Two and a half months ahead of schedule the leaves on the trees were turning brown... Thursday, February 28, 2008

Mountain Goats show #2 was not nearly as epic.

Things that are probably to blame:

1. They played two super high energy shows in a row the two nights before in Portland (at least, I assume the second show was high energy; that's what it sounds like from what I've heard).

2. The fucking audience. Dear. Lord. I wanted to poop on them.


Part of me feels like they were low energy because they planned it that way -- they probably knew the two shows at the Doug Fir were going to be really high energy, so they planned out this show with lots of slower songs, and more obscure songs. Monday's show was mostly songs off the new album and their more recent albums. This show included a bunch of songs off their earlier albums and it would have been lovely, if it hadn't been for the crowd. I was standing right up front with Val, Rob, Steve and some of Steve's friends, about one person from the stage, right in front of John. The girls who were standing directly in front of us were obviously still in high school and had quite obviously come to hear two specific songs. How do I know? They made giant cardboard signs and held them up in John's face between every fucking song. And they were dancing all crazy and accidentally smacked Steve in the junk.

Because they were right up front, right in front of John, it seemed like he was trying hard to ignore them, and ended up just cutting himself off from the audience entirely. There was no banter, nothing -- just song after song. Part of it could also have been that the audience was all ages instead of 21 and over, so I feel like something kind of went funny in the age dynamic.


I don't want to make it sound like I didn't enjoy the concert, because I did. The setlist was fantastic - the other two times I've seen The Mountain Goats it's been mostly new music, so it was really cool to hear older songs.

After the show the 5 of us (Myself, Rob, Dylan S., Peggy and Val) went to Denny's, then drove back up to Portland. After dropping off Val and Dylan, the rest of us finally made it back to campus by a little after 2. Needless to say, I kind of need a nap right now.



Other news: it's the end of February and I'm already done with my taxes... hooray! Also, I'm basically caught up on all my other shit, besides German. Every day I ask myself again, "why am I not in Sound and Sense?" (Sound and Sense is a music class notorious for being an easy A elective at LC).

Con planning is going really smoothly at the moment. The early bird deadline is next Monday, so applications are rolling in. There are 37 people RSVP'd 'yes' on Facebook at the moment, so that's really assuring. We're now about a month and a half away and I'm getting pretty excited...



I really want to see this movie. Hella hella.