Tuesday, April 24, 2007

There's no crying in rock and roll!

I've had a fantastic past few days, with the weekend even spilling over onto Monday (thanks to my sick day - I decided I should at least take advantage of my sick leave while I'm still here).

I already wrote about Andrew Bird, but I'm still pretty happy that I saw him because it was so great.

On Saturday, Christina and I went to Adam and Alissa's for Adam's birthday cookout, which was so much fun. My legs are still sore from the impromptu dance party in the kitchen (which apparently contributed to the downstairs neighbor shutting down the party; her ceiling fan was "bouncing up and down"). I think at one point I was doing squats in some choreographed routine that Katy and I came up with for "Since U Been Gone."

Christina and I went out and enjoyed the warm weather by walking to brunch at Nookies (which I don't particularly like all that much, but Christina's frustration that the male wait staff pays more attention to me than her makes me laugh). Afterward we stopped by a vintage store on Belmont and I found a vinyl copy of The Legend of Jesse James, featuring Johnny Cash, Levon Helm, Emmylou Harris, and Charlie Daniels. (I gasped when I noticed it.) Three dollars! It was a good day.

Kristin and I saw Bright Eyes last night, which fulfilled a five-year-long wish of mine. (Seriously, it's been nearly five years since Lifted came out and my life changed.) After getting tipsy from margaritas at a Mexican restaurant next door to the Riviera, we marched on in, noticing that we were much, much older than most of the people we were standing with (which didn't necessarily surprise me). Anyway, the show was alright; they played mostly stuff from the new album, which was great, but we didn't hear anything from Lifted, so I was rather disappointed. They did play "The Calendar Hung Itself," which was nice and timely (it's featured on the break-up mix). Conor sounded pretty good, and the band was excellent; the two dummers really made a big difference on the sound. My complaints, other than the set-list, were that there was a huge audio-visual component to the show, which featured videos that matched up perfectly to the songs. It looked cool, but it definitely ruins the illusion of spontaneity. Also, Conor was wearing a white suit and he looked like a Tim Burton character, which was unsettling. And there was no crying. Boo!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're an idiot. The visuals were not video, they were being made spontaneously by a guy in the back with a video projector. And that was Janet Weiss from Sleater Kinney on drums. Bow down.

Tyler said...

I will not bow down.

Also, the dummers both looked too young for either to be Janet Weiss, but I wasn't very close to the stage.

Anonymous said...

What is a dummer?
At first I thought that you misspelled drummer, but then you spelled it the same in your comment.
I'm still guessing it's a drummer.

Tyler said...

Hahahaha! Oops.

OK, I'll bow down now.