I go to shows. That's what I do. It's a full time job, people. I only work to support my music habit. Normally I'll hit two shows a week. On a particularly noteworthy week I'll hit five or six. So 2003 had a lot of truly amazing experiences. I whittled it down to my Top 10. A few of them were more than just the best of 2003 -- they were the best so far.
While compiling this, I realized I do an awful lot of crying. I dont' think it's a bad thing; it's balanced out by the amount of smiling I do. I emote. That's what I do. It's a full time job, people.
10. Interpol @ Avalon, Boston MA - 03.06.2003 {Review}:Say Hello to the Angels
9. Postal Service @ the Middle East, Cambridge MA - 04.19.2003
The Postal Service show was originally booked for the Middle East upstairs. I saw it in tiny print during my weekly show-seeking, and couldn't believe my eyes. My first reaction was to wonder how the hell they were going to do that shit live. I bought a bunch of tickets, and it sold out in three days. So the Middle East moved the show to the downstairs, which accomodates an additional 550 people, and they managed to keep tickets available for another few days before that show -- and the second night they booked -- sold out. I didn't even think anybody knew who this band was. And when they came out on stage, they were amazed to see us all there. They didn't know who they were, either.
I had no idea what to expect. But there's little Jimmy with a laptop, and Jenny Lewis on vocals, bass, guitar, and keys, setting wind-up toys at the mic and looping it. My favorite part of the show was Ben Gibbard leaping off the mic, throwing down his guitar, putting on headphones and jumping behind the drum kit during each song to play over Jimmy Tamborello's synth beats. God that kid can drum. Most heart-breaking moment: Jenny and Ben singing their duet, playing to each other, leaning forehead to forehead.
The whole show was a multimedia extravaganza. There were colored lights and disco. There was a scrim and a projector showing the most random images and supercheese Powerpoint-esque song lyrics behind the band. An entire song was played during the video of a cup of coffee in the microwave. This show was hysterical fun. Dance, smile. Smile, dance. Lather, rinse, repeat.
They wanted to play longer, but they only have 12 songs. So at the end, they announced that they were going to do a cover. I think everyone expected it to be a Death Cab cover, but when Ben started singing, it clearly was not. It took me a whole verse to place the song. I knew it. Everyone knew it. But when something is that out of context... the projection at this point became a fifty-something couple walking on the beach and making out or some such nonsense, and then the verse comes: "Take a look at me now, cause there's just an empty space / And you coming back to me is against all odds and that's what I've got to face." A Phil Collins cover? Postal Service? What are you kids smoking?
8. Blonde Redhead @ the Paradise, Boston MA - 02.26.2003 {Review}: I Get Rocks Off
7. Built to Spill @ the Paradise, Boston MA - 09.09.2003 {Review}: Distopian Dreamgirl
6. Jump, Little Children @ the Paradise, Boston MA - 11.13.2003 {Review}: Make a Habit out of Me
5. The Frames @ the Paradise, Boston MA - 10.09.2003 {Review}: From Absorbing Everything
4. It's a tie! Jon Rodgers @ The Space, Hamden CT - 06.13.2003 / Andrew Bird @ Middle East, Cambridge, MA - 06.06.2003 {Review}:Wordless
3. The Damnwells & Mr. North @ the Bowery Ballroom, NYC - 08.24.2003
The Damnwells kick ass and I've seen them a thousand times. They never disappoint. But this particular show they played with Mr. North, who I'd never heard. I went to the show in NYC with my friend Michael who lives there, and the Damnwells were opening. After they play, he asks me if I want to stick around for the next band. I didn't really feel like it, but I figured I'd give Mr. North a song or two and see what happened.What happened was that they absolutely blew my mind to pieces.
I can't really tell you why. Sometimes I go to a show and my head and heart are just wide open and waiting for inspiration. This was such a passionate show, and the audience was so into this band, which created this frenetic energy around us. I just stood there, and after the first song, I came out of the trance and was like, "Oh shit -- I'm a body." I had gone off someplace beautiful. Michael looked over at me to see if I wanted to leave and my mouth was hanging open. I couldn't even speak.
I remembered walking through the New York night afterwards feeling like I was in a dream. And we took a cab up to the West Side and I had my head against the half-open window, watching the city scream by, feeling changed and new. I went back to the apartment and wrote about the show, but my hands didn't move fast enough.
Driving that night in the back of a speeding cab, window open to the fresh night, Manhattan whipping by, I sank fully into that moment, hands open, and felt it. At the show, in the cold club, watching him sway on the mic stand, dancing, the scales, unexpected goldthroated voice, I was thinking: Free yourself. Keep moving forward. New York owns me tonight. I belong to it.
2. Daniel Barrett @ Namaste Cafe, Newton MA - 06.12.2003
I've seen Daniel Barrett and Mike Meadows play in their band porterdavis more times than I could count. Literally. When they played the subway in the morning, I would always stay for at least two songs, sometimes five, depending on how late for work I was willing to be. I saw them play every week at their Toad residency, their P.J.Ryan's residency, at the Lizard Lounge, the Kendall, and Quincy Market. I never got tired of the songs. I can tell what song they're going to do by the percussion instruments Mike chooses from his massive spread, where Daniel puts the capo or what tuning he uses -- before they even start playing. But this show was different. It was the first and only time, in the two years that I've beein going to see Daniel perform, that I ever saw him play by himself.
It was a little acoustic show in a yoga studio in Newton. He started right off telling us he wasn't going to talk -- he was just going to play. That amazed me in itself because he is such a performer on stage. He warms the crowd, gets people involved, often using his self-deprecating humor to temper the passion of the songs, or just to make conversation. He tells funny stories about their adventures and anecdotes about the songs. All that was gone that night. He stopped being a performer and just became a musician.
He had his mandolin, his ukelele -- he smilingly played them both, turning his bluesy foot stampers into charming sweetness. And his voice sounded so rich and beautiful in that room -- standing on its own undiluted. I remember thinking that we were getting to hear the songs as they were when he wrote them -- when he was sitting there in his house with just an acoustic guitar, before they became band songs and were recorded and produced on CD. When they were just his, in their naked newborn form.
He sang 15 or more songs but it wasn't enough -- even with the Townes Van Zandt cover. When he did "Dark End of the Street" I lost it. Fully just crying in the front row. He disappeared into the song and when he came back, for one second, he looked surprised to see us all sitting there.
I recorded the show on minidisc, and I went home and listened to it for three days, feeling heartsick. It was amazing. "My Jolene" is impossibly moving, and it's been my shower song for a few weeks now.
Not only was this a straight-up brilliant performance, but it hit me so hard because it was also an incredible experience for me to see someone I respected as an artist, a musician whose songs I know note for note, pull something totally out of the ordinary.
1. Andrew Bird & Jon Rodgers (together!) @ the The Space, Hamden CT - 09.21.2003 {Review}: Give Me Some Space
2004 has a lot to live up to.
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