the festival took place in various venues throughout portland and featured many prominent artists. my main ambition, however, was to see stephen malkmus, the silver jews, and britt daniel. sm and the joos were on friday night. britt was on saturday. i expected nothing short of pure awesomeness and i was not disappointed.
sm/joos
this show was highlighted in the portland mercury as a show to attend. they lauded david berman as the bob dylan of our generation (excuse any typose: i have a little child on my head) and as he and the joos never tour, it was the thing to see. i was more excited because not only would i finally get a chance to see a band that i have loved for some years, but because i would get to see stephen malkmus, whom i have loved for as long as i've had good taste, open. i assumed it would be with the jicks, but thought there was potential for another arrangement.
prior to either of those artists coming onstage, we were entertained by the trachtenburg family slideshow players, who were fun to watch. that said, though they were fun, i don't know that i would ever buy anything by them because the whole experience revolves around slides, and it probably wouldn't really make much sense to listen to their music without the accompanying pictures. the pictures make the show. overall, they were fun and i would not mind watching them again as an opening band.
the second band of the evening was a local (to portland) act, viva voce. they were lame. i could hardly understand what the singer was singing about and they were just really boring.
here is a picture anyhow, because it IS important to document - even the bad.
the highlight of the set was seeing stephen malkmus in the wings, sporting an awesome moustache.
i got in trouble by a teeny tiny (i am very tall, and so is my friend) security guard for using flash. that, too, was more interesting than their performance.
then, oh then, came stephen malkmus. as previously mentioned, we were unsure if it would be a jicks performance or if it would be a malkmus performance. it turned out to be a solo acoustic show, which was pretty amazing. he played a short set of about 45-50 minutes, but played some jicks songs, some covers, and two pavement songs (!!!)(trigger cut and lions (linden) from the watery, domestic ep). amazing. then, he pulled david berman from the silver jews up to play a song. overall, great set. if i had a tracklist or had kept one in my head, i would tell you about it. alas, i do not, so you have to deal with adjectives like "amazing!" "fantastic!" and so on.
(reunite! the original joos!)
up next were the silver jews. i was extremely excited for this, especially after seeing david berman sing onstage with malkmus. they did not disappoint! they played a long set with many of their "hits" such as pretty eyes (swooooon!), trains across the sea, a good chunk from tanglewood numbers, and some more that i'm forgetting. their performance was simply outstanding, though at times, dc's wife was a little much (i think it's his wife).
they left the stage and came back for a two song encore, in which malkmus joined them. they played "smith and jones" and "new orleans" (which i was hoping that they'd play). malkmus did interpretive singing/dancing during the set and it was pretty much the best thing i'd ever seen. ever.
when they were done, david berman went up behind malkmus and ripped open his jacket and shirt and gave malkmus a hug.
(unfortunately, i did not catch the bare-chested moment on film, but that picture captures the emotion, i'd say...)
the britt daniel review will have to wait until later. malkmus and the jews together was practically musical history and ranks up there with the first show of the pixies reunion tour as one of my most important shows of all time. it was significant. but, this is coming from a major pavement-fan, so what do i know?
1 comment:
wow. viva voce lame, huh? were you too distracted by your berman/sm/britt lust to even pay attention?
Post a Comment