voices carry

It was a good weekend for live music, though frankly, results are mixed on whether it was a good weekend for anything else, as I’ve only accomplished about 4.7 percent of what I set out to do. But as for live music, I was pretty successful.

First up was Aimee Mann on Friday night. She had adorable opening act called The Submarines. The girl in the Submarines managed to smile the entire time she was singing, which was a good counterbalance to Aimee Mann who smiled few times while she was singing. Right before Aimee Mann started, a guy wedged himself between me and this other girl, holding up his camera by way of excuse. This has happened to me before, and usually it means that the guy is press or works for the venue, and he’s going to just take a few pictures and be gone. If only that had happened in this instance.

First off, the camera guy started asking the people in front of me if they could see the set list (I was pretty close to the stage). This is one of my major concert pet peeves, because I do not want to know what is going to be played. If I wanted predictability, I would play the CD. But I figured it was just so he would know what song was first so he could label the pictures appropriately. Then everyone else around me started asking the guy at the stage what else was on the set list. I tried to focus on something else.

Focusing on something else was super easy, and the thing I focused on was trying not to throw up, because, you see, the man with the cameras smelled like ass. To be more specific, the camera guy smelled like he had slept in mothballs for 15 years, then awakened to take a swim in a pool full of sweat and urine. He had one scruffy little piece of Kleenex that he used to both wipe the sweat off his face and blow his nose. And then at one particularly horrifying moment he opened his mouth, inserted said scruffy piece of Kleenex, and wiped his teeth with it. He looked kind of like I imagine Billy Joel will look in 20 years.

Now, as I said, usually guys who claim to be using cameras for professional purposes disappear after just a song or two, but this guy stayed around for quite a while. I think I am pretty lucky I did not throw up during Aimee Mann. That would have been uncool. Also uncool was the guy behind me, who laughed like Woody Woodpecker. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself but he laughed like that a lot, at things that weren’t really funny. He laughed when Aimee Mann was talking about how frogs fly from the sky during the movie “Magnolia,” and then he loudly yelled, “That was so funny!” and did his woodpecker laugh again just in case we didn’t believe him. I wanted to turn around and say, “haven’t you noticed Aimee Mann doesn’t smile? That is an indication that we should be solemn and serious and too cool for school!” But I didn’t. If I opened my mouth I might have thrown up.

Anyways, one of the few times Aimee Mann did smile was when she brought a robot onstage to sing a song with her. That was fun, and the music was really good as well. The night improved when sweaty camera guy left.

I did not see sweaty camera guy the following night, when I returned to the same venue to see Teddy Thompson and Tift Merritt. Despite both those singers being fairly young, they attracted a very middle-aged audience, and for awhile it looked like I would be the youngest person there. I didn’t mind; I have known for awhile that I like things that old people like and as I people-watched, I grew increasingly confident about being middle-aged, when I might actually have some peers in my preferences. I tried to pick out which middle-aged woman might most accurately represent Future Molly. Was it:
a) the very short woman with the very tall husband? (probably not, as I would have to shrink a lot to have a husband that much taller than me)
b) the woman inappropriately dressed in a halter top and four-inch heels and hitting on a bald man?
c) the woman who was wearing a cute skirt but was hanging all over a guy who really seemed to be gay? Hanging all over him in a way that implied that she was married to a homosexual?

Okay, so I didn’t see Future Molly at all. But I did see Past Molly! By which I mean I saw a little girl, about 10 years old, who was at the concert with her dad. That’s how I grew up, going to concerts with my dad. We would always get there ridiculously early and talk about what songs we wanted to hear. I stood really close to this father-daughter duo so I could enjoy the moment, which I hope did not freak them out.

There was enough to distract them, though. Both Teddy and Tift put on a great show. Teddy Thompson is English, so his banter between songs was adorably cute, just by default of the accent. It would put me in a really good mood, which was then off-set by the terribly sad songs he sang. It was a roller coaster of emotion. When Tift Merritt came on I got a little too distracted by how high her heels were. When she walked around onstage it looked like those high heels would get caught in wires and she might fall. I tried to develop a plan for how I might help Tift Merritt if she did fall on stage but I couldn’t think of anything helpful. But Tift Merritt is definitely a singer that it pays to see live. That girl plays instruments with an intensity that you don’t pick up just by listening to the CDs. She also sang two songs on the edge of the stage with no microphone, which was one of the most beautiful concert moments I’ve seen in awhile.

Teddy Thompson and Tift Merritt did one duet together, and I thought about blogging a rumor that they were dating, because I think they would be a cute couple. Plus Teddy Thompson himself is evidence of what good can come out of a marriage between songwriters, though I guess that didn’t end enormously well for his parents. But I read on the internet that Tift Merritt is engaged to her drummer so I guess there’s no chance of this rumor coming true. So there is no rumor. Oh well.