GRANDADDY PLAYED TO A CROWD of friends and loyal fans in Modesto, California sometime before Jason Lytle dismantled the band.  It was a tiny bar on south Ninth Street.  Some very happy people were treated to hits from Sumday and gems from Earlimart, who were on hand for the party.  A favorite lyric, from “The Group Who Couldn’t Say,” 2003: “Becky wondered why/ She’d never noticed dragonflies/ Her drag and click had never yielded/ Anything as perfect as a dragonfly.”  A suggested literary pairing: David Sedaris or George Orwell.

Public Enemy in Oakland, Def Jam Tour, 1989.  I’ve rarely felt the tense energy in the air like I did on this night, as if something important was about to happen.  And it did.  Public Enemy performed.  With the vacuum of political discourse on race dynamics and empowerment, Chuck D filled the void with one of the decade’s best albums, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.  For a young poet with a political consciousness, my Public Enemy experience was a formative step towards literature, politics, and voice.  Then later, “Fight the Power” came along and it was over.  A favorite lyric, from “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” 1988: “Here is a land that never gave a damn/ About a brother like me and myself/ Because they never did/ I wasn’t wit’ it, but just that very minute…It occured to me/ The suckers had authority.”  A suggested literary pairing: Junot Diaz or Patricia Smith.

Liz Phair in Seattle, Neptune Theater.  This was on her tour for Exile in Guyville, one of the best and most underrated albums of all-time, as far as I am concerned.  The notoriously shy performer came out of her shell halfway through the set, that big electric guitar and delicately powerful voice like a good poem.  There was a young woman in a wheelchair sitting near the stage, and at the end of the concert, Phair set down her guitar, walked over to the gushing fan, and gave her a long hug.  I’ll never forget it.  A favorite lyric, from “Mesmerizing,” 1993: “With all of the time in the world to spend it/ Wild and unwise, I wanna be mesmerizing too/ Mesmerizing too/ Mesmerizing to you.” A suggested literary pairing: Kelle Groom or Paisley Rekdal.

The Rolling Stones in Oakland, three hours of joy in the California sun.  I wondered if they had flashbacks of the horrible day when the Hells Angels did their security and things went so wrong.  On this day, though, Mick Jagger was at his best, prancing and jutting out those lips, delivering the attitude on so many great songs, you almost forgot other bands ever existed.  From “Gimme Shelter” to “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Satisfaction” to “Emotional Rescue,” I sang my throat dry.  I’ve never seen anyone command a crowd like Mick at the Oakland Coliseum.  A favorite lyric, from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” 1969: “You can’t always get what you want/ But if you try sometime you find/ You get what you need.”  A suggested literary pairing: Allen Ginsberg or Brian Turner.

Rage Against the Machine at Arco Arena, Sacramento.  I used to love the heavy bands and have seen some great ones: Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, Against Me.  But very few, if any, brought energy and gravity to the stage like Rage Against the Machine, whose albums Evil Empire and The Battle of Los Angelesare classics, in my opinion.  I’d long since given up fighting for the front row at general admission shows, so I enjoyed the show from a seat high above the fray.  But I loved watching the fray.  The band made you care.  And want see the world.  Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha educate and rile like no one before or since. A favorite lyric, from, “Bulls on Parade,” 1996: “Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes/ Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal/ I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library/ Line up to the mind cemetary.”  A suggested literary pairing: Tim Z. Hernandez or Sun Yung Shin.

Cold War Kids played the great new venue, Cellar Door in Visalia, and my wife and I danced and sang along to the band’s happy, march along tunes like “Hang Me Up to Dry” and “Mexican Dogs.”  Before the show, the lead singer and his cousin came into the restaurant where my wife and I had just finished dinner.  I met the singer, chatted for a little while, and welcomed him to the Central Valley.  Clean band with galvanizing guitar and that great drummer makes me want to sing and dance, even though I can’t sing or dance.  But everyone’s welcome to sing at a Cold War Kids show.  A favorite lyric, from 2009’s “Audience”: “Sunday nights that you want her like velvet cake/ Sweet heart can bargain half price mistakes/ She will go down with her ship like a good captain/ You’re sitting on the dock playing for an audience of one.”  A suggested literary pairing: Joseph Legaspi or David Foster Wallace.

Beastie Boys‘ MCA slurped a Budweiser in Fresno’s Selland  Arena in 1987 and Central California raved.  Beastie Boys, Fishbone, and punk band Murphy’s Law were my first concert, twenty-five years ago.  Most of my students weren’t even born.  I saw them later at The Warfield, and at Neil Young’s Bridge Benefit Concert, and again at the first Tibetan Freedom Concert, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.  So fresh, these pioneers.  A favorite lyric: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue/ The disrespect to women has got to be through/ To all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends/ I want to offer my love and respect to the end,” from “Sure Shot,” 1994. A suggested literary pairing: Steven Church or Barbara Jane Reyes.

Fugazi in Santa Cruz.  Any talk of good music often begins with this seminal DC band, and the legendary Ian MacKaye delivered as promised.  You don’t push, shove, or slam.  You listen, enjoy the music, and let others do the same, or MacKaye will shut the whole thing down.  I never saw Minor Threat, but I saw Fugazi three times.  One of the best live bands ever.  His follow-up band, The Evens, was a little sleepier, but you never slept on Fugazi.  You braced yourself.  A favorite lyric, from “Cashout,” 2001:  “so they’re kicking out everyone/ talking about process and dismissal/ forced removal of the people on the corner/ shelter and location, everybody wants somewhere.” A suggested literary pairing: Li Young Lee or Daniel Chacón.

The Little Birds in our living room, Fresno.  You’ve probably never heard of this band, understandably.  I play guitar, and my seven year-old daughter sings.  We named the band after one of our favorite songs, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”  We write the lyrics together, and so far we have four songs, but we’re working on an album that we’ll release to family and friends one of these days.  Daughter likes all kinds of music and loves to dance, so on a few of the songs she’ll dance as she sings, mostly lyrics about birds, the sun and the sky, and dreams.  Her voice is my favorite voice in the world.  A favorite lyric: all of them. A suggested literary pairing: Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein.

Pavement in San Francisco, Golden Gate Park.  It’s only because I love this band that I’ve placed it first.  The show itself wasn’t ideal; it was a festival (Tibetan Freedom Concert, 1994), it was blazing hot (open air, no shade, mid-summer), and it seemed like I was a mile away from the stage (100, 000 sweaty people in attendance will have that effect).  But this band is one of my all-time favorites, with some of the most creative lyrics ever, and the bookish sound was a soundtrack to my life for many years.  Stephen Malkmus made the slacker west coast sound seem so smart, so full of possibility.  Some say Slanted and Enchanted is their best.  I say it all begins and ends with Brighten the Corners.  A favorite lyric, from “We are Underused”: “Simply put, I want to grow old — dying does not meet my expectations/ Let’s drink a toast to all those who arrived alive to tell/ About their struggles in hushed tones around a fire/ It’s late winter — let’s sink the ship, mix our blood, just the tip.”  A suggested literary pairing: just about any great essay or poem you can imagine.
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LEE HERRICK is the author of two books,Gardening Secrets of the Dead(WordTech Editions , 2012) and This Many Miles from Desire (WordTech Editions, 2007). His poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including The Bloomsbury Review,ZYZZYVA, Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California’s Great Central Valley, 2nd edition, andIndivisible: Poems of Social Justice. He lives in Fresno, California and teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College. You can find more about Lee Herrick at leeherrick.com.