last night's musical adventure

[ayelienne]

The Posies ROCKED last night at Slim's. It was one of those typically untypical evenings for K and I. We arrived in time to catch most of the second opener band's set (Oranger) -- K went to get a drink and came back saying, "You're never going to guess who's here"--turned out that Adam, one of the hosts of the G4TV (formerly techtv) show "X-Play", was at the club. I told K I wanted to find him to say hello; it's one of those shows that's fairly obscure, so I figured Adam would be pleased to know that grown-ups watch the show too ;) We tracked him down and I caught up with him as he went out to have to smoke - Adam was pleasantly surprised and was glad I said Hi - we talked about the show for a little while -- they used to be in SF, but the show moved to LA about a year or so ago. I confessed that we hadn't been watching it as much since the LA move, but Adam assured me that it had gotten a lot better -- he said, "you gotta see this week's show - we've got a robot theme, and I die at the end; I'm trying to set it up so I die at the end of every show -- I want to have a whole resurrection thing going on."

I met his girlfriend as well, who had dragged him to the show. She and I compared Posienotes and she mentioned that I had to check out the New Pornographers album, which I promised to do. We then went back inside, whereupon I introduced K to Adam and promised that the show would end back upon the TIVO list. So, that pretty much set the tone of the evening, and the Posies hadn't even gotten started yet.

I've been a fan of the Posies since 1990, when I was working at a record store that was much like the one in "High Fidelity" (but cds). Dear 23 appeared in the monthly promo mailer from Geffen; I threw it into the CD player and was completely enamoured of it within about 30 seconds. That cd was in constant rotation at the store for at least a month. I was doing some writing for a local music paper, and did a review of the album. A couple months later, my editor called and said, "hey, that band you like is playing at the Empire in Cleveland - do you want to review the show?" I was like, "Do I!" -- I went to the show, met with their A&R guy, who asked me before the show, "do you want to meet the band?" Uh.Of course. So he took me back to the green room, where I met the guys - they had a copy of my review and were thrilled with the review. I, of course, was thrilled with the album - we chatted for a while and then they went out to do their set. Afterwards, we sat and talked with Ken and Jon for a long time, and promised to keep in touch...which Ken and I have, for nearly 15 years now. So now, a Posies show is a chance to watch old friends and they are *always* a great time. Their roadie, Joe, was there as well, who I've also known for ages, so it was great catching up with him as well.

The show was fantastic! Great mix of old and new songs; they still rock way better than most -- if you get a chance to catch them on this tour, you really should. I ended up on stage for the encore. When you're in the audience, and your friend is talking to the crowd, asking people to come on up onstage, and he's sitting there looking directly at you while he's saying it, well, you tend to get the hint. So, there I was along with others, singing along and grooving along with Ken, Jon and the rest of the guys. I'll see if some pix surface. K was having the time of his life, as he had gone a couple rum and cokes over the line, and ended up having his last few drinks pilfered by Ken during the show.

So anyway, we hung out after the show til almost 2, met some more cool people who live here in SF that we'll hook up with for coffee, and then went home completely wired. We didn't get to bed until after 4 - it was one of those nights that happen far too infrequently when one has a 8-5 gig, like K and I do these days.

Of course, the alarm didn't go off and we overslept - I just rolled in about an hour ago. I've got the setlist at home; I'll put it up tonight.

What a fun night; I needed that.

Comments

[livenolies.livejournal.com]

yay! glad you had so much fun, i know you needed a night like that. :)

[ayelienne]

Yeah, it was awesome. I have a whole new understanding of the importance of monitors..you really can't hear a damn thing up there.

[livenolies.livejournal.com]

hehe. nope not usually! little coffee houses you can *sometimes* get away with not having one, but anything bigger, you need at least 2 - 1 up front and 1 for the drummer.

[ayelienne]

The other thing that I thought was interesting was that even though you're up there, if you're lucky, you can just get lost in the music so much that you don't even notice all these people in the crowd looking at you.

[livenolies.livejournal.com]

ah yes, the good shows when the whole band is in the zone and totally rocking. i would wager to guess that a band like The Posies that's been together for so long gets into that groove pretty easily after the first few shows of a tour when the kinks are worked out.