Wait, It's Not Seagull?
"There's a problem in my brain!"
I like being the person that people come to and say, "There's this thing going on in New York City. Can I visit you guys for it and will you do it with me?" That's how I wound up tagging along with Jesse and Derrick to see Ty Segall last night, despite not knowing his songs beyond what was on the Pitchfork/NME best-of-2012 lists.
Venue
Music Hall of Williamsburg. If you want to convince me to go to a random concert with you, saying it's at Music Hall is a good start. It was odd, though, because even though I've been there a million times before, the crowd for this show was definitely different. It was far grungier than the crowds I see at my usual shows. I think it was obvious that we were interloping.
Opening Act
Ex-Cults, which we missed entirely, and the K-Holes, which we half paid attention to from the downstairs bar. I regret nothing.
OPQ (Old-Person Quotient)
Extremely low! Sure, it was close to our house, but there was moshing and crowd-surfing and stage-diving and beer-throwing, which brought the OPQ to near-zero. This was not a show for old people.
Seats/Position in Crowd/Up-In-Itness
This turned out to be a little crazy, because our position in the crowd and the Up In Itness of everything did not go according to the normal models. After the K-Holes, we could've walked straight to the front of the crowd, but we chose to hang out in the back, being old people and all. But even though we were only five or so people from the back of the room, the amount of action going on around us was the same as if we were five or six people from the front. The pit just kind extended all the way into the back. It was the deepest pit I've ever seen at a show. Music Hall can sometimes be rowdier than other places, and this was a rambunctious crowd in general. We were Up In It without even trying.
Setlist
I have no idea. I hope that someone puts the setlist up on Setlist.fm soon. There's one for the night before at Webster Hall. Some of those songs look right.
High Point
I was getting our coats from the (extremely slow) coat check for this, but I really, really appreciated the all-cover encore, which kicked off with "Feel Like Makin' Love," a song I have an annoying soft spot for. When I met up with Jesse and Derrick again after getting the coats, they told me that Ty didn't sing the encore-random people from the crowd got up on stage and did. That seems awesome.
The other high point of the weekend was the cookies from the Levain Bakery. I got to see Jesse and Derrick on the cookie cam! Does driving to the Upper West Side to get $4 cookies make me a yuppie? Was I the only yuppie at the Ty Segall show?
Low Point
I wish I knew that this was going to be a throw-the-cup-into-the-crowd-when-you're-finished-with-the-beer kind of show. I'd already thrown my cup away when the show started, and there were some specific people I wish I could've thrown mine at.
Exuberance
So much exuberance. So tired.