Wed Apr 02, 2003 02:00:23 PM
(for some reason this post insn't showing up in my blogger archives, so I'm reposting it so I can link it from my LJ)
Saw Dan Bern last night at Starr Hill in Charlottesville. Incredible. One of the coolest shows I've seen since, well, the last live show I saw. Sigh. I heart live music. I've been a huge fan of Dan Bern since sophomore year, so I was really really excited. We got there at 8, since that's when our tickets said doors opened, and found that we were the first ones there. The opening band didn't even go on until maybe 9:30. Before the show started, Andrea wrote a note on a slip of paper that said "Dan, please play Wasteland (one of the two bernstein songs Andrea knows) and Children of the Cold War (Bill's request, since it's his favorite song) We love you! Andrea, Doug, Jenni, and Bill" I took the note to the room where the band was warming up/hanging out, and slipped it under the door and ran away. Then I went to the soundboard to see if anyone was recording that night, and lo, an older yet enthusiastic fella named Alan was in fact patched into the soundboard, and gave me his card with his address and phone number, since he didn't have a computer with Internet to send me email or check out my trading list. This excited me to no end. We sat sipping our Star Hill microbrews and tolerated the opening act, and waited patiently for Dan and his band, The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy, to come on.
Then they came on.
I was jotting down the setlist, and it went like this: Black Tornado, One Thing Real, Earth Girl, Joe Van Gogh, Without You, Chelsea Hotel, Funeral Junkie??, Tyranny?? (I'm not sure of the names of those last two songs, since I never heard them before and he didn't introduce them) My Country Too, Another Rosita, and then.... I don't know. I stopped writing the setlist at this point, because Dan said something along the lines of, "This is bullshit. You are all too far away from me. Come up closer" and then he and his band unplugged their instruments and the drummer grabbed a hand drum and they came down into the audience, into the center of the room, and jamed out on Jerusalem and Tiger Woods, with everyone crowding around them, singing along. During Jerusalem Jenni and I sat up on the stage, and I played a maracca that was on stage into a microphone. I'm not even going to try to describe how fucking awesome this part of the show was. After that they jumped back up on stage and plugged in, and played Tiger Woods again and some other songs, which, as I remember them in no particular order: Two Hands (Ani cover), Fly Away, One Dance (where he pulled a girl up from the audience and slow danced with her), Marilyn, Superman, Chain Around My Neck, City, ummm, the first track off the new CD that I can't remember the name of (Bye Bye Baby, maybe?), and ended on Rice, where the band jammed out and the each left the stage one at a time, with Dan going first and the lead guitar and keyboards ending it. I was really hoping to hear Graceland or Albuquerque Lullaby, but he played so many of my favorite songs in that first set, I was happy nonetheless. Dan came out for an encore and did Wood Fuckin Racket solo. Sweet.
We couldn't help but notice they didn't play Wasteland or Children of the Cold War.
After the show Dan signed a poster that I tore off the wall, and Bill snapped a picture. We went out to my car, piled in, and as I backed out, BABOOM, I backed over a curb. We all got out to discover that I had totally fucked up my muffler. I pulled some duct tape out of my trunk and Bill and Jenni rigged it up so that it wouldn't drag on the road all the way home. Thanks, kids, I appreciated it. As we were fixing the car, Alan, the guy who taped the show, came out to the parking lot and we talked to him for a while. Turns out he's also from the Empire State, and went to school at New Paltz. We talked about The Last Chance bar, now renamed The Chance, where a lot of good shows come. He was telling us how he was hanging around to offer Dan and the band some pot, but they dissappeared before he could. He also told me he wasn't able to record the accoustic-in-the-audience part of the show, but he still thinks he had enough music for two CDs. We started talking about music, and he started naming all these bands that he thought we'd be into. He went to his car and gave us a ton of CDs, including a live Keller/String Cheese show, and maybe 4 other bands I had never heard of. (Andrea later claims he was giving the shows to HER, since he was handing them to her, but he was looking at me as he talked, so I contend that he was giving them to me, if not the four of us as a unit) We got home at about 2am, and, well, crashed. It was excellent.
(for some reason this post insn't showing up in my blogger archives, so I'm reposting it so I can link it from my LJ)
Saw Dan Bern last night at Starr Hill in Charlottesville. Incredible. One of the coolest shows I've seen since, well, the last live show I saw. Sigh. I heart live music. I've been a huge fan of Dan Bern since sophomore year, so I was really really excited. We got there at 8, since that's when our tickets said doors opened, and found that we were the first ones there. The opening band didn't even go on until maybe 9:30. Before the show started, Andrea wrote a note on a slip of paper that said "Dan, please play Wasteland (one of the two bernstein songs Andrea knows) and Children of the Cold War (Bill's request, since it's his favorite song) We love you! Andrea, Doug, Jenni, and Bill" I took the note to the room where the band was warming up/hanging out, and slipped it under the door and ran away. Then I went to the soundboard to see if anyone was recording that night, and lo, an older yet enthusiastic fella named Alan was in fact patched into the soundboard, and gave me his card with his address and phone number, since he didn't have a computer with Internet to send me email or check out my trading list. This excited me to no end. We sat sipping our Star Hill microbrews and tolerated the opening act, and waited patiently for Dan and his band, The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy, to come on.
Then they came on.
I was jotting down the setlist, and it went like this: Black Tornado, One Thing Real, Earth Girl, Joe Van Gogh, Without You, Chelsea Hotel, Funeral Junkie??, Tyranny?? (I'm not sure of the names of those last two songs, since I never heard them before and he didn't introduce them) My Country Too, Another Rosita, and then.... I don't know. I stopped writing the setlist at this point, because Dan said something along the lines of, "This is bullshit. You are all too far away from me. Come up closer" and then he and his band unplugged their instruments and the drummer grabbed a hand drum and they came down into the audience, into the center of the room, and jamed out on Jerusalem and Tiger Woods, with everyone crowding around them, singing along. During Jerusalem Jenni and I sat up on the stage, and I played a maracca that was on stage into a microphone. I'm not even going to try to describe how fucking awesome this part of the show was. After that they jumped back up on stage and plugged in, and played Tiger Woods again and some other songs, which, as I remember them in no particular order: Two Hands (Ani cover), Fly Away, One Dance (where he pulled a girl up from the audience and slow danced with her), Marilyn, Superman, Chain Around My Neck, City, ummm, the first track off the new CD that I can't remember the name of (Bye Bye Baby, maybe?), and ended on Rice, where the band jammed out and the each left the stage one at a time, with Dan going first and the lead guitar and keyboards ending it. I was really hoping to hear Graceland or Albuquerque Lullaby, but he played so many of my favorite songs in that first set, I was happy nonetheless. Dan came out for an encore and did Wood Fuckin Racket solo. Sweet.
We couldn't help but notice they didn't play Wasteland or Children of the Cold War.
After the show Dan signed a poster that I tore off the wall, and Bill snapped a picture. We went out to my car, piled in, and as I backed out, BABOOM, I backed over a curb. We all got out to discover that I had totally fucked up my muffler. I pulled some duct tape out of my trunk and Bill and Jenni rigged it up so that it wouldn't drag on the road all the way home. Thanks, kids, I appreciated it. As we were fixing the car, Alan, the guy who taped the show, came out to the parking lot and we talked to him for a while. Turns out he's also from the Empire State, and went to school at New Paltz. We talked about The Last Chance bar, now renamed The Chance, where a lot of good shows come. He was telling us how he was hanging around to offer Dan and the band some pot, but they dissappeared before he could. He also told me he wasn't able to record the accoustic-in-the-audience part of the show, but he still thinks he had enough music for two CDs. We started talking about music, and he started naming all these bands that he thought we'd be into. He went to his car and gave us a ton of CDs, including a live Keller/String Cheese show, and maybe 4 other bands I had never heard of. (Andrea later claims he was giving the shows to HER, since he was handing them to her, but he was looking at me as he talked, so I contend that he was giving them to me, if not the four of us as a unit) We got home at about 2am, and, well, crashed. It was excellent.
posted by Doug at
2:01 AM
