bad metaphor

As my joyride month of free music closes, I find myself rudely thrust back into the civilian life of having to pay full price for concerts again. Pfft. (Though I’m trying to keep the train going by applying to win Caribou tickets. Brief summaries of the concerts I won:

Tegan and Sara: So I’d heard their names before, but until the day before the show, I couldn’t tell you if I’d heard their songs or not. (Turns out I had, without recognizing that it was T&S). I think some people get the impression that I know a lot about music, particularly indie rock and whatnot, but my knowledge is actually pretty patchwork, and this happened to be one of my blind spots. I can’t say I dug what little I heard during my pre-show research, but the show was pretty entertaining. Mostly I was amused by the aggressively dancing girl who danced her bony hipster ass in a circle around us, and who severely annoyed the diehard T&S at the show with me – “ugh. She’s not even a real fan.” Apparently little miss Tiny Dancer kept texting when she wasn’t jabbing us with her hips, and made the criminal noob mistake of cheering for their popular radio hits as opposed to their older songs. Anyhow, T&S put on a good show, and regaled the audience with lots of little quirky Canadienne anecdotes between songs.

I didn’t so much care for their opening act, Steel Train, comprised of a bunch of hipster gay boys playing 80′s prog-rock sendups. Just wasn’t my thing, really – and it didn’t help that they broke out into this barbershop quartet routine for one of their songs! They did have cool T-shirts, though.

Beach House: The only one of the four concerts that I would have actually purchased tickets for if I hadn’t won them, owing to the $14 price tag. I didn’t know much about them beforehand, either; I’d just listened to the live stream of their latest album “Teen Dream” off NPR. The album was amazing, of course, and they didn’t really deviate the way they played their songs, which usually bugs me. In this case it didn’t matter; hearing Victoria LeGrand’s ethereal, spookily androgynous voice fill physical space was positively enchanting. Eli mentioned that he had a much greater appreciation seeing the guitarist, Alex Scally, live – it’s tough to pull off dreamy, gauzy guitar plucking, and he does it well.

Their opening act was Bachelorette, a nice seeming girl from New Zealand. She played a short set owing to voice difficulties, though her singing sounded all right. I’m not the biggest fan of laptop-oriented music, though, and wished there was a little more to it besides that.

Jonsi: PHENOMENAL. I can’t stress this enough – if you have the opportunity, go see either him or his band of fellow Icelandic witchgoblins, Sigur Ros, live in concert. Even if you’re not particularly a big fan of the music as heard in mortal album form, just go. Something about the alchemy of a live concert experience transforms this music into a transcendental experience.

Didn’t catch the opener for Jonsi, a band with the highly misleading name of “Death Vessel” – a soft-voiced guy plucking an acoustic guitar.

The Flaming Lips: also a great band to see live, even if you’re not particularly into their music. It’s tough to top a performance that involves the band members emerging from a giant pulsating neon vagina, Wayne Coyne in his patented hamsterball roaming over the audience, a giant catfish attempting to clap with his little stubby fishy fins, and loads and loads of giant balloons and confetti jets.

Jack White’s newest band, The Dead Weather, opened for the Flaming Lips. That particular concert in Kansas City marked the only point on the bands’ respective tours where they would join forces; I guess the Flaming Lips have a long and happy history with Jack White dating back to the time they feuded with Beck while on tour. Jack White apparently cheered up the Lips by bestowing upon them a fiberoptic plastic Jesus, which inspired them to write a thank you song. Inexplicably, the Lips chose not to play this song at the concert? Maybe it was too expected.

Anyhow, the Dead Weather. They also put on a good show, though it was a straight up rock concert featuring straight up classic rock and roll. Krissy said she thought the lead singer, Alison Mosshart, looked completely strung out on heroin. I thought this was probably not the case, as she was bouncing and dancing around all over the stage…as to what she and the rest of the band would do recreationally after the show, of course, I couldn’t comment. Anyhow they looked like typical rock stars, dressed in black and too cool for school. Ho hum. Meanwhile I’m sitting in the audience, knitting. (That’s right bitches. I live life on the EDGE….of a needle.)

We also caught opening bands White Rabbits – who had an impressive percussion section – and Minus the Bear – who Krissy didn’t care for, but E and I enjoyed, though I wonder what they would sound like with the Bear (HA! I slay myself. I really should).

In summation, it was a great month for music in the world of karenology! The fact that so many great bands came (and continue to come) to this area reminds me how lucky we are in Lawrence, and how lucky I am to have been able to see all these shows. It’ll be tough to go back to gazing wistfully at shaky Youtube videos of live recordings. But it was great while it lasted!

The instant I heard Beach House’s latest album, “Teen Dream”, I fell in love – particularly with the opening song “Zebra,” featuring diaphanous, ethereal vocals with a sweet tinge of melancholy. Naturally I was super excited to find that Beach House is coming to Lawrence to play, and set about getting my tickets months in advance (yes, I’m one of those people).

First attempt: went down to the Jackpot with Krissy to get tickets to this show, and also for the upcoming Midlake concert.

“Oh, Midlake canceled, and we’re completely sold out of Beach House tickets,” said the bartender, delivering a double whammy of bad news. Krissy and I had been really excited about the Midlake show…and how in the world did an April show sell out by early February? “Oh, we’ll definitely have more Beach House printed and ready by next week, so just come back then.” Phew.

We decided to have a beer anyway and process this poor news before moving on, when a middle aged lesbian / bar lizard started talking our ears off – ranting about the latest city controversy regarding some designer drug in the process of becoming criminalized. She was, of course, most emphatically opposed to this and did not hesitate to let us know about it. She also had very interesting theories on how law enforcement is conducted in our fair city. There was a pretty controversial raid on a store that carried the drug (K2), and I mentioned the common speculation that this particular store had been raided because the owner had testified before the legislature on behalf of K2. I thought that this explanation would sound reasonable enough to paranoid people, but no…the old bar lizard decided the store had been raided, “because the government keeps track of receipts and what’s sellin’ out.” Apparently the electronic cash registers send some signal beam to some shadowy control center, where bureaucrats can monitor individual store sales and notice sharp upticks in the sale of quasi-legal items. Somehow her explanation also involved Little House on the Prairie?

Bar Lizard was highly entertaining to listen to, but – as with my father – my ears can only tolerate so much lecturing, no matter what the subject, so Krissy and I excused ourselves and shuffled off once the old bar lizard paused to take another swig of Hamm’s.

Attempt two: a friend of mine mentioned that Beach House had changed venues to the Granada to accommodate more people. A few days after the venue change had been officially announced, I rode up to the ticket window and asked the guy there about the tickets. “We don’t have those printed yet,” said he. “Come back next Monday.”

Attempt three: I rode back next Monday, to find the window deserted and the lights off inside. Grr…

Attempt four: Same as attempt three, though the lights were on inside. Nobody at the ticket window, though, and I had to meet some friends at the other end of Mass St so I just rode onwards.

Ever elusive Beach House tickets! I’d just resigned myself to haunting the ticket window every subsequent Monday, and maybe just trying to get tickets at the door – hoping that the tickets didn’t all sell out to other people.

Then yesterday, before heading down to meet my alcoholic friends at Harbor Lights (they basically showed up there right after the employees, but I thought drinking before noon was a bit much), I glanced at lawrence.com to check on the time of the Downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Immediately underneath the time, I saw a posting about a Twitter contest to win tickets to four upcoming shows: Tegan & Sara, The Flaming Lips, Jonsi (lead singer for Sigur Ros) and – of course – Beach House. Apart from Beach House, all pretty expensive shows, and it would be a ridiculous boon to win tickets to all four of these shows. The contest was basically “look for a guy with a funny mustache in a green shirt.” Which, on St. Patty’s Day in Lawrence, is like half the population of the downtown area!

I met up with Krissy on her lunch break, when she came over to greet us (and maybe sneak a quick beer), when over her shoulder I noticed a guy standing at the bar, with a respectably full mustache and a green shirt. Suddenly, though the potential prize was admittedly sweet, I had a moment of doubt. How do I walk up to him and say, “hey, are you the guy from the Internet contest?” Even if he was, there was just no non-dorky way of saying this.

Luckily Krissy was there, because I just informed her of the dilemma and without hesitation, she walked right up to the mustachioed man and said, “Do you have tickets?” Mustachioed man reluctantly said, “you’ve got me” – poor guy had been hoping that the contest would last a bit longer.

Disappointing for him but exciting for us: WE WON! I never win contests! Twitter actually made itself useful! Maybe it was Fate that prevented me from successfully purchasing those Beach House tickets. What a lucky day yesterday was, for a girl without a drop of Irish blood in her veins.

Last night Krissy and I went to catch the first early Sunday show at the Replay. Her friends were supposed to play and canceled at the last minute, but we still wanted a beer and a chance to soak up live music at a reasonable, old-lady hour. The band that did play, The Woes, came all the way from NYC to play for a mostly empty room, since most of our town fled to Cancun and South Padre this week. They still put on a great show – it’s rare that we see any shows around here featuring one horn, and this band boasted three. You can listen to their music here (be warned, there’s some dumb embedded video in one of the comments that automatically plays on page load – SO ANNOYING – so you might have to scroll down and stop that before you can listen to the Woes’ actual songs).

Afterwards we geeked out a little with the singer, who is this really tall black guy with dreads, about iPhones and their various iterations. Not exactly the most stereotypical country / bluegrassy concert experience! I thought back to the time I went to a Gillian Welch show, and had these two middle aged white ladies who kept sneaking up behind me to touch my hair, because they had never seen Asian hair in person before? Made me appreciate that times appear to be changing.

Last night’s show wasn’t without its own creepers, however. One guy in the band played a lap slide guitar, which I’d never seen before, and immediately thought was the coolest thing ever. (I could totally play that while recuperating from tendonitis!) A guy in the audience also apparently thought this was the coolest thing ever, because he squirreled his way right up to the guy playing the lap slide, planted himself firmly within the poor guy’s personal bubble, and touched his shoulder! The lap slide player brushed him off and continued playing, but the creepster went to get a beer and lurched his way back up in Lap Slider’s business. At this, the bouncer did his job and bounced Creepster right out of the bar, seizing the mostly full beer glass and disposing of it. (I bet Creepster was really sore about that). Some of Creepster’s buddies tried to plead with the bouncer to let him back in, but really, unnerving the band is a pretty major offense. Not ten minutes after his ejection, Creepster casually went up to the door and tried to regain entry, as if the bouncer would have just forgotten about it? He eventually skulked off into the night, this time – for once – not reeking of booze.

Towards the very end of the show, I got up to use the restroom, leaving my stuff in Krissy’s care. Upon my return, I saw that one of Creepster’s friends – Lady Skeeves – had usurped my seat, across from a really uncomfortable looking Krissy. Lady Skeeves wore baggy filthy camo pants, and an entire ecosystem as a hair accessory. I shrugged and figured it was almost the end of the set; if she wanted the seat it was hers.

Then Lady Skeeves did something that unfortunately distracted me from the great finale of the Woes show – she ran her fingers through her stiffened, matted hair and started vigorously SCRATCHING. In the dim hazy light my germophobic mind saw thousands of lice bailing onto the table, onto the seat, onto my stuff! I looked at Krissy in alarm and she grabbed my stuff out of the line of fire, brave friend.

I’m not sure what Lady Skeeves was after – she didn’t seem interested in the band that much, and Krissy said she had marched right over to my seat to steal it, with an air of purpose. Eh, maybe she was trying to seduce Krissy with her verminous wiles, and was angry at me for intruding. Or maybe she wanted to talk with us, cause we look like okay people. Maybe she just wanted to unload some of the cargo in her hair. Whatever the reason, after the song was finished we grabbed our stuff and got in line to talk to the band. She skulked off into the night after her friend the Creepster.

“Gosh, I don’t want to pester her,” I said to my friends as I peered down the dark alleyway behind the Blue Note. “Aren’t we kind of creepy anyway? Who skulks about in the shadows waiting for a girl they don’t know, besides rapists?”

“It is so not creepy,” said James, as he tried the door of a trailer parked behind the building. Thankfully, it was locked and no one official with a baton or a glaring face saw us.

Note that I am not the type of person who ordinarily likes to try and interact with celebrities, major or minor. Even if they seem reasonably approachable. Once I stood about five feet away from Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, who was just idly chatting with a sound guy or whoever, with no one else mobbing him for autographs or anything…and I was still too shy to walk over there and introduce myself. At the time I thought about it and just decided I had literally nothing witty enough in my brain to contribute to a conversation with the King of whip smart rock nerds. Maybe my buddy Indie Dan could, but not me. I was too tongue tied to even shout “you rock!”.

Eventually a band member or two emerged from the doorway, and the flicking of lighters combined with wafting cigarette smoke set me at ease. A few Andrew Bird fans joined us in our groupie vigil, waiting to pounce on the headliners as they popped out of the door. Andrew Bird emerged first, and an elated Krissy managed to beat back some blonde floozies (pfft) to get a photo opportunity with the Bird. Then out came Miss St. Vincent, Annie Clark herself, and my helpful friends pushed me forward. Took a photo with her, babbled something about how she should come to Lawrence, and she said something about how her sister had gone to school there, and she’d been to a frat party there once. I’m not sure if in my drunken, giddy state, I did true justice to the many exciting tourism opportunities of my town in the two minutes I spoke with her. Once we walked away, we played it cool…ish…until we rounded the corner, and then skipped back towards my car like three schoolgirls high on pixy sticks.

Later, I saw that she added ‘Lawrence, KS’ to her spring tour dates. And yes, I may have boasted constantly about it for the rest of that week.

Fast forward to the Bottleneck, last Monday. I was glad I got my tickets over a week ago, as the place was packed and I’d even shown up early, by rock o’ clock standards. This band from Sweden called Wildbirds and Peacedrums opened for St Vincent, and they were only the most incredible band I’d seen in ages. These two gentle looking hippies strolled onto the stage: “we are from Sweden,” said the woman timidly, and the pair promptly proceeded to blast our eardrums with their music. She had a full, brassy soul singer’s voice, and he attacked the drums in a decidedly non-peaceable fashion. At some point during their set, I even questioned whether St Vincent was going to be able to adequately follow this act.

I shouldn’t have doubted: St Vincent brought it that night, with the backing of her incredible band. She had a robotic yet strangely winsome manner while casually shredding her guitar. The flautist – wait, that sounds like a fried Mexican snack food – flutist? Flute tooter – yes, that guy, and the violinist were top notch, intertwining their notes seamlessly to give the impression of a fully loaded orchestra. They walked off stage to go take a smoke break for a song or two, leaving just Annie Clark and her guitar to do a scorching rendition of the Beatles’ “Dig a Pony”:

Not from her performance at the Bottleneck, obviously, but it’ll do. Just crank up the volume and pretend the lights are red.

After the show I contemplated waiting for St Vincent again outside the show, autograph my new ticket, and thanking her for coming to Lawrence (because obviously she came at my behest, and not because she has like any family members here or tour dates to fill, or any other good reason. hee). But judging from the murmurs around us, a lot of other people were planning to do so, and this is the coldest February in Kansas I’ve ever shivered through. So I decided to just go buy some merch and replay happy music memories in my mind, in the warmth and comfort of my home.