Scene and Heard

Adam Green, Dead Trees at Cafe du Nord

Photos by Jenz » 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.

Text by Jenz
Posted on April 08, 2010

Adam Green takes you to Crowd Surf City.

Dead Trees as backing band for Adam Green.

adam green Jump mid-air

adam green acoustic guitar

Trying to raise the roof more than is physically possible.

Adam Green with crowd

adam green crowd surf Adam Green receives a half-eaten bag of Ruffles from an adoring fan.

The band is not thrilled about Green's theories on "pussy sand".

Adam Green gives his friendship bracelet to someone because she asked for it.

adam green posturing singing

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.