January 31st, 2005
Easy on the ’Eyes
There’s this album I really want to listen to right now, but I can’t. Arcade Fire’s Funeral. Man is it good. I can’t understand a word the guy is singing, and I still love it. It’s gotten the “Album of the Year” award from just about every pretentious, elitist indy publication and website out there, so I really don’t want to like it. But I can’t help it. It truly is the album of the year… I hate it when the hipsters are right.
Now that you know this, let me tell you all about last week. First I got the sickest I’ve been in years. Some kind of stomach bug. I won’t go into the sordid details. Let’s just day I set a new personal record for the number of times I’ve thrown up in a single day (6).
Then I went to sleep.
I woke up two days later, bleary-eyed and disoriented, and stumbled into work. While at the computer, I checked my email. Hmm, interesting…. Evidently Smitty had spent the first part of the week trying to get a “posse” together to go to the Arcade Fire show in “Asheville.” It was the only Arcade Fire show in North Carolina that hadn’t sold out. Tickets for the Chapel Hill show had disappeared from the box office faster than anything I ate had disappeared from my stomach…. In other words, a lot of people never even had a chance to get one.
Then there was also a follow-up email from Smitty, saying the Asheville show was also sold out. I was staring at the screen blankly, trying to process this information, when Smitty showed up and told me he’d managed to get tickets to the Asheville show for himself, his girlfriend Nancy, and his friend Matt. Only now Matt couldn’t go, so he had an extra ticket. He asked me if I wanted it. I looked up from the computer, continuing to stare blankly. Fortunately he ignored me; determined that, yes, I did want this ticket; and told me where and when we were leaving.
So I went to Asheville to see The Arcade Fire play this past Thursday. Man was it good. Among the best shows I’ve ever seen.
Yesterday I shaved my beard into a handle-bar mustache. (I don’t know why I’m mentioning this, other than it’s the only other big event from last week. I think it’s a great new look. Steph says it makes me look like a sleazy redneck, but what does she know? She doesn’t even have a website.)
Anyway, you can see why I want to hear Arcade Fire’s Funeral now, right? But, every opportunity I have to listen to something I’m putting on Bright Eyes.
Why? Because Steph is dragging me, kicking and screaming, to a Bright Eyes show. There I will be surrounded by a mob of people who love Bright Eyes. People hysterical with joy because Bright Eyes is about to come onstage. People I consider certifiably insane at the moment. Then he will come out and everyone will go nuts and I’ll hardly be able to stand it. “How can all these people think he is so great?” But then he and his band will start to play, and it won’t be as bad as I thought. Slowly I’ll start to feel bad for thinking there was something wrong with all the people around me. Then I’ll start to feel bad because I don’t know any of the songs. Songs that are causing people to get very emotional and hold hands as they sing along. Magical songs that are bringing everyone together…except for me, because I don’t know them.
When it’s all over, I will walk out into the night, saying “That was a really good show.” And I’ll mean it.
It happened with Smashing Pumpkins at Cat’s Cradle in 2000. See also Belle & Sebastian, Carolina Theater, 2003.
What occurred after both of these shows was I asked Steph if I could borrow some CDs by those bands. And I heard songs that I had heard at the shows again. And I cultivated a fondness I never thought I’d have for both groups. It’s like I’m trying, retroactively, to be part of the group. To be really into those shows, like everyone else was.
So by listening to Bright Eyes, Bright Eyes, and more Bright Eyes, I figure I can expedite this whole ordeal. I’m determined to gain a working knowledge of his songs, and at least a partial tolerance for that warbly, atonal voice, before the show. Which, by the way, is tonight.
(Yep. Two shows in five days. I hope people who don’t know me or what I dork I am have found their way to this site and are reading this entry. Two shows in five days. I bet I sound pretty cool and “with it.” Funny, considering I don’t think I went to two shows all year in 2004. Well, unless the ballet counts…. Hmm…I also hope these new people don’t read things that are written in parentheses.)
Let’s all say our farewells to the part of me that can’t stand Bright Eyes. Tomorrow I’ll be forever changed.
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