A Bit of Grass-Stain Does Not a Ruined Pair of Jeans Make

Monday was breezy, lacking humidity, and slightly overcast, making it the perfect evening to walk to Central Park and stand in a sea of people for almost four hours. To see the Decemberists. The surprisingly best live band you will ever see.

But before I get to the goods, I have to talk about the openers. Land of Talk played first and were somewhat enjoyable. The band's front man is actually a front woman, who both sings and plays some of the most shreddingest solos I've heard. But, proving that I'm becoming an old fart myself, I fell asleep during their set. While standing up. Trust me, falling asleep while standing up is one of the weirdest things ever. You sway and jaunt awake when you're about to lose balance. Then, of course, you play it off to the people around you like you meant to teeter totter.

Oddly enough, the band without any ladies made me grow, at last count, eighteen vaginas. Grizzly Bear lived up to all the indie hype by proving to be another one of the whispy, whiny, and glacial bands that blogs fawn over and proclaim to be genius even though they come no where close to, you know, rocking. Just because they harmonize and play an autoharp doesn't make them worthwhile. No song had a melody, a discernible beginning or end, or even any type of rhythm. Just sparse noodlings from dudes in tight jeans. You know what, I'm honest when I say I like rock and roll. I like seeing bands play pop songs and look like they're having fun.

And that's what the Decemberists are all about.

They came out and opened with "July, July!" and "Billy Liar", two songs from their first two albums that I didn't hear last time. I pretty much was set, right there, good time was already had. After the second song, Colin said that the band was going to play summery songs to fit the mood. And they did. Aside from two ballads, every song was pop perfection and upbeat, exactly what a band should do. Even though Colin had to keep the banter to a minimum (this banter being a highlight of the last show I saw) due to the strict curfew, he managed to have fun with the audience. He tossed a beach ball onstage and back and forth with the audience, had everyone do spirit fingers in the air during the ticker tape parade line of "Perfect Crime #2," and inspired everyone to sing along loudly to the closing choruses of "The Engine Driver" and "Sons & Daughters." All the while, John Moen added fun vocal accents while playing the drums and Chris Funk and Jenny Conlee made goofy faces and laughs while ripping through their multiple instruments with glee. Not to be outdone, bassist Nate Query did some amazingly fast high kicks while playing his upright bass during "Mariner's Revenge Song." No other band has this much fun onstage.

After promptly ending their set at 9:30, Colin came back onstage and announced that they could play "a whole lot more" since they were so good with staying on time. He then went into a solo performance of "Red Right Ankle." The band's closing songs were absolute joy. Right before Jenny's part in "The Chimbley Sweep," Colin put the entire band "to sleep" and then put the audience "to sleep." A huge field of people all sitting, crouching, at the whim of Mr. Meloy until the band started up again with the song's closing chorus. And I posted before about how awesome "Mariner's Revenge Song" is live, and it was no different this time. The look on every concertgoers' face after the show was one of pure glee. I overheard many people say how amazing the last song was and how they thought the show would be boring. Yeah, an acoustic based indie band who sings songs about 19th century European life should be boring shouldn't they? Not the best live band on Earth, right? Well, every time I see the Decemberists, they blow me away.

Setlist: July, July!/Billy Liar/Summersong/Perfect Crime 2/The Sporting Life/From My Own True Love/The Engine Driver/Crane Wife 3/The Island/O Valencia/Sons And Daughters//Red Right Ankle/Oceanside/The Chimbley Sweep/The Mariner's Revenge Song

What?

No.

Because I'm still not over it...

I'm listening to nothing but the Decemberists (with some New Pornographers and Futureheads, a light sprinkling) after the awesomeness of Saturday's concert. Picaresque has been getting heavy rotation, becoming the second Decemberists album I want to listen to straight through (The Crane Wife being the other and best one). The DVD I got at the show (A Practical Handbook) is highly entertaining (the concert) and informative (the documentary). So good. And my love affair with technology continues as more and more people upload videos from the concert to YouTube.

Here's Colin leading the audience through the "la-de-da" part of "Sixteen Military Wives." I'm standing directly behind the third guy he gets to do a solo, although you can't see me.


And here's drummer John Moen crowd surfing.

$$ Bills Ya'll

I have a roommate. Life is good. This means that I now have an extra $550 for the next two months to, you know, be able to live on. Of course the thought of having money is completely dismantling the good lil' spender I had become. I had dinner delivered Monday night. I bought myself a sandwich for lunch yesterday. I spent $20 on picture frames for the decoration of my newly healthily furnished room (pictures to come soon!). If I can finish Melinda & Melinda I'll return it and get back on track with The 100 Film Initiative. I've only watched Borat and Hot Fuzz in the last month. I'm falling behind.

M&M is not as good as the candy that just popped into your head after reading that abbreviation. Woody, seriously, people like those in your movies don't exist. And those that do aren't enough to make your movie successful, nor do they probably care about seeing themselves represented on the big screen. No one discusses philosophy constantly. No one is insanely well-versed in classical music, especially current classical musicians. It's annoying. Woody, your movies are loved by hipster indie Wes Anderson loving twentysomethings who have studied your films in college and cite Manhattan as a turning point in their film-viewing lives. This fan base loves ScarJo because of Ghost World and Lost in Translation and loves that you love her (Match Point is great). This fan base doesn't give a rat crap about any of the things your characters give a rat crap about and man, it's really hard to relate to them. Woody, stop making pop culture references or start making some that make sense in 2007. There are plenty of equally pretentious bands that are just dying to be referenced by your latest young muse (Arcade Fire, hello!).

And also, try making a movie where no one cheats on their spouse.

I'm trying to think of things to buy with my money. The number one thing on the list is a digital camera, a nice one that's small and portable. A nice zoom and big ol' mega pixels would be good, but the portability is key. My last camera was pretty nifty but pretty bulky. I need this so I can take pictures of The Decemberists on July 16th in Central Park. And upload them on FlickR along with the hundreds of other digital camera-equipped Decemberists fans that will be in attendance.

FlickR has become an obsession of mine. It's crazy that I can just type in a name and see all sorts of pictures, my favorites being celebrities with random fans. Once I get my internet up and running at home, I'll upload my photos to it. The pic above was taken at The Strokes show at the Ryman last year.

That's about it. I'm hungry. I'm going to go BUY lunch.

From all atop the parapets blow a multitude of coronets!

Traveling to Boston is a joy mostly because it's so easy. $15, four hours, I'm in another legendary and mythical locale of the Northeast. On the ride up I read the book I Know You're Out There by Michael Beaumier, which I got for free at The Late Show last fall. I also slept and listened to my favorite Decemberists jams since, you know, that's why I was making this trek. Thoughts of chimbley sweeps, infantas, shanties, bayonets, muskets, and ferocious whales all danced through my mind as I drifted in and out of an uncomfy slumber.

I met up with Dave in the early afternoon after arriving and we had a lovely lunch of Thai food. I wanted to scope out the venue and see what the waiting situation was going to be like. I always get to general admission concerts early since my lack of inches height-wise makes it hard to view anything if I'm not up front, clutching the metal barrier or stage itself. 4:30, ticket says 7:00, and already 30+ people in line. High school kids. The curse of an all ages show, kids with nothing better to do on a Saturday that wait outside for well over three hours. I can't tease, really, since I was like this once and still am, the difference being as the concerts I attend restrict their patrons strongly due to age, the number of people over 21 willing to wait long stretches of time is significantly smaller.

I sat outside until 6, reading, talking on the phone, and listening to the iPod. Upon entering I found myself about four standing rows back. Not bad but not up to the standards I'm used to, especially since this meant there would be four rows of people potentially blocking my view of Mr. Meloy and his merry band. There was a quartet of Frat Douches directly in front of me who would, from time to time, attempt to talk to the couple standing next to them who with which they were also associated. This couple, very James Franco/Busy Phillips from "Freaks & Geeks," made out continuously for the hour and a half until the opening group took the stage. During this time, I got to become very familiar with the Frat Douches.

Decemberist Douche - Knew everything about the band and pointed out how much acid they say they were on while recording "Perfect Crime #1." Acid or absinyth, not sure. He spoke with an annoyingly deep nasal voice and was very into and adamant about such pretty and mellow acoustic ditties.

RA Douche - The douche in front of me who, due to the crowd confines, spent some of the night having my chin on his shoulder. He told stories about his RA exploits and how he didn't bail on helping a drunk girl even though she wasn't hot. He then put his iPod on Picaresque and hippie danced for a good half hour, shoving the other half of his ear bud into the other Douches' ears in a "Hey, I'm listening to 'The Infanta'! Cool, huh?!" kinda way.

DMB Douche - The guy obviously drug along with his three Douches, his defining quote being "This place isn't as packed as when Sublime played." I don't know what decade this guy was living in. He put his iPod on and listened to some Dave Matthews Band, mislabeled DMB with song titles not corresponding to their albums and album artwork arranged all willy nilly. He kept pretty quiet.

Pot Douche - This guy spent the ninety minutes carving a hole in the bottom of his lighter with a pocket knife so he could "store ANYTHING" in it while also going over the details of all the pot the four of them were going to smoke that night. He also shared a video on his cell phone of two girls making out. After watching this, the four douches high fived each other.

Concert going is a weird experience. The music that you go to a concert to hear is, for the most part, private. You listen to these songs alone, you sing along alone, you love them alone, you internalize them, you apply all sorts of meaning and memories to these songs. They become yours. Then you go to a concert and stand behind people who slur the words to "We Both Go Down Togther" while passing imaginary orbs and talking about all the pot they're going to smoke during the show. You have to wonder if they're hearing the same song as you. Guess not.

The opening act, My Brightest Diamond, was decent. The woman was overwhelmingly charismatic and had a lovely voice, very Regina Spektor-y in my opinion. She later came out and sang the female part to "Yankee Bayonet." After the opening act, a pack of sidlers made their way next to me with every intention of breaking through and getting to the front. The cramped conditions finally got to them and they realized that they were now fourth-row dwellers next to me. Fine. But the Frat Douches decided to take a stand and started rigidly pushing everyone behind them backwards, doubling the already generous amount of space they had. This irritated me and led me to tell the sidlers that if they wanted to get up front, they should come in front of me and shove these guys out of the way since they were being rude. The James Franco/Busy Phillips couple looked at me with a mix of shock and loathing.

The douches were not only going to hippie dance, sully my songs and smoke loads of marijuana, they were going to kill me.

The show started and I tried to not interact with anyone and, once Colin Meloy came onstage, it was all right. The band opened with "Oceanside" and then went into "The Island," all 12 minutes of it. This was a highlight, with the band switching instruments for the last bit of it and creating such a beautiful atmosphere. Colin is a superb showman, stomping furiously and marching during "The Island" and instructing the audience to sing along at all possible moments. He plays to the audience, gets on his knees while playing the guitar with his teeth, and is downright hilarious in-between songs. The band did an impromptu jam which Colin dubbed "The Chris Funk Theme." He then did multiple versions of the theme, each with a different mood that Chris Funk (the guitarist) acted out. "All of those moods included the bottle of wine, I noticed" Colin said of Chris' characters. Someone in the audience yelled for them to do a ska version, and after doing so Colin noted that they were "really good at ska."

The best moment came during "16 Military Wives" where Colin parted us like the Red Sea (leaving a strip of bare floor down the center of the audience), instructed us to introduce ourself to the person across from us, give them a glare, sneer, and then led us in the last "la-de-da-de-da" part of the song. My side did not win, no matter how hard I tried.

"The Mariner's Revenge Song" was also a joy; a giant papier mache whale ate the band. Great!

Setlist (not in order)
Oceanside
Grace Cathedral Hill
The Island: Come & See/ The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning
Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
O Valencia!
The Perfect Crime #2
Shankill Butchers
Summersong
The Crane Wife 1
Sons & Daughters
The Infanta
16 Military Wives
The Mariner's Revenge Song

Seems short but you have to remember that two of these songs took up nearly a third of the concert. The Frat Douches, after all, did not sing along, dance poorly, or even smoke anything. They were all talk. Losers.

I love youtube. There are already videos from the show.

Mariner's Revenge Song


O Valencia!


Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)


I can't wait to see The Decemberists again in July. Yes...yes...

O Francesca!

Whenever the Decemberists posted their video for what's arguably becoming the biggest single of their career, "O Valencia!", lots of fans noticed that something was missing...mostly the entire location. The now infamous green screen debacle landed the band a mega-public feud with Stephen Colbert and resulted in one of the best TV moments of 2006: The Colbert Report's "Countdown to Guitarmageddon." Fans went bonkers placing the Decemberists everywhere, from libraries to slur filled backdrops dissing the whole contest. Youtube has some entries and they're interesting...

But, goshdarnit, a real video had to be made. And here it is. It's a pretty by-the-books translation with some Wes Anderson-esque twists and a non-spectacled version of Mr. Meloy. Highly enjoyable.

I don't know who won the green screen fiasco, but this entry is by far my favorite.

A true yankee bayonet

I purchased my ticket to see the Decemberists today at 1:00. Buying tickets is normally a pain but, somehow, this went quite smoothly. I will be seeing the band on March 24th at some place called Avalon (props if your mind immediately goes to The Acolytes HQ, mid-90s X-Men reference) in Boston.

Tickets weren't so bad, $30.99 is a lot cheaper than their Bowery Ballroom concert late last year.

This'll be my first time seeing them. Nothing but a flimsy metal gate between me and Colin Meloy. Of course there was nothing between us when he walked by me in the airlock back when I was an intern at "The Late Show" (oh, November was so long ago!). Whatever. I'm excited. Debating on wearing period garb.

LAST 3 SONGS PLAYED ON iPOD
"The Hives Are Law, You Are Crime" by The Hives *****
"6060-842" by The B-52's *****
"Who Is It?" by Talking Heads *****