Last night (19 oct 2013), my brother and I went to see Neko Case at the Newport Music Hall. Despite it being game day, we managed to get there with plenty of time to spare and snag front row, leaning-on-the-security-barrier spots. Observations:
Neko is really scary (in a friendly, cool, way, but still scary). I took this photo at the very beginning of the show, just seconds before she called everyone out for having their phones out. Phew.
She had a super-cool roadie (stage manager?) with her who’d tune all her instruments during the show and have them ready at the precise moment. He was wearing a three-piece suit and looked like an interesting guy.
Speaking of guitars: those funky tenor guitars are so cool to see in real life. They are beautiful.
Kelly Hogan is a national treasure and I want her to sing on all musical things I produce. The whole band was great, really; I was really glad to see Eric Bachmann too! And the dude playing bass was rock’n’rolling all the time.
It was a fun crowd! I spotted lots of interesting people I didn’t expect to see. I love you, Columbus. Thanks for being here, Neko.
I had the chance to see They Might Be Giants play at the Newport Music Hall this past saturday (2 mar 2013)! I took my sister along with me. The opening band, Vandaveer, was a bad fit for the audience. The frontman for the band was annoying (he was “trying way too hard”, as my brother would say) and the music was really unappealing. On top of that, all the usual Newport unpleasantness abounded—lame acoustics, dirty, sticky surfaces, generally terrible logistics.
But TMBG was freaking wonderful! They played a lot of songs from their new album Nanobots (“You’re On Fire”, “Call You Mom”, “Circular Karate Chop”, “Insect Hospital”, and “Nanobots”) and they all sounded very tight! We did “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” and a new thing where the Johns would take turns shining a high-powered flashlight in the face of a random audience member and would then make up a nickname for him. And of course there were lots of great tunes. I particularly enjoyed hearing “Whistling in the Dark” with full band + accordion performed literally in the dark.
The band is so vibrant and technically proficient and imaginative and fun. It’s a really heart-warming, satisfying experience to see them perform. My only complaint is an enduring, long-term one: more accordion, please.
Last night Ian and I went to see St. Vincent at the Newport. I hadn’t bought tickets ahead of time, which is really unusual, and I was a little worried that we’d have trouble managing. But everything went very smoothly: Ian drove and parked in an extremely convenient spot; we walked right up to the front of the Newport and bought tickets (and, free from Ticketmaster, undoubtedly saved a bunch of money); we stood in line on High Street and had pleasant conversation and watched the local color.
I really don’t like the Newport but for some reason I also have a sort of fondness for it. Nights like last night only serve to reinforce those feelings. It was gross and uncomfortably warm in there, and the crowd was made up of a bunch of annoying young people and people who looked like they were there for weird reasons. (So different from the Lambchop crowd, oh my!) Ian and I were about two rows back right in the middle of the stage. The Newport had put barriers up so the crowd was kept about three feet away from the edge of the stage; because of these things, the stage felt pretty far away! But overall it was a good spot. More on that later.
Shearwater was the opener. I really want to like Shearwater, because I really like Okkervil River so it seems like I should like Shearwater too. But the truth is they kinda get on my nerves. As openers go, they were quite good, but they weren’t my cup of tea. Too loud and too dramatic.
They took a long time setting up the stage for St. Vincent. By the time they were done, the stage was almost completely bare except for the drum kit (which was extremely giant and awesome), two synths, and a rack of four of Annie’s guitars. Oh, and a theremin in the front of the stage. That was exciting to see. Overall, the stage was atypically clear of stuff and it was very pleasant to look at. The most striking thing about the stage layout and organization was the lighting—I’ve never seen a show with such well-planned lighting. There were four or five big LED spotlights on the back curtain of the stage pointing out into the audience, which sometimes functioned as insane strobe lights. Sometimes just the center spotlight was turned on, and because it was pointing straight out into the audience, all we could see was Annie’s silhouette. There were also little spots at the front of the stage pointing up at Annie; whenever these were on, it made the stage feel very intimate and cozy. Using all these things in concert with the normal stage spotlights, the show had some really cool lighting effects. I am constantly amazed by the power that lighting can have over the emotional tenor of a performance.
The first song of the set was “Marrow”, which I thought was an unusual choice. From what I gather, the rest of the setlist was typical of this tour: there was a bunch of stuff from Actor and about half of Strange Mercy. During “Actor Out of Work” and “Surgeon” the strobes were on in full effect and I felt like I was going to puke or jump out of my body or something. During “Champagne Year”, the cozy fireplace-lights were turned on. Man, it was a cool show. Annie used the theremin during the instrumental break on “Northern Lights”, which was awesome.
And then there was the crowd-surfing, which I had completely forgotten to be expecting. The show was going on its merry way, and suddenly Annie has laid her guitar down and is swinging the mic around on its cord and she is climbing down the. The Newport’s security men kinda lifted her up over the little barrier, which she balanced on for a second before almost falling backwards and getting caught by the security men. Then she just dived into the crowd. All of this happened just exactly in front of where we were standing, which was super fun. She surfed all around on the crowd, but mostly stayed around near the front where we were. It was thoroughly terrifying and exhilarating. After all, Annie seems so petite and fragile. I’d like to think I helped keep her from falling once or twice—I suppose this is all the fun of crowd-surfing. Oh man, it was wild. And perfect. Nothing out of the ordinary for a St. Vincent show, but a very unique and special experience for me.
For the encore, the band played “Your Lips Are Red”—the only song from Marry Me in the whole show. It was a perfect ending to a spectacular show. Come back soon, Annie.
Last saturday, Dempsey and I went to see Mates of State at the Newport Music Hall, which is like a ten-minute drive from my house. There was an OSU football game that afternoon, though, for which I did not properly account. The traffic was terrible, of course! Even though we left with a half-hour to spare, the drive took much longer than I’d planned. We got forced onto the highway heading downtown and it was a giant pain to drive anywhere. Once we got to the Newport’s vicinity, we couldn’t find anywhere to park, either, because the parking garages’ entrances were all barricaded.
At this point, we’d already spent over an hour in the car and we both really had to pee. The traffic was so bad, we planned to just keep driving and go back home. We turned off High Street heading towards (just to get away from it all!) and ran into the parking lot for Indianola Presbyterian Church, which was mostly empty. I spoke to one person just leaving the lot. He very kindly gave me his parking pass, since it was still valid until midnight. Huzzah! Dempsey and I ran to the Newport, which was by now like 5 blocks away.
When we got to the Newport around 7:40pm, there were probably only 50 people there. It was really odd. More people trickled in over the next hour, but even so the crowd was definitely very small. I am sure the football game had something to do with this.
The opening band was called Other Lives. They were a five-piece band. There was one woman who looked interesting, but the other four were cliché, androgynous, hipster men. Their music was technically complex and instrumentally varied: everyone but the drummer played at least three instruments. They had guitars, glockenspiels, sleigh bells, cellos, violins, and a bunch of other things. The only problem with their music was that all the songs sounded pretty much the same. The Newport’s muddy sound system did not help things.
Dempsey and I were standing in the very front row on the left side of the room, so when Mates of State came on, we were so close to Kori’s keyboard that literally all we could see of her was her bottom half. But it was ok because we were so close and because we had a fantastic view of Jason.
The best part of the show was when they played a songs from Team Boo, which is, I think, the band’s greatest record. But the whole show was stellar. Honestly, when I first planned to go to this concert, it was more just because Mates had been one of my favorite bands when I was younger and because I’d always wanted to see them. But their newest album, Mountaintops, is a seriously great collection of songs and really rekindled my love for the band. The show made me love and respect them even more.
The setlist was a good mix of songs from the band’s four most recent albums. They played a lot of songs from The Re-Arranger: lots more than I expected. But even those were great and enjoyable. It was just generally a fantastic time. Mates played for about 90 minutes but the show seemed really short. This is probably because I was having such a fantastic time. I hope they come back because I would love to see them again.
