A bit of a delay on the recap of recent events. On Tuesday afternoon I had a small stye removed from my eye lid, which meant I was unable to wear a contact lens in that eye. It gave me the choice of either wearing my glasses (which had prescription that was last current before most people even knew who the band Nirvana was) or wearing only one contact. I choose the later, and let's just say it was interesting very interesting over the last few days.
She's just saying had a similar entry today that reflected on the fun of having sucky vision. Boo hiss to sucky vision.
Finally today I am back to normal (or as normal as it gets) vision. So, on with the real recap from last Sunday.
It was Easter and I was having an early Easter dinner with The Teacher's family. We enjoyed our lovely rainy Astoria weather and feasted on some fine food. Of course, that wasn't our only plan for the day. So, later in the afternoon we hit the road and went to Portland.
A brief stop in Longview for some gas and the non-Oregonian experience of pumping your own gas. Yep, only Oregonians would take a photo of this fun experience. Perhaps it's the lack of gas fumes we normally experience that when we are actually close to them we react in odd ways. Of course The Teacher would most likely state that the fumes had nothing to do with my behavior.
With all that said, it was concert time! Our first concert together, in fact.
We made our way to the Wonder Ballroom, which was not very crowded and made it extremely easy to be nice and close for the show. That's how I like my concerts: nice and close.
Sky Larkin opened the show. I had been listening to their debut album The Golden Spike prior to the show and it was growing on me, so I was looking forward to seeing how it would be live.
The interaction with the crowd was good and early into the show, the lead singer Katie, announced that it was her birthday and she had been given a birthday cape. I think something was lost in translation there, but she put it on and played with a lot of energy, as the other band members did too (even with out their capes).
At one point the members of Los Campesinos! came out to sing happy birthday. I took a photo while they shot video:
Overall a great performance from Sky Larkin. Towards the end of the show Katie brought her guitar into the crowd and played from the floor.
Next up was Los Campesinos! whom I was really looking forward to seeing live. They certainly had a lot of energy on their albums, and I was hoping that the live experience would deliver the same thing.
Indeed they brought it. I think my only gripe would be that the vocals were a bit distorted by the high volume. It helped tremendously that I knew what they were saying even thought I couldn't understand it completely during the show.
Los Campesinos! played most of their songs from Hold On Now Youngster and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. I was slightly bummed that they didn't play the song titled in my previous blog entry. ;)
Towards the end of the show three of the Campesinos came into the crowd and played. It was pretty cool, except it was hard to see unless you were really close or really tall. There were no lights focused in that location as well, so it was hard to see what was really happening, but it was a very nice gesture from the band. Overall, it was a great show. As the
review on Oregonlive stated: "Next time, don't miss them. No excuses."
I was very happy to bring The Teacher along and we already have plans for another show next Friday. Next up: Dan Deacon.
