow news day and I managed to get out the door with enough time to stop and pick up my ticket from a former coworker in Philadelphia and get to the show. Unfortunately, the cop hidden between used cars in a darkened lot on the way to entrance for 295 had other ideas. He took his time inspecting my press badge in the front window and didn't bite on my fabricated story that I was running late for an assignment in Philadelphia on a local musician made good in the city club scene. He was more concerned that I was going 40 in a speed zone that was apparently 25, though no signs anywhere near the scene of the darkened used car lot suggested so.

It would not be my last encounter with a police officer that night, but what makes no sense to me is why on earth it took him so long to give me a traffic violation. I've sat in cop cars and I've been shown how efficient the new computer systems are, how in 49 seconds they can find if someone is wanted for stealing a Twix bar in Boise, Idaho or propositioning a prostitute in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Still, they make you wait and wait, perhaps to ponder what you have just done, since we all know that unknowingly driving 15 miles over the speed limit in a darkened road with minimal traffic is contributing heavily to the demise of our society. It's obviously worse than driving like a maniac, passing cars on the right and not using your turn signal, since that type of tomfoolery is rarely ever ticketed.

So running behind schedule at this point, I managed to still get to the city to pick up my ticket, a few blocks from the club. One small problem though. No parking. The legal variety at least. I illegally park and imagine getting a second ticket for the evening as I walk the narrow streets of the Art Museum district of the city. Luckily, when I return I see that I've lucked out and not received another ticket, but rather than risk it longer and walk to the club I drive three blocks up to find a parking spot. More problems finding parking. I settle for parking on a shady disheveled street and say a prayer that my car will still be there when I return. I have a strange feeling it won't.

When I enter the club, Arthur has already started so I squeeze through to a decent place in the crowd and immediately get lost in the sound of his voice singing over an acoustic guitar, enhanced by a series of pedals and effects that make him look the part of a musical scientist on stage messing with knobs to his right, clicking pedals with his feet. The shiny side of a CD placed in the middle of his acoustic guitar reflects the light from overhead and creates a surreal picture of a tall lanky singer who from my vantage point strangely resembles Tom Green alone on a stage in front of a danky patterned backdrop.

For being alone, Arthur manages to create a sound big enough to transcend the whole guy with a guitar vibe that can often get old. It isn't quite like the CD, which is good because who wants to pay to see that, but the songs take on a new level for me, the songs especially from his album "Come to Where I'm From." This is the CD I took to Oklahoma and played before one of my best friend's wedding. It's the CD that became a soundtrack for my confusing and sometimes anguishing college experience. The title track, though still as disturbing when he starts in about taking a loaded gun to his head, reverberates through the small club, a club that no matter what always seems to have the same 4 or 5 annoying people in the back who talk non-stop, volumes raising as the alcohol saturates the liver.

When it comes time to do the current single off "Redemption's Son," the dreamy "Honey and the Moon", I'm already in a daze. Arthur talks and from what I can make out is trying to be funny. I'm not sure why he bothers to talk, because it's both difficult to see his lips moving and even more difficult to make out the inflection of his voice over the buzz of the PA. He beats on his guitar and starts the simple and familiar beat of the song and just runs with it, begging the crowd to come along to this imagined universe he's probably reached by way of substances. Along the way, Arthur takes some trips of his own, exploring the stage around him and looking every bit the part of some stoner in a Richard Linklater film, putting his back to the crowd at one point and pressing his face into the corner. When the song ends he disappears from the stage, the beat still playing and the loop of his charming guitar ditty still hypnotizing the crowd.

Arthur eventually returns to an encore and exits again in similar fashion, letting his programmed elements end the show for him as he stumbles off to mingle with the crowd. For Arthur it was all in a night's work, his talent for songwriting and the ease with which he controls elements far trickier than putting a pick to the strings and singing into a microphone, making it all seem close to effortless.

I'm left speechless and in a surreal daze as I leave the club and wonder back into the early evening. For some reason as I walk toward my car just a block up from the club I again have a strange feeling that something is wrong. My car is still there though and the alarm is not sounding so I figure I have nothing to worry about. But as I open the door and prepare to sit down I start to feel a draft and see the glass on the back seat. Immediately, I'm struck with horror and first and foremost afraid that maybe someone is waiting to bonk me over the head and finish the job.

Quickly racing around the corner to find a police officer, it takes me all of 30 seconds to find one. She had apparently been patrolling the area, but must have missed the part when someone broke my back passenger window out and climbed through to get inside and steal a box that was laying on the floor. At the time, I had completely forgotten that the imitation George Foreman grill I had gotten for Christmas was still in the back seat when I left for the show that night. All I could think of was the fact that my cell phone, computer, and digital camera were still there and most importantly my car.

The cop told me it would be best to not bother with a report since my insurance company would be of no assistance. What is it with insurance anyway? You pay them every month to insure you if something happens, yet when anything does happen that costs less than $500 to fix they get out of it. And if a window is broken by a thug in Philadelphia and three days later a rock hits the windshield and cracks it too, they still can't help you because it was two separate instances.

So naturally, driving home that evening I was more startled than anything, so much so that I ended up getting lost in the city trying to find my way back and had very little gas left in my tank as I raced down streets to only find that more than once that I was heading the wrong way down an unmarked one way street.

Violated is a word that I kept using to relate the story to people I talked to and it's probably the best way to describe the feeling of having someone take something from you. Lord knows I wasn't missing that imitation Foreman grill that came straight off one of those Made For TV carts in the mall and I had no real attachments with that window that was broken out. The cost, the inconvenience, and the canceling of my weekend plans to go to Boston all played a role in my angst over the situation, but more than anything I just wanted back a piece of innocence that I had lost that night. I wanted to get rid of that sick feeling in my stomach and the nervous emotion I felt experiencing the ugly side of life all in an evening where ironically enough I had listened to a musician who has found a distinct way to touch my soul and my spirit with his honest and uplifting music that despite exploring all aspects of human emotion leaves the listener filled with hope and faith.

In the end, seeing Arthur perform ended up costing me just under $400 and has me cautious about returning to the so-called City of Brotherly Love, in that particular part of town at least. Still, as I listen to Joseph Arthur driving home from a late night at work, it's not bitterness that sets in recalling this awful circumstance, it's bliss from the wonderful tunes and the magical spell his music to this day continues to put me under.

posted 03.07.03

2003 White Elephant Productions