What's the one saving grace to leaving Portland at 7 am after a late night?
At 7 am, there's no line at Voodoo Doughnut - on that note, why does Sydney not have a 24 vegan doughnut shop? Oh that's right, because it sucks. Ha!
That would be two Old Dirty Bastards, a Dirt Doughnut and a Lemon Crueller. Don't judge, it was a long drive! Incidentally, there was a tour bus that looked rather like the Bright Eyes bus parked outside. If they can have breakfast doughnuts on tour, so can we!
After a bunch of hours in the car, look where we found ourselves!
In order to shorten the following day's drive so Paul could make it back in time for class in the afternoon, we stayed in Crescent City, which is about 90 minutes north of Arcata. After a quick nap at our hotel, it was back into the car for the drive to the show, along the coast and through some staggeringly beautiful redwood forest.
We met some fellow lookout point picture-takers, who kindly captured this touching snap of us freezing our butts off on a cliff next to the ocean
There is some weird stuff by the side of the highway
And now to more Conor-swooning! The show was at the Arcata Community Centre, which is basically a tiny gym in the middle of a town of 15,000 people. The show wasn't sold out, and when we arrived at the venue about 40 minutes before doors opened, there were six other over-keen losers hanging out the front and that was it. Pretty different to the epic, multi-block queue the night before! One thing I will tell you for free - if you want to have an amazing, intimate experience seeing your favourite band, try to arrange for it to be in a glorified high school gym in the middle of nowhere!
Like all good fans who take themselves too seriously, we discussed our second night strategy after the Portland show - on the one hand, it had been great to be at the front, but it is always a bit tiring and stressful to line up for hours and then hold onto your spot on the barrier for even more hours before the show actually starts. We decided to take it a bit easier it Arcata, no queuing, and just see where we ended up, and we were rewarded for our laziness by grabbing a spot even closer to the band than we'd been the previous night. Bless small towns and their lack of interest in popular music!
Waiting waiting waiting
Of course, they did not disappoint. Considering their enormous back catalogue, I was prepared to hear the same set list again - it seems like a bit of a tall order to rehearse that many songs with a touring band! On that count though, they completely exceeded my expectations. The set was, I would guess, at least half songs they didn't play the previous night, and the ones that they did play again I was just glad to hear a second time (Poison Oak!).
On the way to the show, we dared to dream about old, obscure songs we really wanted to hear and we both agreed that Going for the Gold was number one on that list, but we agreed it was SO not going to happen. You can imagine then, that we both nearly keeled over and died when Conor started playing it. I can't believe we got to see that live!! I DIE OF HAPPY! Even better, Paul recorded it, so we can relive it over and over:
Unfortunately the songs with the full band were just too much for my poor camera's tiny microphone, so they didn't come out too well. Paul did get an even better video of First Day of My Life though, which was another sweet treat from Sunday night's set:
What a great show! Allow me to get a little soppy for a second when I say that Bright Eyes have really shaped and followed the course of my adult life in the way no other band has. There are so few bands from my late adolescence that haven't fallen by the wayside or been relegated to the late-night nostalgia rotation (and this is speaking as a latecomer to Bright Eyes - I think they might've already been four albums in by the time I got into them). This must be because their music continues to grow and change, and unbelievably, after nine albums (NINE! I've never counted before), they continue to engage my ears and my brain more and more.
As a performer, Conor has really changed too - there was no sign of the awkward, angry-looking weirdo I saw when they toured Australia back in 2005 (although that was awesome in its own way, don't get me wrong!). The band seem to have a great time on stage, and Conor is positively chatty these days compared to his old on-stage self. With all the dancing, bantering and getting down into the crowd (we may have brushed hands - I'm blushing just thinking of it!), their whole show is a bit of an epic lovefest! I'm so grateful to have heard them play twice this weekend - my ears are still ringing and still I can't believe that really happened. Whichever cosmic forces lined that up for me, I salute you!
No comments:
Post a Comment