Frank Turner at the Majestic Theater, Madison, WI, 12/1/15. (Photo: Joe Rasmussen)
Frank Turner called his first solo EP Campfire Punkrock, and after seeing him live (finally, after years of missed opportunities), I can see why. Early on in his set at the Majestic Theater in Madison earlier this month, he said “I’ve got two rules at my concerts: Number one, don’t be a dickhead. Number two, if you know the words, fucking sing along.” And EVERYBODY sang along to almost every song, from the very first notes. And when silent attentiveness was called for, like when he sang an acoustic version of “Demons” dedicated to Eagles of Death Metal merchandise manager Nick Alexander (killed in the Paris attack in November), we were quiet—except when we all joined in on the chorus, “At this truth we have arrived, god damn it’s great to be alive.”
On most of the songs, the vast majority of the crowd knew the words. And for a few choruses, he taught the rest of us. Before “Photosynthesis,” he said “Every single person in this room can be a musician.” More than almost any performer I’ve seen, Turner takes punk's “anybody can do it” sensibility and makes it the center of his ethos. I mean, here’s a guy who has a whole song about that called “Try This at Home,” with the lyrics “Because there’s no such thing as rock stars/ There’s just people who play music/ And some of them are just like us/ And some of them are dicks” and “Quick, turn off your stereo/ Pick up that pen and paper/ Yeah, you could do much better/ Than some skinny half-arsed English country singer.”
Of course, not everyone has Turner’s relentless energy or his booming tenor, the kind that cuts right through even a somewhat muddy (and way drum-heavy) mix. Nor do we all have his sense of melody or his way with words. In lesser hands, some of Turner's songs would come across like bumper-sticker affirmations, but every affirmation-like line (“We can get better/ Because we’re not dead yet”) is offset by another that’s self-deprecating (“Just give me one fine day of plain sailing weather/ And I can fuck up anything”). Hell, his latest album is called Postitive Songs for Negative People. And almost every damned one of his songs points out that none of us get better by ourselves, not bad for a guy who’s called himself a libertarian (even though he supports social welfare).
Which is why, for as powerful as the man and the band were onstage, the show felt as egalitarian and communal as any I’ve ever been to. That may be overstating the case. Folks who’ve spent more time in the punk world can probably point to plenty of other examples; my son once told me of a Lawrence Arms show where half the audience ended up onstage with the band. And I’m mindful of the fact that we all paid money to see him and his band play for us. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel kind of like a big campfire.
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