mokudekiru

Went to a couple of good concerts this week… first up, Monday night it became apparent that my friend was looking to sell his Ben Folds ticket due to unreasonable amounts of homework. After a slightly stressful attempt to meet up and complete the ticket transaction, by noon on Tuesday I had my ticket in hand. Noam came back to town, picked me up after my meeting, and we continued onto a stop at Zorbas and then onto Ben Folds. Ben Lee opened, and he was also excellent. Then Ben #2 came onstage:

There was a particularly ridiculous tambourine player who elicited more applause than Ben Folds, completely mysterious.

As usual, Ben Folds was not what I imagined. His recorded music sounds so sarcastic (I have a hard time imagining that he’s not making fun of Zak and Sara), but not true live. The end of the concert involved the audience singing a three part harmony, conducted by Ben Folds. Probably one of the only times I have successfully harmonized.

Friday night was the Islands @ the IMC. The Headlights, who opened, are apparently local — which I didn’t know, though I knew a few of their songs. More than anything else, they seemed to just be really happy while performing:

Then the Islands showed up, after a long sound check and and even longer period of time after their soundcheck where they just weren’t there… finally they began playing though:

Half the band:

Blurry other half of the band (the violins/ violas(?) were rocking)

Most hardore picture, imo — gotta love the IMC lego guy.

Really good sound — even better than their recorded stuff, I thought. Though until two weeks ago I was unaware that they had other music besides “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby”… now their song, “Swans” has become my official walking-to-math-class song. Don’t know how I ever got to math in the mornings without it.