Andrew Bird show

[garran]

Having now been twice to shows at the Media Club, I feel like I'm in a position to say that I do not like the venue. Tonight it was stiflingly hot and there wasn't really anywhere to sit and one couldn't see the stage for the crowd, and the place I eventually found that rectified the latter two problems was pretty uncomfortable. For some peculiar and heretofore unexamined reason, when I imagined this show in the time leading up to it, I always pictured it taking place at the Cultch; as a setting, that may have really felt a bit too domesticated for a concert like this one, but I would have been a lot more comfortable.

The performance itself was good. He varied his singing from the recorded versions a lot more than I'm used to, altering the whole rhythm of song-segments or rephrasing lyrics in apparently improvised ways. This was interesting but difficult to sing along to.

There seemed to be a really disproportionate number of rowdy drunk people on the buses tonight. They certainly weren't all at the concert; I wonder if something else was going on?

Comments

[beccadesse.livejournal.com]

Maybe he forgot how he recorded the songs you mentioned. I'm in a band, and there's this one song where the melody sometimes differs from time to time, but that's just because I haven't discovered the most catch way to sing it yet, so that's why it happens with me, anyway.

[garran.livejournal.com]

What do you play in your band?

His album is careful and polished enough, and he's been performing these songs for long enough since releasing it, that I suspect that's not the case; also, the variations were really pretty dramatic in places, and pretty much scattered all through, much beyond the norm in the concerts I've seen. The impression I got was definitely that he was playing around with them to keep the performance interesting, the same way that some people will do a certain guitar solo a little different each time.

There are some things that I totally forgot to mention when I wrote this entry, so I'm just going to put at the bottom of this comment that I hadn't really believed that his whistling sound came from human lips until I saw him perform it, and that actually at least half of his nervous tic motions of the head were to the right. Okay, thanks.


-Andy H.

[beccadesse.livejournal.com]

At shows, I play the Rhodes (old-school electric piano (you probably already knew that)), and that's just because there are no pianos at any venues, and I sing. I get what you mean about keeping it interesting, like, I have a Jason Mraz live album and he changes stuff around for seemingly that same purpose. That's funny about making weird tic motions, but then again, I like to drum on my lap when we perform, and I don't play drums/know the first thing about anything like that, so it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to do it.

[garran.livejournal.com]

I should explain that Mr. Bird has a song called, "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left". The song is awesome.


-Andy

[masamage.livejournal.com]

Maybe he was doing it to your left.