They had gotten to Royal Oak early, and decided to pass the time busking for dollars

It’s not every day that you see a major-label signed band play on the street.  They earned two dollars.

Then, they got busted for busking!  Apparently the cops took a dim view on them playing on the street.  This was kind of odd, because when we arrived there was an italian street festival going on.

We drove down to the Royal Oak Music Theater later and got there just as the doors were opening.  Because of our pre-printed tickets, we got to enter in the VIP entrance rather than wait in the line.  This secured us a spot right up next to the stage.

The first band was called “The Heartless Bastards”.  Interesting name, but they definitely put heart into their playing

I was looking forward to seeing their opening act, since I have quite enjoyed their newest disc, ‘The Mountain’.  They played a reasonably long setlist, with lots of songs that I knew and had heard from that album.  There was only one issue – the vocals were fairly low and we had a hard time hearing what she was singing.  We were so close to the stage that we were underneath the big PA system that the venue had installed, so we were worried that we weren’t going to be able to hear the concert from where we were.

Finally, the Decemberists came on stage after a short break.

They played The Hazards of Love in it’s entirety, from start to finish.  It’s better in person than it is on the CD, for sure.  An interesting thing to note: we were close enough to the performers to see their eyes and what they were looking at.  It was interesting to see that they were basically people watching throughout the performance.  I guess I didn’t expect that.

The entire concert was high energy, even though the theater was extraordinarily hot.  The crowd up front was closely packed.  After drinking 3 bottles of water and standing in the heat for several hours, we decided to retreat to the relative coolness of the middle of the theater after the intermission.  The full setlist for the concert was:

01. Prelude
02. The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
03. A Bower Scene
04. Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
05. The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)
06. The Queen’s Approach
07. Isn’t It a Lovely Night?
08. The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid
09. An Interlude
10. The Rake’s Song
11. The Abduction of Margaret
12. The Queen’s Rebuke / The Crossing
13. Annan Water
14. Margaret in Captivity
15. The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)
16. The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)
17. The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)

Second Set:

01. Intro
02. California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade
03. The Sporting Life
04. Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
05. The Bachelor and the Bride
06. The Calamity Song
07. Dracula’s Daughter
08. O Valencia!
09. Crazy on You*

Encore:

10. Eli, the Barrow Boy
11. Sons and Daughters

The second hour of music was amazing.  The band commented on the Royal Oak police force being kind of a drag.  The entirety of the concert was recorded and can be found online here

All in all, it was an amazing concert, and definitely ranks up there with my favorite performances I’ve attended.  This was a most amazing way to finish our summer vacation.

I’ve been waiting for a kick from my daughter seemingly forever now.  She’d kick, I’d put my hand where it was, and she’d stop.  She seems to be a very contrary baby!

Last night Jolene went to a Tori Amos concert in Detroit, about two hours away.  After she got back late last night, we started dozing off to sleep at the late hour of 2:30AM.

Suddenly, we felt a ‘thud’.  She was up, kicking, and had miraculously kicked the exact location my hand was in.  Finally!  I was half asleep, but it was sudden and obvious what happened.  We waited for a second one, and she delivered yet another to me.

She must’ve missed me, or didn’t like Tori Amos or something.

More Music

The night previous to this, Jolene and I and some of her friends from work all went to go see Lacuna Coil again:

We had all seen them previously as an opener to Disturbed, but everyone in the group felt that they didn’t play nearly long enough.  We got our full dose of Lacuna Coil Friday, as they played a regular length set.  The opening bands were local groups that were pretty good as well.  As you can see in the pictures, it was a small club event and not a large stadium event like the Disturbed concert.  This is a good thing – you get much closer to the artists and see how they really are.

It was a great concert.

We’re going to our last scheduled concert this Tuesday – another Decemberists concert.  I missed the last one, and so I just had to get tickets.  I’m looking forward to it very much!

Week 26

No more fruits or vegetables – I am having a harder and harder time finding posts about fetal development that deal in the metrics of fruits and veggies.

However, this week she’s developing eyebrows and fingernails and the like.  Also, some hair might be starting to grow on her head.  More importantly, her blue eyes are opening.  They’re blue because all infants eyes are blue at this time, not having a chance for the pigments to take hold yet.  She can see around her now, and knows when it’s dark and when it’s light.  Now she truly knows her mother likes to stay up too late at night!

Everything else is going well, we excised the desks from our house and I have built a new desk to make room for the chair that we’re going to be using a lot in the next few months

It was quite a project.  When I originally put it together, it was far too tall for use as a computer desk.  I would’ve had to sit on phone books or something to get high enough to use the computer.  In the end, I had to jigsaw off the bottom ‘kick plate’ area of the cabinets.  It all came together nicely in the end.

Post-Rock

This next week we’re going to go see one of my favorite post-rock bands at a Mount Pleasant location that has lots of indie bands playing.

The band whose album art is pictured above, The Appleseed Cast, is the headliner for a bunch of other experimental bands that aren’t really well known.  Local acts, as well.  I have no idea how good they will be.

They’re kind of an experimental band that doesn’t have a lot of lyrics or singing to their songs.  “Post-rock” is basically using rock instruments, such as guitars and the like, for arrangements of music not usually found in rock-n-roll. As such, the sound that these bands produce is often varied and not easy to categorize.

Jolene is not looking forward to this.  In all instances I’ve played post-rock for her, she’s expressed a distaste for it.  She’s going with me, though, so we’ll see how she feels afterwards.

Metal

We’re going to go see the “Music as a Weapon” tour in Detroit on May 2.  Disturbed, Killswitch Engage, Lacuna Coil, and Chimaira will all be playing there.  Jolene agreed to go, primarily, I think because of her coworkers, who are also going with us in a group.

While I don’t listen to “Metal” as I did when I was younger, I still enjoy it quite a bit.  Of the above, I’m probably most excited about listening to Lacuna Coil.  They fall more into the “Rock” category and are basically known for their melodic singing by their female singer.  This is in contrast to a lot of their contemporaries who scream a lot.  If you know the band Evanescence, this band is pretty similar, but is a bit older and more developed. Their new album has just come out and it’s pretty good sounding.

Disturbed is the headliner, I believe.  I’m looking forward to seeing them as well, though their brand of music is pretty generic insofar as “Metal” goes.  Very FM radio friendly.

I haven’t heard much of Killswitch Engage nor Chimaira.  I will rectify this before attending, of course.

Jolene is not looking forward to this.  She’ll have fun since her coworkers are going as well, though.  I’m sure of it. This is probably going to be terribly loud.  Nothing can beat Ted Nugent when I saw him in loudness though.  He opened for Metallica when I saw them on New Years Eve, 1999.  Things were already loud as a regular heavy metal concert, and then Teddy started playing.  His guitar was turned up to 11, and it was all that you could hear.  The speakers were going so loud they were clipping and giving horrifying feedback at times as well.  Ted Nugent was the worst ‘band’ I’ve ever seen.  At least this won’t be Ted Nugent, I tell her!

Indie/Folk Rock

We’ll be going to Columbus, OH and spending the night there to see The Decemberists live in concert.  It will be the third Decemberists concert we have attended.  This is what I’m looking forward to most, I think.  This is by far my favorite band recently – the songwriting is fantastic, the instrumentation is strange and wonderful.

They’ll be playing their new album in it’s entirety at the concert – The Hazards of Love.  Most of The Decemberist’s songs tell a story. For their latest album, the entire album tells a story in sort of a “rock opera”.  Album of the year, for sure – at least by my measurement.

Opening for The Decemberists will be a band called “Blind Pilot”.  I have no real knowledge or information on this band, other than that they’re from Portland, Oregon and the picture above is what they look like.  A lot of my new favorite bands are from that city for some reason (The Decemberists, The Builders and the Butchers, The Thermals… hey, I’m noticing a pattern here… is it a prerequisite for Portland bands to have a “The” in the title?  Should this band be called “THE Blind Pilot”?).

Anyway, I hope they’ll be entertaining.  We have quite a summer lined up – there are tons of more bands that I want to see live.  Maybe I’ll get the chance soon.