Adam Green’s grown up a lot in the past seven years since
2003’s Friends of Mine. Long gone are the days of Green crooning “There’s no wrong
way to fuck a girl with no legs,” but the tongue-in-cheek lyrical content off
his new record Minor Love still punches hard.
At a back-to-back two night stint at San Francisco’s Café du
Nord, Pavement-happy openers Dead Trees took position behind Green as his backing band after
their own solid set.
Green takes over the stage, fist-pumping, dancing,
crowd-surfing, and high-fiving the crowd as he works his usual acoustic songs
into rock jams.
It’s obvious that Green respects his audience
wholeheartedly, taking requests (“Bunny Ranch”) and even giving a girl in the
front row his friendship bracelet simply because she asked. He was all smiles
throughout his set too, exchanging banter with the audience about female
ejaculation, meeting Merle Haggard’s wife, and explaining that there’s “no room in
relationships for balding women.” He also noted that “we
only do wheat grass shots to make our semen taste good,” turning the guys in Dead Trees red with embarrassment, before commenting on a heckler’s
“suppleness” and making a guy sing the rest of “Jessica” before stepping in and
finishing the song and segwaying into Green Day’s “I Hope You Had The Time Of Your
Life.”
All the fun and games made
Green’s solo moments, with him and his guitar, that much more poignant. During encore
“Can You See Me?” his earnest, observant delivery came through.“I tried to untie your
lips, but they were double knotted / I tried to break into your brain, but all
the entrances were rotted” he sang achingly, but also somehow hopefully. Able to deliver on both rock star and crooner fantasies alike, let’s all wish his bell bottoms much success into the future.
