"i seem to have rocked my shoelaces untied."
So you know how my like, burden in life is to see The Decemberists a lot and yet never have them play The Tain? I know at least evergleam83 knows this.
WELL. Tonight was my sixth time. Guess what they opened with.
The Tain
Apology Song
Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
The Crane Wife 1 [not 2]
Culling of the Fold
The Perfect Crime #2
O, Valencia!
The Island: Come And See/Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning
After The Bombs
ENCORE:
Kingdom of Spain
Mariner's Revenge Song
I went with H and spent a good five minutes right before the concert started explaining to her about The Tain and how I've never seen it and how I'm obsessed with the Cattle Raid of Cooley and all the strange references and metaphors and the five parts and how amazing it is, and then...POW. The guitar line started, and I think my reaction was to half-shout, "JESUS!" and then faceplant into my lap. Colin Meloy later pointed out it was the first time they've played it "here," which could mean London or maybe even all of the UK! THIS WAS FATE.
Royal Festival Hall's much like the National Theatre, very 60s design [er, I think] and big and very seated. Very seated. Especially given that every time before that I've seen the Decemberists, it's been in a standing venue, and has been very small. Well, except Hammerstein Ballroom last time, that was ridiculous. But whether it was the Ballroom, Webster Hall, Irving Plaza, or the...auditorium at my university, I've always been up against the railing in front of Colin or Chris Funk, or maybe a few people behind the railing. Whereas this time H and I were in the second row of the balcony. Add that in with no one standing, and it was a really odd audience. Colin and co. definitely got that impression as well, and teased us a bit about it. Even when he explained the "scream like you're being devoured by a whale" part and we demonstrated poorly, he said: "You're as bad as the Germans! Just a scream for 3 or 4 polite seconds!" Which elicited the first mass reaction from the audience that night, which was patriotic booing.
All audience complaints aside, it really was an amazing concert, and holy shit, dude. I saw the TAIN.
Oh, and Colin dedicated the Kingdom of Spain to Carson [Ellis, his wife -- and illustrator of their albums], who was there in the audience tonight. And I think my heart swooned.
Perhaps more notes added later. Probably really later, actually, I'm thinking of doing a big project when I get home: scanning and organising all my setlists, because I recently created a list of all the shows I've been to and realised I had no recording of the Supergrass '04 setlist aside from a notebook somewhere in a box in my closet in California. And I never really documented the last Tom McRae show I saw (also back in '04), with full details of the French Greg. [Oh yes.] That list of undocumented concerts goes on.
For now, though, I'm going to make some chamomile tea and a plate of some McVitie's digestives, and watch The Mighty Boosh's Electro episode, because that's where I'm at in my rewatch. And right now nothing sounds better than Howard Moon, the greatest jazzman in Yorkshire. "Yorkshire? What is Yorkshire?"
WELL. Tonight was my sixth time. Guess what they opened with.
The Tain
Apology Song
Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
The Crane Wife 1 [not 2]
Culling of the Fold
The Perfect Crime #2
O, Valencia!
The Island: Come And See/Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning
After The Bombs
ENCORE:
Kingdom of Spain
Mariner's Revenge Song
I went with H and spent a good five minutes right before the concert started explaining to her about The Tain and how I've never seen it and how I'm obsessed with the Cattle Raid of Cooley and all the strange references and metaphors and the five parts and how amazing it is, and then...POW. The guitar line started, and I think my reaction was to half-shout, "JESUS!" and then faceplant into my lap. Colin Meloy later pointed out it was the first time they've played it "here," which could mean London or maybe even all of the UK! THIS WAS FATE.
Royal Festival Hall's much like the National Theatre, very 60s design [er, I think] and big and very seated. Very seated. Especially given that every time before that I've seen the Decemberists, it's been in a standing venue, and has been very small. Well, except Hammerstein Ballroom last time, that was ridiculous. But whether it was the Ballroom, Webster Hall, Irving Plaza, or the...auditorium at my university, I've always been up against the railing in front of Colin or Chris Funk, or maybe a few people behind the railing. Whereas this time H and I were in the second row of the balcony. Add that in with no one standing, and it was a really odd audience. Colin and co. definitely got that impression as well, and teased us a bit about it. Even when he explained the "scream like you're being devoured by a whale" part and we demonstrated poorly, he said: "You're as bad as the Germans! Just a scream for 3 or 4 polite seconds!" Which elicited the first mass reaction from the audience that night, which was patriotic booing.
All audience complaints aside, it really was an amazing concert, and holy shit, dude. I saw the TAIN.
Oh, and Colin dedicated the Kingdom of Spain to Carson [Ellis, his wife -- and illustrator of their albums], who was there in the audience tonight. And I think my heart swooned.
Perhaps more notes added later. Probably really later, actually, I'm thinking of doing a big project when I get home: scanning and organising all my setlists, because I recently created a list of all the shows I've been to and realised I had no recording of the Supergrass '04 setlist aside from a notebook somewhere in a box in my closet in California. And I never really documented the last Tom McRae show I saw (also back in '04), with full details of the French Greg. [Oh yes.] That list of undocumented concerts goes on.
For now, though, I'm going to make some chamomile tea and a plate of some McVitie's digestives, and watch The Mighty Boosh's Electro episode, because that's where I'm at in my rewatch. And right now nothing sounds better than Howard Moon, the greatest jazzman in Yorkshire. "Yorkshire? What is Yorkshire?"