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I had completely forgotten about my post-Spoon show events until my friend Courtney sent me these photographs today.  Courtney came in from Minnesota to party it up with Curls and I.  The big night was supposed to Saturday when the rest of Minnesota people made their way into town but I chose Friday (Friday is my night lately).

I split from CJ and the Fam post-Spoon to see these cats and we had a blast.  Supposedly I called my friend Kari and left a 10 minute message about how she had to carry me up my stairs (she lives in Minnesota).

Courtney and I are so excited to get our photo taken with Hasselhoff – I should send this to the RedEye as a celebrity spotting.

Tina actually managed to meet us – I think it’s because we were in her neighborhood.

I’m not sexist – I will arm wrestle anyone – and win… I think.

My new favorite line after seeing a show at Schuba’s is: “They need a producer”. My brother used it originally when we saw Elvis Perkins play a while back and I find it’s true for most of the acts that come through Schuba’s. Figurines and Dappled Cities were no exception to this statement.

Dappled Cities were (surprisingly) the more impressive of the two bands. They mentioned that the night before they played 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis and got booed to shit. I told one of the band members afterwards not to concern themselves with Minneapolis – it’s a shit-hole town anyway. The set hit a lull in the middle but they closed it with their two strongest songs, ‘Fire Fire Fire’ and ‘Holy Chord’.  [Dappled Cities has four songs for free download at Daytrotter.com]

Dappled Cities

Figurines were less impressive but still enjoyable. Christian Hjelm has a really cool voice and it held up live but the material from the new album is less than stellar and they seem to think they’re talented enough to play funk (which they’re not) and that lame guitar solos are what we came to see (which I didn’t). No ‘Race You’ but they did play ‘The Wonder’, ‘Ambush’, and ‘Silver Ponds’.

Figurines

I can’t believe I forgot to post this yesterday under the Ween show. I stumbled into the bathroom at the Aragon and was like, “does that guy have his shirt off?” only to realize that it was Flood who had come to show with me. This was only about an hour into the show, too. I remember Flood saying something to the extent of, “am I the only person at a Ween show with their shirt off?”. Apparently so.

This show was one big party… I don’t remember a great deal but here are the photos.

Ween on stage. I distinctly remember the following songs: Spinal Meningitis, Mr. Richard Smoker, Zoloft, Bananas and Blow, Piss Up a Rope, Help My Pony, Freedom of ‘76 – but they played for almost 3 hours so to recall them all would be a tall order.

I’d never been to the Aragon Ballroom before. A really unique place – certainly not the kind of venue someone would build today and I like it all the more for it. It was hot as shit in the place so by this point I had made my way upstairs.

My lost Irish bother… This man is gonna own a movie studio someday and I’ll be the first to hit him up for a job.

CJ, Diddy and Dan: Irish brothers I never had the fortune to lose in the first place. They’ve grown weary of my pictures but someday when they have children as ugly as they are they’ll be glad they can compare photos.

I really need to stop bringing CJ to shows with me. This show was all fine and good for the Andrew Bird portion of the performance. He appeared solo which was really cool to see. I’d seen him perform with two fellow bandmates twice before at a couple of different venues, but to see him at the Chicago Theatre – a more intimate venue than the previous two – was a real treat. Even CJ was impressed.

Andrew Bird played a slew of great stuff including a number of songs off the new album Armchair Apocrypha. He employed his stage technique of looping instruments for the layers of each song and it was cool to see him do so solo because it afforded a better opportunity to gather exactly how he approaches the process.

Unfortunately, CJ was not as keen on Bright Eyes, and by the time this portion of show began he had consumed a handful of vodka cokes. I enjoyed most of the Bright Eyes material although he did carry on with a number meandering stories about his day-to-day existence that even I found a bit tiresome.

One of these stories involved how he (Conor Oberst) “woke up today and felt really cold for some reason” and so he had layered up with a sweater and coat for his performance. CJ had had enough and decided to yell out: “It’s called fucking fall”. Oh shit, here we go. Conor continued his story, saying how he didn’t want anyone to make fun of the shirt he was wearing underneath his sweater since he’d had it for years and it was pretty ragged. CJ yells: “Write about it on your blog”. At this point, laughing due to a combination of humor and embarrassment, I look for the exit. People are looking over and giving us the evil eye. The story continues and CJ decides to start making really loud snoring noises. This really incites a girl in front of us who turns around and to inform us that, “That’s a good story“.

At this point I get up from my seat and head to the back in an attempt to distance myself from CJ. I remember a few numbers with Conor on keys that were okay but by that point I myself was starting to get tired of the show. We split before the encore.

Bright Eyes

I really don’t think I can recall a month-span with the release of so many new albums from such great musicians. It’s been hard to get through all of them and to be honest I’d still like to give some of them a longer listen. Here’s just a few:

Radiohead: In Rainbows – Fantastic from start to finish. A classic Radiohead combination of guitars, synth sounds and Thom Yorke’s voice. I paid $16 for it and it was worth every penny. I especially love ‘Nude’, ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’ but to honest the whole thing is great.

Band of Horses: Cease to Begin – Another GREAT album. Ben Bridwell didn’t steer to far from his successful formula utilized on Everything All the Time. I really dig ‘Is There a Ghost’, ‘No One’s Gonna Love You’, ‘The General Specific’, and ‘Marry Song’.

Iron and Wine: The Shepherd’s Dog – This one is all about ‘Innocent Bones’ for me. Such a fantastic song. That and ‘Boy With a Coin’ as well.

Devendra Banhart: Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon – I recently saw Devendra live and I was all about ‘Samba Vexillographica’. I don’t think I’d be as high on this album as I am if I hadn’t had the opportunity to see the stuff live – a lot of the material was so great in concert – such as ‘Freely’ and ‘Seahorse’ that the album took a few listens to dig.

I finally got the chance to see a Spoon show from start to finish. I saw the first half of their Lollapalooza set this summer but had to split to catch Interpol. Actually, I thought the portion of the Lollapalooza performance I did get to see was better than the Riv set Friday. For one, the sound was better at Lollapalooza and secondly I thought their performance was a bit sloppier this time around. That being said, I really enjoyed the show and will certainly make an effort to see them again.

Britt kicked things off with the great opener “Utilitarian” from the Series of Sneaks album. I was surprised how few songs they played from the new album – at least until the later half of the show. One thing I must credit Spoon with is that they don’t really have any bad songs. You know, the one a band starts to play and you’re like “ah fuck”. Some additional older numbers they busted out early were “Jonathon Fisk”, “Chicago at Night”, “The Fitted Shirt”, “I Summon You”, “The Beast and the Dragon Adored”, and “I Turn My Camera On”. It seemed they played as much from Gimme Fiction as they did from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

Towards the later half of the show we started to hear more from the latest album including “Rhthm & Soul”, “Don’t Make Me a Target”, “The Underdog”, “Don’t You Evah”, and my fav “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”. Spoon even had a three-piece horn section to help with the new material – something they lacked at Lollapalooza.

They mentioned before the show that Spoon’s playing New Years Eve at the Metro. I don’t know if tickets are still available but it would be a blast.

Afterward we met back up at the Uptown Lounge, poured a few drinks on the floor and started a dance party. I got the rare opportunity to kick it with Colin – one of my favorite people to see a show with.

Jimmy is so sick of getting his photo taken with me.