Invisible Man In my defence, Officer… everyone else was doing it

FBi needs my saving expertise

So I said I was bored, right? I decided I would try Music.

I listen to music already, just not the stuff that other people generally do. I’m ok with that, as I’m sure I’ve posted before. Soundtracks? Life needs a soundtrack, and it’s fun to make pretend that my life warrants the sort of sweeping, epic sounds that accompany the hero’s journey. It also just sits nicely in the background, so I can inflict it on others when we work Comedy? Life is hiliarious. Get used to it.

Still, I was vaguely aware that I was missing out on stuff. And damned if I wasn’t right. Going to the gym means exposure to MTV, and I discovered to my amazement that I only hate about half of what they play. I thought it was more like 90%. I decided this meant that I should probably try something new.

So when James mentioned that there was a concert for a radio station I’ve never listened to at a venue I’d never been to where bands I’d never heard of would be playing, I thought why the hell not?

I’m glad I did.

You’ve taken your first step into a larger world
Obi-Wan

I’ve been to concerts before. I’m told they don’t count. In the last year or two, I’ve gone along to a few concerts where they’ve played Beatles songs. I think one was just The White Album. I’ll admit these weren’t my idea, but I was pretty happy to go along with family and see them. Adam Hills and Bill Bailey sing a little bit, but I guess they’re not really concerts as such. About six years ago I went to see “Weird Al” Yankovic, but that was very much a sit down affair.

So that made last night my first time.

I loved it.

We got there right at the start in order to see The Jezabels, a band that James and Lexie like quite a lot. It wasn’t very busy at this stage, so we were right up the front. The sound! The bass drum vibrates through your soul, from head to toe.  It may have been relatively unspectacular, as these things go, but it was a brand new experience for me. I even wanted to be in a band at one point. But this is me, and so one of my thoughts was a quote from Gladiator

The silence before you strike, and the noise afterwards, it rises, rises up like…like…like a storm, as if you were the Thunder God himself.
Proximo

That’s kinda what I was imaging it was like. I was barely aware of what they were singing, for a good part of it. I just knew I liked it.

We went out after the Jezabels for some food: tapas. This was also a new and fun experience, as was  a Spanish beer called 1906 Especial Reserva… but this night was about the music. Over dinner we missed Palace of Fire and Muscles; I am told this wasn’t a big deal.

Returning to the metro, the security person decided that I looked a lot more suspicious than I did two hours before, and decided to fondle me a bit, ostensibly looking for drugs. All part of the fun?
It was a lot busier at this point, we ended up three rows from the back. I was pretty happy with this; I’m not quite ready for extended moshpit/dancefloor head banging. It was mainly the underage types anyway.

Midnight Juggernauts were really good. Bluejuice were not. I tried really hard to like Decoder Ring, because it was practically soundtrack music, albeit ’soundtracks on acid’. I didn’t, though. It didn’t really grip me; it was a little too ambient. That’s ok, we were just hanging out for Dappled Cities. (The others were, anyway. I decided to trust their judgement).

They were brilliant. I loved them.
Not so surprising: if I have any mainstream musical appreciation, it’s in what I would broadly term ‘rock’. Mind you, my genre classification system means that anything labeled as rock is essentially

• not comedy
• has words
• has one or more guitars

So I like rock a bit, and now according to wikipedia I like Dappled Cities’ indie rock.

Just before they came on, James offered to educate me a bit by picking me some CDs that they were giving away for a gold coin donation. I’ve been listening to them while writing this.
I like The Walkmen, I’m not so sure about  My Latest Novel (too mellow, although I love the first four or so minutes of Ghost in the Gutter), and I have Fionn Regan up next.
I obtained Midnight Juggernauts’ Dystopia, but couldn’t immediately find anything by the Jezabels or Dappled Cities.

So I guess that’s the end of my first concert story. I’m cool now! Not very cool though, since I still quoted Star Wars.
There may be a few more posts about musicky things in the future… ‘cos a blog about music is totally original and stuff.