Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Birdie Num Num

Folks, last night was an amazing show. Jeff Tweedy is not only an amazing singer/songwriter, but a riveting performer. The very first song he played reduced my friend and I to tears. His voice, my god - was pure emotion. It was mostly just him on acoustic - he must have played at least a dozen songs. Wilco's drummer (whose name eludes me at this time) did the opening act - solo. I had never seen (or heard) anything like it. He joined Tweedy during the second set - the energy they produced together was something else.

Really, I don't think there is anything better than live music. Even with drunken noisy folks yelling - which Mr. Tweedy dealt with in the most amicable and humourous way - most notably would be the comment of "Yes, I will play all of the songs you requested, even the unintelligible ones" (in response to a very drunk person yelling out gibberish requests) - the music just washes over you, vibrating every single cell in your body, and all that distraction just falls away. There is something really honest about a live show - particularily one of this kind, it's the raw purity and the vulnerablility of the artist that makes it truly beautiful.

My only complaint - I am too old to stand for 2 hours. Good god, I almost passed out from the heat, pot fumes and the lack of personal space. But even if I fell over (which I didn't, I made it out of the crowd before anything like that could happen...) - I would almost think I had swooned over the beauty that was the music.

1 comment:

DC said...

I would think that most people would be disappointed if there wasn't a huge element of personal discomfort involved in partaking in the concert. Of course, I would argue further that those people simply aren't that intelligent and don't reallize that it is not a necessary part of the ambiance and thus enjoyment of said experience, but well, they won't be reading this, so I can stop now.