Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton
Monday night was the Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton show.
I never heard back from Jeff about whether or not he was going, and I had had trouble reaching Jayme all weekend to see if she remembered about the show (turns out she was visiting her grandma and had forgotten her phone charger, so her phone had died). I stopped by Jayme's place that afternoon, and she had a sinus infection and didn't want to leave the house. Lindsay had been planning on going with me, but she didn't feel well over the weekend so she held off on buying a ticket. Since both Jeff and Jayme weren't going, I had an extra ticket that I gave to Lindsay.
We left Sac a little before 5:30pm, and showed up at the venue around 7pm. We had a couple of beers and waited for the show to start. It was a seated show, the first one I'd been to at Great American Music Hall. They had brought in a bunch of small tables and chairs, and it was actually kinda cool. While waiting for the show to start we chatted and caught up, which was fun because Lindsay has been out of work for a while (right before Halloween she broke her hand -- or rather a drunken Edgar broke her hand -- and then slipped and broke a wine glass at work, in turn cutting her other hand and nearly severing a tendon in it. She had to have surgery to fix the tendon, and is currently going through physical therapy to regain use of her hand).
Tall Firs opened the show. They were pretty good.
Emily Haines went on around 9:15pm. She opened with Our Hell, then went on to play Doctor Blind, and Crowd Surf Off a Cliff. Above the stage there was a screen onto which was projected some clips from Guy Madden movies. When she started playing The Lottery someone in the audience made a loud noise, so Emily stopped playing and yelled, "Are you okay? Did she (referring to one of the cocktail servers) step on your foot while selling you a candy bar? What are you selling? Empty cups? That's no fun!" She then sat down and began playing the song from where she left off. I'm pretty sure she played her entire album, and then for the encore she covered Neil Young's Expecting To Fly, and then brought out the members of Tall Firs and sang an awesome duet on their song, The Woods.
I tried to take some pictures and get some video, but the lighting wasn't that great and we were at kinda a weird angle to the stage. I did get some video of Our Hell, Reading In Bed, The Lottery (starting after the break where she talked to the audience), and most of the Neil Young cover (towards the end, a GAMH staff member came up to me and said, "When you hold the camera up for a long time, it makes me think you're recording audio or video ... take a still, then put the camera down"). The audio is good on the clips, but you can't see her very well. Most of the pictures where you can see things are ones that I took of the screen above the stage, and I forgot to take a picture of the marquee outside the building, which sucks.
We stopped at In-N-Out Burger in Pinole on the way home, and then came back to Sac and hung out with Casey and Jackie for a while.
It was a fun night.
Tall Firs
One of the Guy Madden clips above the stage
Emily Haines
Another Guy Madden clip
Emily
Another shot
Another clip on the screen
Playing "The Woods" with Tall Firs
Emily at the piano
Leaving the stage
I never heard back from Jeff about whether or not he was going, and I had had trouble reaching Jayme all weekend to see if she remembered about the show (turns out she was visiting her grandma and had forgotten her phone charger, so her phone had died). I stopped by Jayme's place that afternoon, and she had a sinus infection and didn't want to leave the house. Lindsay had been planning on going with me, but she didn't feel well over the weekend so she held off on buying a ticket. Since both Jeff and Jayme weren't going, I had an extra ticket that I gave to Lindsay.
We left Sac a little before 5:30pm, and showed up at the venue around 7pm. We had a couple of beers and waited for the show to start. It was a seated show, the first one I'd been to at Great American Music Hall. They had brought in a bunch of small tables and chairs, and it was actually kinda cool. While waiting for the show to start we chatted and caught up, which was fun because Lindsay has been out of work for a while (right before Halloween she broke her hand -- or rather a drunken Edgar broke her hand -- and then slipped and broke a wine glass at work, in turn cutting her other hand and nearly severing a tendon in it. She had to have surgery to fix the tendon, and is currently going through physical therapy to regain use of her hand).
Tall Firs opened the show. They were pretty good.
Emily Haines went on around 9:15pm. She opened with Our Hell, then went on to play Doctor Blind, and Crowd Surf Off a Cliff. Above the stage there was a screen onto which was projected some clips from Guy Madden movies. When she started playing The Lottery someone in the audience made a loud noise, so Emily stopped playing and yelled, "Are you okay? Did she (referring to one of the cocktail servers) step on your foot while selling you a candy bar? What are you selling? Empty cups? That's no fun!" She then sat down and began playing the song from where she left off. I'm pretty sure she played her entire album, and then for the encore she covered Neil Young's Expecting To Fly, and then brought out the members of Tall Firs and sang an awesome duet on their song, The Woods.
I tried to take some pictures and get some video, but the lighting wasn't that great and we were at kinda a weird angle to the stage. I did get some video of Our Hell, Reading In Bed, The Lottery (starting after the break where she talked to the audience), and most of the Neil Young cover (towards the end, a GAMH staff member came up to me and said, "When you hold the camera up for a long time, it makes me think you're recording audio or video ... take a still, then put the camera down"). The audio is good on the clips, but you can't see her very well. Most of the pictures where you can see things are ones that I took of the screen above the stage, and I forgot to take a picture of the marquee outside the building, which sucks.
We stopped at In-N-Out Burger in Pinole on the way home, and then came back to Sac and hung out with Casey and Jackie for a while.
It was a fun night.
Tall Firs
One of the Guy Madden clips above the stage
Emily Haines
Another Guy Madden clip
Emily
Another shot
Another clip on the screen
Playing "The Woods" with Tall Firs
Emily at the piano
Leaving the stage