Make me dance, I want to surrender
I first saw Belle and Sebastian just five weeks or so shy of ten years ago, in the August of 2003. I was approaching my one-year anniversary of living in New York. I had a cold, which I had forgotten until I re-read the very brief and not very evocative LJ recap just now. I was interning at a literary agency, so I was poor; my mom sent me money so I could go to the show. (My mom is the best.) I went by myself. By myself! I only knew a few people who actually lived in the NYC area and my main concert buddy for the past year had moved back to California after graduating Sarah Lawrence that spring.
This decade-later concert, in the very same Prospect Park bandshell (though for a full twelve additional American dollars), was in some ways a culmination of past B&S concert experiences. For one, they are not particularly promoting a new record; they have a B-sides collection out next month, but they don't seem to be playing any songs from it, so this between-album tour (relatively rare for a UK band touring the US) has been very much a career-retrospective greatest hits type of deal. This concert also featured the unfulfilled threat of a thunderstorm, like the one on my birthday in 2010; heat, like the one on the Fourth of July in 2006; and a famous-ish opening act, like their tour with the New Pornographers, earlier in 2006. Marisa and I were old hands, finally, while Other Sara B was the newbie. A bunch of other One Story/writer folk were further out on the lawn, too, and I was surprised how few of them had seen Belle and Sebastian before. I really was lucky back in 2003, empty pockets, stuffed nose, and all.
Because B&S aren't releasing new material at the same clip they were in the nineties and early aughts, and because they don't tour here all that often, and because their most beloved album is at this point close enough to its twentieth anniversary (!), it's easy to take them for granted. I didn't even prep much for this concert, just throwing my rarely listened-to copy of their BBC Sessions record onto my iPod, feeling like, OK, I'm pretty much all set for this concert already. And in terms of familiarity, I certainly was. But not having listened to their proper albums in a little while, I forgot just how crazy solid the Belle and Sebastian catalog is. Seven full-length records, most of which are very good or better; three or four albums' worth of singles and B-sides, many of which are as good as anything on their proper LPs; and a live presence that apparently used to be a bit shambolic and amateurish but has always been polished, upbeat, and fun as all hell when I've seen them. It's funny that the sad-bastard image still looms over them, because Stuart Murdoch has never seemed remotely sad when I've seen him perform; he dances more than almost any frontman I can remember.
So, this is not a very unpredictable or likely controversial post: yay, Belle and Sebastian! But really, their setlist was impeccably chosen from all eras of the band, covering all of the records except Fold Your Hands Child, as well as crucial-to-me non-album tracks like "Legal Man" and "Your Cover's Blown." They played a fantastic number of my Top 10 B&S songs ever, and that they could play a set this full of great songs and still not get to "This is Just a Modern Rock Song," "If You're Feeling Sinister," "Jonathan David," "Write about Love," "Stay Loose," or several others, well, wow.
I'm not 100% on the order here but I think I have all of the songs:
Judy is a Dick Slap
I'm a Cuckoo
Another Sunny Day
Stars of Track and Field
I Want the World to Stop
To Be Myself Completely
Lord Anthony
Funny Little Frog
I Don't Love Anyone
Piazza, New York Catcher
Simple Things
Your Cover's Blown
I Didn't See It Coming
The Boy with the Arab Strap
Legal Man
Judy and the Dream of Horses
---
Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying
Le Pastie De la Bourgeoisie
I guess I forgot to mention that Marisa and I are in the midst of a summer-concert marathon. Starting the weekend of 6/14, when we saw the Postal Service, and going through the weekend of 8/10, we only have two weeks without a concert (well, three for Marisa, not doing the Eleanor show with me), both because we're out of town (no one was playing in Rhode Island when we were there a few weeks ago. I haven't checked the Thousand Islands on Pollstar but my guess is that no one is playing there either). Next up: Bob Dylan, My Morning Jacket, and Wilco in Connecticut, or as Marisa has been calling it, the Gathering of the Vibes.
This decade-later concert, in the very same Prospect Park bandshell (though for a full twelve additional American dollars), was in some ways a culmination of past B&S concert experiences. For one, they are not particularly promoting a new record; they have a B-sides collection out next month, but they don't seem to be playing any songs from it, so this between-album tour (relatively rare for a UK band touring the US) has been very much a career-retrospective greatest hits type of deal. This concert also featured the unfulfilled threat of a thunderstorm, like the one on my birthday in 2010; heat, like the one on the Fourth of July in 2006; and a famous-ish opening act, like their tour with the New Pornographers, earlier in 2006. Marisa and I were old hands, finally, while Other Sara B was the newbie. A bunch of other One Story/writer folk were further out on the lawn, too, and I was surprised how few of them had seen Belle and Sebastian before. I really was lucky back in 2003, empty pockets, stuffed nose, and all.
Because B&S aren't releasing new material at the same clip they were in the nineties and early aughts, and because they don't tour here all that often, and because their most beloved album is at this point close enough to its twentieth anniversary (!), it's easy to take them for granted. I didn't even prep much for this concert, just throwing my rarely listened-to copy of their BBC Sessions record onto my iPod, feeling like, OK, I'm pretty much all set for this concert already. And in terms of familiarity, I certainly was. But not having listened to their proper albums in a little while, I forgot just how crazy solid the Belle and Sebastian catalog is. Seven full-length records, most of which are very good or better; three or four albums' worth of singles and B-sides, many of which are as good as anything on their proper LPs; and a live presence that apparently used to be a bit shambolic and amateurish but has always been polished, upbeat, and fun as all hell when I've seen them. It's funny that the sad-bastard image still looms over them, because Stuart Murdoch has never seemed remotely sad when I've seen him perform; he dances more than almost any frontman I can remember.
So, this is not a very unpredictable or likely controversial post: yay, Belle and Sebastian! But really, their setlist was impeccably chosen from all eras of the band, covering all of the records except Fold Your Hands Child, as well as crucial-to-me non-album tracks like "Legal Man" and "Your Cover's Blown." They played a fantastic number of my Top 10 B&S songs ever, and that they could play a set this full of great songs and still not get to "This is Just a Modern Rock Song," "If You're Feeling Sinister," "Jonathan David," "Write about Love," "Stay Loose," or several others, well, wow.
I'm not 100% on the order here but I think I have all of the songs:
Judy is a Dick Slap
I'm a Cuckoo
Another Sunny Day
Stars of Track and Field
I Want the World to Stop
To Be Myself Completely
Lord Anthony
Funny Little Frog
I Don't Love Anyone
Piazza, New York Catcher
Simple Things
Your Cover's Blown
I Didn't See It Coming
The Boy with the Arab Strap
Legal Man
Judy and the Dream of Horses
---
Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying
Le Pastie De la Bourgeoisie
I guess I forgot to mention that Marisa and I are in the midst of a summer-concert marathon. Starting the weekend of 6/14, when we saw the Postal Service, and going through the weekend of 8/10, we only have two weeks without a concert (well, three for Marisa, not doing the Eleanor show with me), both because we're out of town (no one was playing in Rhode Island when we were there a few weeks ago. I haven't checked the Thousand Islands on Pollstar but my guess is that no one is playing there either). Next up: Bob Dylan, My Morning Jacket, and Wilco in Connecticut, or as Marisa has been calling it, the Gathering of the Vibes.