Duffy says: The best man to my wedding, Steve Kazimir, sometimes e-mails me about shows he goes to in NJ. He went to see The Bangles last night at The Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ. To many of you this is a cool new venue run by the Bowery Ballroom people, but growing up it was a movie theater where me and Steve saw a bunch of films, good and bad. Here’s what he wrote me:
So when I bought tickets for the bangles show at wellmont a while back it wasn’t because I’m a die hard bangles fan. I thought, “hey, it’s a harmless show I could take the wife to, it’s where I saw lawrence of arabia for the first time, what the hell?”
So I went to the show to say I went to the show. I went for those ironic, kitschy, 80s nostalgic reasons. I went to the place where I sat through 4 hours of kenneth branagh’s Hamlet (TWICE) to earn my “I’m making fun of myself for doing this while I’m doing it” merit badge.
I mean, walk like an egyptian for chrissakes, right?
Rob, please explain to me why, if this is so, the Bangles rocked my face off last night. You don’t return to the place where you saw Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning turn in “Monster”, or where Johnny Depp had to outmaneuver Christopher Walken in real time just to be rocked like that on a Sunday night. It was quite an unexpected rocking. I certainly didn’t rock that hard when I saw “The Daytrippers” there. Although in retrospect, back in 1996, when I went there and Sean Connery “Welcome(d me to) the Rock” I guess that’s what he meant. That’s what he meant all along. The Bangles. They rocked.