Cowbell III: Requiem for a bad joke

Last nogth I went to yet another concert, the final in the fall of many concerts. I went to see Bright Eyes at Constitution hall. Since I'm pretty sure that no one who would read this gives a damn about bright eyes, I will try to be brief. Bright eyes, for those who do not know, is kinda indy-folk-alternative-ish music, that has been descibed as kinda like Bob Dylan, but I dont really think the association is that great. Its basically a lot of stream of conscious lyrics, and good, mostly acoustic, but also some electronic music. I think its really good, but I guess thats just me. Anyway I got there afetr the first opening band (The Magic Numbers), and before the second (Feist). Feist was OK... they're like a chick from Canada with a really good voice who can play pretty good guitar, and then a backing band. Good, but I'm not rushing out to buy the CD... She reminded me of a mix between Bjork (where the hells the umlout key?) and PJ Harvey(at least the one song by her I know). Bright eyes was awesome.. they had like 7 people on stage, playing everything from an orchestral harp, to a Dobro guitar, to Timpanis, to synthesizers.... definately an eclectic mix. Since they had already come to town after their last release (actually two albums released at the same time), they played stuff from all their albums instead of mostly the recent ones, which was cool. They played a lot of old stuff, a brand new song, and only a few off the new CDs. The singer, and songwriter, Conner Oberst, kept saying that we were in the buildign where the constitution was signed, which was patently false... Im not sure if he was joking or serious, but at one point he said, "we're going to Philly tomorrow... maybe it was signed there... Or in New York. I know it was near New York, or a few hundred miles from there", so I think he was fucking around.... The girls next to me apparently didnt realize this and were like "Oh my God, was it really signed here? Thats awesome". Stupid bitches. The crowd was largly college kids, with their emo haircuts and copious piercings, which made me feel old and unpierced. Of course I was there alone, so I felt like a loser. The worst is when its not a sold out show and you have an assigned seat, so it obvious that you are alone, cuz there is noone next to you. Dumbass friends not liking the same music I do and making me go alone.... There unfortunately was no cowbell, so the title of this post is pretty pointless, but I figured I have a theme going, I might as well keep it. Im not going to list all the good songs, cuz no one cares, but they did play "When The President Talks to God" which is a pretty harsh critisism of President bush and got a huge reaction. He was like "I Havent played this for a while so I might mess it up, but Ill play it tonite and hopefull the asshole sleeping across the street will have some bad dreams". They also played a few other politically driven songs, the reactions to which made it pretty clear what the general political tendencies of the audience were... All in all a very good concert. I give it a 5 out of 5 for awesometude. and a 0 out of 5 for cowbellosity. However, it does receive a 5 out of 5 for timpaniness, harposity, dobroness, and politicalness, all of which make up for the lacking cowbell.

Many of you have complained about my "Now Playing" dealie. I tried putting it in teh header at first, but it looked bad if the title was short. With a short title, it looks really good in teh left column. With a long title it does not. probabaly with a long title it would look great in the header. I just cant win. Also, I think there is somethign up with it since I am not currently listening to Bach. I think the daemon that updates it must not have been started automatically when I rebooted... I'll have to look at that, but i'm not at my computer now.