I Couldn't Think Of Another Band I'd Rather Have Be From Portland

As if I needed more reasons to love the Decemberists without abandon, I will just go ahead and let you know that the show tonight was incredible, and if I do some tricky non-mathmatical mathmatical reasoning in my head, the twenty dollars I spent for the ticket evened out to ten. And we don't even think about the whiskey coke money. We already forgot about that, and it falls forgotten from the final tally. The opening act was Sarah Dougher, who I've always heards personal stories about and then felt excited when I saw her name in print, but never actually seen. The way she stood there with her guitar and just a drummer made me think of the old days, before I turned 21, when we would go to the old Meow-Meow and watch whomever just rock the small stage with the shallow ceiling and that horrid leopard-print backdrop I always hated, and the us dregs from the barrel of underage hipness would flail around and get all hot and sweaty for whatever they played, and it'd be just some girls and guitars and little old three chord them up there, but they'd be earnest and eager and we all'd lap it up. Maybe that's rosy tinting it a bit, but that's what I'm good at. Now the crowd was a bit disappointing, just consisting of anyone who had an extra twenty to fling the way of the show (which was a benefit concert, so it went to a good cause, which also factors into my reasoning). Lots of girls dressed in lots of ways that all looked alike. But that's not fair, now, is it? I always disapprove of the crowd at a Decemberists show, always wanting them to be pale young things in period garb. And that's never how it's going to be, they're more than just a novelty act designed to help me meet boys in woolen knickers. And it's okay that the DF is much cleaner than the Meow Meow. Aside from all the commotion about whether or not the crowd met my approval, I had got what I chanced on, that the band would be looser and more approachable due to the circumstances surrounding the show. Which was absolutely true. The interaction up on stage was playful at the least, and filled with witty shining moments of things said, pantomines and this exquisite arched eyebrow Colin Meloy can muster. The evening was chock full of covers, including a version of "Tam Lin" sung by Petra Haden that was very... well, it was a song that hailed a different era, but one much more recent than their usual. By the end, after the blistering electric guitar solos (of course, blistering. I don't know how else to describe it without wiggling my fingers at the top of an imaginary guitar and going "Deeedle-dee-deedle-dee-Deedle-deedle" etc.), the entire band was on its knees in some form or another, and the crowd was nuts. The cover song "Mr.Blue Sky" actually had a part where Colin made the entire crowd sit down, and then stepped into the audience to tell us a short story about a man named Jeff Lynne, who formed the original Electric Light Orchestra. It was just a pleasure to listen to, and that's almost all I've got to say. The members appeared to be having a great time, having recovered some of the original instruments that had gotten stolen a while back, and the boys behind me were loud in their praise and in belting out lyrics with me. All was good at the Doug Fir tonight.