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October 25, 2007
My Life Among the Kids Who Go to Shows
Tuesday night, Jeff and I hauled our exhausted selves out to the Roxy to attend the New Pornographers show. It was disappointing. The Roxy is a dance club and doesn't have that many shows - at least not ones we're interested in attending. The usual venue for bands like NP is the Avalon, which is under major construction. The sound at the Roxy was terrible, and between nearly every song the band asked the sound guys to adjust one thing or another. Obviously this killed any building energy as we stood waiting.
But worse was the seeming lack of any real excitement in the crowd and in the band themselves. Nobody seemed particularly invested. Now, I'm usually just a bob along type concert attendee and leave the wild dancing to the crazy undergrads, but Tuesday night I looked like a spastic club kid by comparison. It was dead. The opening bands barely managed to elicit clapping and half hearted cheers despite being pretty good. There was a little singing along and a little bobbing for the New Pornographers, but little else even from the kids who jammed themselves against the stage. This may be in part to the lack of any encouragement or interaction with the band. Neko Case and AC Newman seemed totally indifferent, although Kathryn Calder was smiley and cute and Dan Bejar was kooky and deadpan and possibly drunk and/or high while singing and clutching his Corona. Newman showed a little expression when he forgot the words to a song from Electric Version, (I'm not too familiar with that album, sorry) but overall it was lackluster. Maybe they were annoyed with the bad sound.
Jeff speculated that perhaps the crowd was still recovering from the insanity of the weekend - the whole city was hungover on Monday morning after the Sox won game 7. Maybe they didn't have the energy. However, I doubt the band members had worn themselves out watching baseball. It was weird and a real bummer. I hope to see them again sometime for a do over.
| By heidi | 10:25 AM
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Posted by: Nick at October 29, 2007 10:31 AM