do all the things! ... do all the things?

[ursamajor]

Dear friends and readers, I am really crap at this longer-than-140-characters-update thing lately, as proven by the number of paragraphs originally in this entry with date(d) references. It's a sleepy rainy Sunday afternoon in Camberville; let's try this again.

Update: I type that, and outside, I immediately hear a loud thundercrack, followed by a fizzle, and then the power dies. And then comes back on. And then dies. And now appears to be back on for us, but out for a good portion of a 3/4 mile radius around us? Sleepy rainy Sunday afternoon in Camberville? Hah. And then it died again, so we decided it was a good time to go feed ourselves elsewhere. So now I'm back, after a dee-licious schmancy pizza dinner at Posto and the weekly supermarket run; what I was saying was:

I rarely go to shows anymore, but I hit three in the space of three days last week; two of them in one night. Tuesday night, I had tickets for both sets of the Vienna Teng/Alex Wong shindig at Passim; joined at alternate points by jennifer and dalryaug and my sister in law. Best seats ever: front left center; of course I took pics. :)

Flickr set here: Vienna Teng and Alex Wong.

It helped that we had the absolute best seats in the house. (I have very similar seats for Dar Williams next month in the same venue, and I'm hyperventilating from the excitement.) When Vienna stood up to bow from the first set, the setlist fluttered off her keyboard and landed in my lap, is how good the seats were.

I'm a fair bit of an acoustic musical snob and then some. I have perfect pitch and no tolerance in live music for annoying voices, feedbacky guitars, or drums that add nothing to the musicality of a song. I'm generally suspicious of electrical musical anything - I'll dance to it in my living room, but I don't go to see it live. This concert turned that notion on its ear, the way Vienna and Alex use loopers to record close harmony lines live and play them back while building up these walls of sound ... oh, man. Now I want a recording setup where I can play with that kind of thing. For me, music is first and foremost about how the tones and rhythms play with each other. Lyrics aren't my strength, either writing my own or hearing/interpreting others', and the less a given singer enunciates, the less coherent of a mondegreen my brain fills in. Maybe I need a lyrics partner.

Anyway, I'm really, really glad I went - I mean, given that Vienna's going to grad school in the Midwest starting this fall, and thus tapering back her touring schedule, it was really important to me to get to one of these last shows, and two in a row was an incredible treat. So amazing. So inspiring. A good reminder that I should put my Passim membership to good use and take up those guitar lessons I've been talking about, ahem.

Also, afterwards, I got Alex to sing the Tetris theme with me, so that was amusing :D

*

Actual conversation hyounpark and I had yesterday morning last week awhile ago now:

hyounpark (pulling a black suit out of the closet): "I hope I still fit into this suit."
ursamajor (noticing the suit jacket doesn't look like H's): "Um, sweetie, I don't think you ever fit into that particular suit. Your shoulders are too broad, and the skirt would slip right off your hips."
hyounpark (looks at label, has revelation): "Huh. Yeah, I guess I'm not exactly Anne
Klein's target customer." (tries again, pulls out one of his suits, puts it on.) "Barely. I'm getting fat."
ursamajor: "You should run again in the mornings!"
hyounpark: "So should you!"
ursamajor: "I hate running. Actually, you have two choices. You can exercise regularly, or ... we can go shopping to get you new pants."
hyounpark: "AAACK NO ANYTHING BUT SHOPPING!!!"

If I'm to wake up early enough to hit the gym tomorrow morning myself, I think I'm going to have to leave some updating for later. If I'm to wake up early enough to hit Porter Square Books the second it opens Tuesday morning so I can be at the MOCKINGJAY RELEASE PARTY, I should probably be getting to sleep earlier, period. Mockingjay Mockingjay Mockingjay, oh, post-apocalyptic Olympics and conspiracy theories and I'm gonna go finish re-re-re-reading the first two in the trilogy now. G'night!

Comments

[ex_pippin880]

I would looove so much to see those ladies live. *___* I love watching musicians who use loops, though I've only seen Andrew Bird and Owen Pallett live so far.

If only it weren't so expensive for people to come out here. Sigh.

[ursamajor]

Loops were a new thing to me, and now I am desperately craving one. I'm not a great instrumentalist (some years of piano combined with neglecting my guitar and tiny hands that make both of these instruments difficult to play), but I've always been singing since I can remember. It's just a way of life for me - people assume I'm always in a good mood because I burst into song so frequently, but that's not always true; a lot of times, I'm just voicing the mental radio station.

I know at one point, Vienna posted to the forum explaining how expensive it was to even get work permits to play Canadian shows, even if the venues she'd be likely to play were all short drives over the border; I can only imagine adding the travel costs to go overseas would make it prohibitively expensive. :( I'm really lucky to be so close to Passim; it's an awesome, intimate venue, and generally at least once a month *somebody's* playing there I want to see live.

[glass_icarus]

*OGLES MOAR* :D

Icons coming soon...! or at least, sometime this week. /o\

[ursamajor]

Can I go back in time? I want to relive the concert again! :D Okay, what I'd really love to do is get up there and do a vocal improv session with them ... ahh, farfetched dreams. :)

And hooray, icons!