I just got back from seeing the Shins in San Francisco. It was the first time in quite a while that I'd seen live music outside of my house's open-mic music and story night. It was splendid, of course, with the usual blend of why are there so many people standing so close to me stop chattering damn you they're trying to play music here ohmygod it's (insert name of song I'd been hoping to hear) I couldn't be happier will you shut up over there? Followed by a generous helping of oh wow that was awesome hang on I need to stand in a really long line for a t-shirt with a thing printed on it hey look I have a t-shirt with a thing printed on it! It sounds sarcastic, but there's something about the whole progression -- and it does need the whole progression, because if you just have the wonderful music without the million weird aggravations of being in a roomful of other people, then it's just listening to music in your bedroom by yourself and it's somehow lacking in intensity -- that makes me enormously happy. How was that for a hard-to-follow sentence?
But if you blog about concerts then you're a pretentious hipster, and lord knows I am not now nor have ever been a pretentious hipster. So I will simply say this and then go to bed already: at no show that I've ever been to have I seen a performer look as genuinely happy as James Mercer did when the entire audience sang the random falsetto silliness in "So Says I", perfectly and in unison, without any prompting whatsoever. In the unlikely event that I ever become a rock star, I plan to put shit like that in my songs just so that my adoring audiences can sing it and I can grin like a hyena about it. Do hyenas grin? They do now. Thank you and goodnight.
Posted by dianna at April 19, 2007 01:08 AM