Bright Eyes

Another concert. Probably the last for a while - for me, at least. I think I'll let Rob do the honors of taking his firstborn to her second concert next weekend (Taylor Swift. Needless to say, I'm not heartbroken about not going, though seeing They Might be Giants, the gig we took her to see two Novembers ago in DC, would always be a welcome outing); I'm starting to feel a little old to be standing in the middle of a pit of teenagers and early twenty-somethings who don't know how to behave themselves. Plus, the standing in one place for three and a half hours is killer on the legs and feet, the decibel of noise emitted from the speakers leaves my eardrums ringing for hours afterward. But man, if it isn't great seeing live music, watching folks whose songs I've loved for years doing what they do so well just yards away! This was easily one of the best shows I've seen in a good long while, and the only one that I've ever been able to compare to an R.E.M. show (an event that always leaves me deliriously happy). It certainly wasn't quite to that level, but I was impressed (as was the gentleman behind us who kept on raving about how bowled over he was by the performance, how it "wasn't at all what he was expecting"). One thing I will say about Conor Oberst, the brains behind Bright Eyes, is that the kid could really benefit from logging a few hours in the sunshine; he resembles a nocturnal basement dweller with his lank, dark hair, hollow, sunken eyes and ghastly pallor - not a becoming look, but he sure can write some good lyrics. Besides going a little overboard with an audience member for calling out, "Freebird!" (he went on a venomously sarcastic chiding spree that would've been witty if he'd dropped it at praising his perseverance and being a "true traditionalist", but he veered into that tiring tangent of bringing up George W. Bush. Nearly three years later...), he seemed like a pretty decent dude and even went so far as to honor the request for "Landlocked Blues" that the kids beside us screamed out at the top of their lungs no fewer than fifty times. If it were me I would not have delivered just on principle; they were annoying the living daylights out of most of us. In their defense, it is a good song, so I wasn't all that disappointed when he brought it out during the encore. Here it is, along with a handful of others.