Concert

I went to a cool concert last night. I was accompanied by LG and my friend David (he who invited me to the Johnny Walker event). The show was at Southpaw, the concert place right next door to my apartment. There were three bands at the show, but we skipped the first one since we'd never heard of them before. When we got to the place the second opening act, Richard Buckner, was just beginning. He is a pretty good singer-songwriter who I know a little bit about. Intrigued by this song, which was featured (for good or for bad) on a Volkswagon commercial, I went out and bought one of his CDs a while back at Used Kids. I like his music but he was a little too electric live. I expected a nice lonely man with a guitar, a glass of beer, and a tear running down his cheek. He was not any of these things. I imagine (to a much lesser degree of course) that my expectations for him and the actual event were similar to when Dylan first went electric. Although the results were not nearly the same. Anyway, I'm going off on a weird tangent, so back to the show...

The headlining act was a band called The Minus 5. Some of you (Jack, Burb) may know them from my incessant promotion of them as a "cool" band. They are comprised of a variety of people (depending on the album), but are mainly made up of Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck (of R.E.M. fame) as well as Bill Reiflen on drums and John Ramberg of bass. In addition to these folks, they are accompanied on their CDs by the likes of Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, and Glenn Kotche of Wilco, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, and a host of others. I am a big fan of the band, especially their two latest CDs ("Down with Wilco" & "The Minus 5 (the gun album)"). They were great to see live (although my tiny hope of seeing either Jeff Tweedy or Colin Meloy pop up on stage was dashed) and I think that everyone enjoyed them. As for those of you reading this post who are interested in the band, here are three songs of theirs that I fancy.
The first, from "the gun album," is called 'Cemetery Row' and features Colin Meloy as lead vocalist.
Second is a song from "Down with Wilco" called 'The Family Gardener' sung by Jeff Tweedy.
And third is another cut from "the gun album" called 'Out there on the maroon' with lead singer Scott McCaughey. Enjoy them all!