Andy and I both love music, and love going to concerts. We're lucky enough to live close enough to a wide range of venues that get visited quite often by a diverse array of bands. Andy has much better taste in music than I do, truth be told, and it's rubbed off on me. We got to know each other in the very beginning of our relationship by sharing music and going to concerts.
The Showbox in Seattle is one of our favorite venues, and we've seen quite a few shows there. One of our first dates was there, seeing the band Elbow. Both Andy and I don't like getting squished in crowds, we really prefer having seats. Seating in the Showbox is pretty minimal, but if you can grab them there are some really good views. The trick is to get in before everyone else by going to the Green Room, the bar attached to the Showbox. Green Room gets to enter before any of those poor people shivering in the rain in the line outside.
The Showbox has been around forever, it keeps some of its glam around with its chandeliers. There are photos up in the Green Room that show that Duke Ellington once played there.
I like the challenge of trying to take concert photos that aren't totally and completely blurred.
Here's Elbow:
We just went to the Shins show last week and sat next to the drunk couple posting to facebook from their iPhones. Friends don't let friends drunkbook.
Here's the Shins:
We also go to other, more obscure bands. One of the most surreal was to Abney Park, the steampunk band from around here. Everyone. Everyone was dressed in steampunk gear. Also the club was underground, so it felt like you had just stepped through a timeslip and we were the odd people out. It was very, very cool.
This is Abney Park, I wish I could have gotten more pictures of the costumes people were wearing in the crowd, too:
We've also gone to some big headliners, more mainstream bands. One of the best shows I've ever been to was Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor is such a performance artist, and the sets were incredible. There were scrims on stage that served as huge LED-like backgrounds, and some were even interactive.
One of the things about concerts these days is that there are no lighters, really. Mostly cellphones, waving in the air. Like here:
One of the LED-like sets, showing a creepy forest of doom:
My favorite album from NIN is Year Zero, which is all about government conspiracy to subdue the masses, adding things to the drinking water, big brother is watching you, freedom of speech is in danger. I find it like a modernized way of exposing people to the same ideas posed in books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.
Here they had a set with all these 'security cams' set up, and some were live feeds from the audience. Made you wonder if the screen showing a bathroom stall was stock footage or not.
All these concerts make you stay up pretty late, but it's usually fine. Andy and I are night owls, me moreso. Although once we got caught in a parking lot in our Mini for three hours after a Radiohead concert and it was four in the morning before we got home.
This was us at about hour number two post-concert:
Anyhow, these are just a sample. This summer we have quite a few more concerts to go to. Coldplay, Neko Case, Flight of the Conchords, probably others once we get word of them!
Rothko. Unimpressed by music.
