Decembrists and a request

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The Decembrists at Terminal 5 in Chelsea, NY 9/19/09

First time showing up at a sold-out concert hoping to buy a ticket at the door! I was in the City on Saturday and decided around noon to meet Yin for this. There were fans with spare tickets waiting in line so getting in was no problem.

The show was a lot of fun. The band picked the songs randomly out of a big lottery wheel and then creatively conveyed the used balls into the audience, to show they hadn't cheated. Amazingly the pace was not destroyed, though there was one point where they tinkered with the song order a little and another where the MC announced that the band was NOT going to play the next few songs that came up, a transparent excuse to keep pulling balls until A Perfect Crime or some other big hit could be located before the show ended.

The only real pacing mistake happened when The Tain was picked second to last. A lotto show is a gimmick and 20-minute song cycle, from a band whose real strength is (short!) Eng Lit Geek folk songs, is a statement. Gimmick + statement = can't we just have a regular concert, please? (Yin doesn't agree with me on this.) Most of the audience's energy heading into the home stretch had dissipated by the time The Tain wound to a close; after a failed-singalong version of A Perfect Crime The Decembrists had to do an ELO song to get some of it it back.

But at least Laura got to sing again on The Tain -- she hadn't had a vocal part since the first song of the night. Also most of the audience - me included - took the opportunity to relax and check twitter and text our friends about the show, which must count for something. :p (I, personally, think they should have played The Tain, but only the first thirty seconds of each song.)

Yin has the setlist. My favorites were:
Raincoat Song
From My Own True Love

And the song about New York Colin Meloy made up on the spot, with the lyrics: New York, Home of the Brave / And the well-dressed people / The Intrepid rests nearby on the river / Which I think might be the Hudson / Where someone crashed their plane / I think his name was Scully / But everyone survived / And they called it the Miracle on the Hudson.

In short, a fun concert. Terminal 5 is a very annoying venue, though. It's huge and the floor and balconies aren't tilted, so unless you are very tall or standing very close the front you ain't seeing nuthin'. The view from the left balcony, where we were, is almost totally blocked by the VIP seats - unless you stand on chairs, as Yin and I did.


Secondly, my phone was stolen a week ago - this just hasn't been my month - but I bought a new phone on ebay and it came last Friday so could those of you whose numbers I used to have please text me your names? Again? I promise to actually back up my contacts this time - would hate to turn into the New Yorker parody.