Yeah, so, the Jonathan Coulton show last Friday was pretty great. I'm not doing a real report but I don't think I need to since (for those of you who care) this show was filmed for a DVD which will bring the full delightful experience to the masses. (Um, in a few months.) Mostly I just want to pass on the link to this excellent video from the evening, in which he, along with illustrious guest stars including Leo Laporte, plays his song "Still Alive" Rock Band-style. (Spoiler alert: they fail. But just barely.)

Really an amazing show. This was my first time seeing him play (and my first time at the Great American Music Hall which is a lovely venue) and it was well worth the trip. I'm not a super-hardcore fan so I think there were a number of things I didn't "get," and I don't do audience participation (of which there was a small but significant amount), but I had a great time (thanks especially to my BFF who invited me along [and got me in for free]).

Also, there was delicious cake after the show was over. Yellow and chocolate! Would that every concert ended that way.

So, yeah, a long weekend with too little sleep, then four days of work and now I've got a moderate cold and despite the doses of DayQuil and albuterol (that's to ease the coughing) I'm feeling pretty shitty. But I've got work tomorrow and I hate letting a show recap get to its one-week anniversary, so I'm gonna give this a try. I'm thinking the happy memories will distract me from my ills. ( Golden Gate...Divisadero...Turk...Fillmore! )

It was really an excellent weekend, not just for the shows but for seeing old friends and meeting new ones! Maybe next time I'll get to go out East instead. In the meantime, I have memories and pictures. k1cup, hope you had a good trip home!

I really wanted to get this recap done earlier, before all the memories trickled out of my brain, but, you know, there's that job I have to go to now, and the fact that I'm getting old and tired, so now it's four days later and I don't know how this is going to turn out. Probably short, and summary. ( But I've thought that before and it didn't turn out that way, so let's just plunge into it, shall we? )

Now that I'm done being a killjoy, you can take a look at the pictures and setlist. Fillmore recap coming up! (Maybe tomorrow? Depends on how late I stay out with k1cup. :P )

I think the two most important lessons I learned last night are

1. never lose faith in Dan Miller; and
2. it is possible to arrive at a show 15 minutes before doors and still get into the front row, without being rude

I've decided for this set of shows I'm experimenting with embracing the ephemerality of the experience. Which means basically that I might not be doing so much the extremely detailed blow-by-blow I usually do. ( We'll see how that works out. )

I think I might need a nap before heading down to Santa Cruz to meet up with k1cup. And here are last night's pictures and the setlist. I hope tonight will be good too (and longer!).

I think this one is going to be shorter than usual, partly because it's so very much after the fact, and partly because the show itself was so short. ( But let's see how it goes. )

Wow, that report was really short. That's got to be a record of some kind. And here are the photos and stuff. Can't wait until September!

I'm not saying we drove 400 miles each way just so I could go to a They Might Be Giants concert, but the fact remains that those 400 miles had to be driven in order to make it possible for me to go. And it's been an excellent trip so far (we're heading back home on Sunday).

I have pictures and one video, and, of course, ( lots of memories. )

But as always, I can't wait for the next one!

I'm not actually going to write a full report, especially since hobbitgrrl already wrote a pair of good ones, and you can download both concerts from archive.org and hear for yourself what happened. But the shows were absolutely wonderful, as I've come to expect from the Decemberists. Two in a row is always a treat since they mix their setlists up so the two nights will be quite different; and in fact I happened to be in Madison the next night where they were also playing and considered trying to get a ticket for that one as well, but ended up not really having the time to go. (And later found out that they played The Tain as the encore there and was rather disappointed that I missed it.)

But anyway, here are the pictures from Wednesday and Thursday. They seemed to have a whole new lighting scheme which, besides looking really cool, contributed greatly to the (if I do say so myself) high quality of the pictures. For example, I can't believe I got one this crisp with my little 3-megapixel pocket camera. The Thursday ones are slightly less good (although still better than average for me), but I did get some wonderful compositions, like this tableau—the poses are just so perfect. Fantastic showmen, those Decemberists.

Colin announced that they would be doing a free concert with the Grant Park Orchestra in Millennium Park in July, which totally annoys me since I won't be living here anymore by then. I don't see a date scheduled for the Bay Area either, so boooo! Maybe a road trip down to the Hollywood Bowl?

So, cptmoll and I went to that live This American Life show last Thursday. It was pretty excellent. No, I still haven't forgiven Ira for moving the show to New York (and judging by the hissing from other parts of the audience, I'm not the only one), but he can still put together an entertaining program.

I actually liked Sarah Vowell's segment the least—the humor seemed a bit labored, or maybe it was a little too much like stuff I've already heard from her. David Rakoff and Dan Savage were both splendid, though. And I did enjoy the preview clips from the soon-to-premiere TV series, although I'm still not totally won over to the idea. But as I don't have Showtime and don't plan to get it, it doesn't really matter to me.

I was also thrilled to discover, after we got into our seats and perused the program, that the house band was to be Mates of State, whom I adore but had never gotten to see live yet. They only performed like five songs, but it was still pretty awesome. They did, after all, include their cover of Phantom Planet's "California" (aka the theme song to The O.C.). TAL does always have excellent music at its live shows. (And when Ira mentioned having seen Quasi play at the Empty Bottle, my respect for his musical taste only increased.)

So, definitely worth it. I had a most excellent time and cptmoll gave me some useful career advice. Then Friday leahrosmerta did a wonderfully generous thing and bought me some yarn, which is so pretty that ( I must post a picture of it. Yes, just a picture of yarn. )

First I have to ask k1cup, did you get the text we sent you last Thursday? I sure hope so.

Okay, so, I haven't been too good with the show reports lately. I could pull the lame excuse that I've been really sick the last couple of days (which is true), but that doesn't explain the few days before that. But anyway now that these two are nice and stale, I'll just do a quick two-fer and then take you to the crappy pictures.

OK Go on Thursday were great. There's a lot of showmanship on the stage when they play. But I think hobbitgrrl and I have decided it might be time to take a hiatus from them, or least only go to over-21 shows for a while. Too many teenyboppers screaming stuff like "I think my heart just stopped" when Damian flees from walks past the line of people waiting outside. Myself, I was more excited to see k1cup's nemesis Bob, also known as They Might Be Giants' tour manager for the past couple of years. After we saw him I kept hoping Andy Lala was also working the show, but instead it was, I think, the same guy who was teching at the zoo show in August (the one Dan Miller got so peeved at). He's okay in my book, though, since he gave me an OK Go tambourine. I don't think Lala would have done that.

All right, pictures here. Also 2 videos from their acoustic set, in which you can't really see much but which don't sound all that bad. Also, Andy does a pretty little guitar solo in What to Do.

I barely had time to recover before the Decemberists on Saturday. We got there sort of late but managed decent spots in the second row. However I was seriously annoyed by the girl to my left who kept pushing into me in what I assume was a misguided and extremely rude attempt to get closer to the middle. She was totally touching me and leaning onto me and I got pretty pissed off. I mean, that's just not concert etiquette: once people are in their spots you don't push them while you're standing around waiting. So at one point I actually turned to her and said, "Excuse me, I'm standing here," and—this was the best part—she stared straight ahead as if she couldn't hear me, which was completely implausible since her ear was about six inches from my mouth because she was physically pressing against me. Ugh! I was so mad. But happily she eventually moved further to the left, but into the front row, and then her mom was standing next to me instead. Her mom actually seemed pretty trashed, and when she started yelling in an embarrassing teenybopperish way, I was quite amused.

So I was in a much better frame of mind when the show started. But what can I say about the Decemberists? Just that they're always worth it, even when Colin isn't in perfect voice (as he wasn't at this performance; I read later that he got really sick after that, so perhaps that was an early symptom). Oh, a recording of this show is now up at archive.org if you would like to hear how it went. I think my favorite Colin moment is when he completely cracks up during the last verse of A Cautionary Song. It was all good, though, of course.

And photos, no videos. The pictures are pretty dark, but not as terrible as I expected them to be.

Wow, I have been seriously delinquent on show reports lately. I don't know if it's even worth talking about the Doughty show now, almost two weeks later...( but hell, I'll give it a try. This won't be very long. )

Oh yeah, 3 blurryish photos and they're also oddly pink. And again, setlist and a pretty lo-fi mp3 of the new Luminous Girl song.

Common Rotation tomorrow, OK Go and the Decemberists in a couple weeks! I've got to get back into my concert recapping habits...