Open your mouth, let the shit come
out
 We
saw the Magnetic
Fields on Friday at Town Hall. This kind of place is way
bigger than I like to see live music, but in the case of this
particular band, I can make the exception. Not only that but
we literally had front-row seats, thanks to a friend who had
thoughtfully bought up extra tickets when they were first made
available. Even though he was quick on the draw, I'm still sort
of surprised we got such good tickets, since I always assume
the best seats are bought up immediately by membership groups
or ticket brokers or scalpers or somebody else who wants to
get over on the concert-going public. But maybe I overestimate
the drawing power of Stephin Merritt and his pals.
 Merritt
has been having some kind of ear malady, so Claudia asked
the audience not to applaud too loudly. Rather, she suggested
we snap our fingers beatnik-style, and hiss (but not in the
malevolent way, you know). The result was similar to one of
those rain stick things that are fun for like a minute and
then are useless. So they did a lot of stuff off their new
album i which I regret to admit I still do not own. They played
a bunch of stuff I recognized, free from the constraints of
the last tour in which they had to play a given 60 Love Songs
CD in order. I never realized it, but "Papa
Was a Rodeo" seems to be universally adored. Everybody
went nuts when they started into it. Well, not really. But
the hissing was exceptionally intense for a moment.
The opening act was Andrew
Bird, who I didn't know at all. But he played a violin
into a delay pedal, then played over the resulting loop with
either the violin, guitar or glockenspiel. This sort of limited
the structure of his songs a bit, but it was pretty cool what
he was able to do. At times he played the violin like a guitar,
or ran an octave pedal through it to suddenly give it a cello's
depth. And his lyrics were pretty smart too. It made me really
wanna get a delay pedal and start up the one-man band.
Sadly, Lemony Snicket was not performing.
Saturday was another drunken evening at Lit
with The
Means and The
Giraffes. Somebody must have fallen down Lit's narrow
staircase recently because some poor guy had to stand at the
top all night long warning people about the first step. How
do you warn somebody about a step? "Watch out! First
step!"
Jason of the Means was in rare form; at some point he grabbed
some unassuming older guy off the street and forced him to
answer a bunch of philosophical questions. It's a sign of
a real New Yorker when such a middle-of-the-road kind of guy
isn't even phased by being interrogated by some drunk guy
from the midwest. Instead, he seemed pleased to offer his
opinion before telling us his life story and giving us his
card. He later was spotted down in Lit's basement, possibly
getting his freak on.
Oh and if anybody recalls, I used to maintain a music
blog in which I would post rough drafts of songs from
time to time. I was shocked to realize I hadn't updated the
thing in months, so I threw together a little song
and posted it last night. Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary
of my first posts (the instant cut-out Jimmy
Legs Takes His Medicine), and with this new addition
there are now 30 songs by Jimmy Legs, as well as some old
Motico recordings, and one cover song. The sad thing is it
took me a year to double the number from that first batch.
I'm hoping that when I start employing a delay pedal, I'll
exponentially increase my recording frequency.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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You
ever have that feeling, when you know that the slightest provocation
is gonna get you in really hot water fast ... but you still
do it anyway?
Does
anybody out there ever pick up a paper copy of the 
