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

Saw the sold-out Arcade Fire show on Friday at the Chicago Theatre. It was my second time seeing them, the first being at the Hollywood Bowl when they opened for David Byrne in the summer of 2005. It would be difficult to top that show seeing as David Byrne is one of my fav’s and he brought Arcade Fire out on stage with him to do “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”, but I will say the Chicago show was pretty fantastic.

I managed to get a box for the show which was nice, I was hoping for floor seats when I originally tried to get tickets but to no avail. While the view and access was great, I have to admit, sitting in a box sets you a slight bit apart from the performance and makes it all seem a bit less momentous. I’ll always find something to bitch about…

The material covered by the band came almost entirely from their two extraordinary full-length albums Funeral [2004] and Neon Bible [2007]. They opened the show by walking in from the back of the theater right down the main aisle and onto the stage. Win kicked things off with ‘Black Mirror’ but seemed displeased with the bass he was playing and threw to the ground before he finished the song. With a total of 10 band members on stage – most changing instruments between songs, I have to imagine being a roadie for Arcade Fire would have to be a terrible job.

After ‘Black Mirror’ they played almost everything from both albums including: ‘(Antichrist Television Blues)’, ‘Keep the Car Running’, ‘Intervention’, ‘No Cars Go’, ‘Haiti’ and my favorite part of the show – ‘Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’ into ‘Rebellion (Lies)’. They played two encores, the second one consisted of solely ‘In the Backseat’ which featured Régine Chassagne on lead vocals and is (in my humble opinion) one of their weakest numbers, which made it bit of an odd choice to end the show with but all in all I loved the performance. My only regret is that I never got the opportunity to see these guys perform at a small venue, and something tells me that opportunity won’t come again.

A quick post… it’s nearly midnight and I gotta start ‘Twin Peaks – Season II’. I flew solo to see David Sedaris at the Chicago Theatre on Sunday. Another venue I hadn’t been to before and by far the most impressive to date (in Chicago at least). It was Easter so Sedaris read a classic story of his from ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ about he and his classmates trying to explain the premise of Easter to a Moroccan woman using their substandard French skills. If you haven’t read the book I highly recommend it – along with ‘Naked’.

Another great story he read was a recent one from The New Yorker about going to a trailer park to score pot with his brother Paul while home for Christmas. The vulgarities of the trailer park denizens might be a bit too harsh for the blog but if you can find the article it’s a funny one.

I was up in the balcony so the only relatively worthwhile photos I got were of the amazing theatre itself.