Belle And Sebastian At Benaroya 2010

Kim pointed out that this is the third concert I've dragged her to this year. I think that's a record for us. If you know anything about Kim's upbringing you might find it weirdly ironic that she's not very fond of attending concerts. But she can be a great sport.

And a hot date! Actually, this is the look you get when you interrupt her at Tetris. She just got finished bragging about how good she was -- do you hear that? That sound? Listen to how fast the pings are.. One of her most reveled and extremely rare pleasures in life is casually crushing me at games. If you want to delight her and angrify me, for example, just bring up the topic of Wii bowling.

The planning for this concert started back in July when B+S announced a Seattle date. Actually, they announced a San Francisco date in May when they were wrapping up recording in LA for B+S Write About Love and I was already trying to work an angle on a combo visit to the then-PB-based inlaws. But machinations aside, I spent the summer in intense anticipation.

The story on how the tickets were announced, released, sold, and distributed is too painful for polite reading, but let's just say that when I walked up to the box office window to pick up my tickets (yes *every* single person who attended had to go to will call!) I was armed with the detritus from my scuffles with the front-of-house "production company" in the weeks leading up to the show: I had sixteen (actual number!) wristbands, three printed receipts, two flyers and all the postmarked envelopes -- my trove of evidence just in case I needed to call my lawyer.

At some point in August I think we made the connection that we wanted to do something with Chris for his birthday (which is today! Pinch him if you're near him -- isn't that a birthday tradition?) and since Chris went with me to my very first B+S concert a few years ago it seemed like a good fit to make it an evening out.

Here we are after supper, waiting for the doors to open. Of course I insisted that we go super-early because I had no idea how the box-office situation was going to work out. I wanted enough time before the show to account for me throwing a ticketing-inspired faux-hipster fit of volcanic angst -- and the subsequent arrest, booking, and bailing out of jail that I was anticipating. But my worry was mostly for naught as it turned out we got decent seats together in about 30 seconds. So yeah, we ended up with some time on our hands before the show.

Which left us targets for scams like this -- the promise of front-center tix. They said, we'll text the winner in the intermission after the opening act. Of course once we got seated I discovered that my iPhone/ATT coverage did not include Row P of the S Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall. Yeah, rub my sketchy ATT coverage my face you bums.

But we had plenty to amuse ourselves with in the wait. Kim had discovered the Killer Otters of Bainbridge (check out her FB posts if you don't believe me) and.. shall we say.. piqued Nat's interest at dinner. You'd be suprised how much milage you can get out of savage otters with razor-sharp teeth and indeterminate morals.

Somehow one or two people managed to get into the auditorium before us. But we were in the first handful, that's for sure.  So we had a good chance to scope out the B+S demographic as people poured in. I was surprised at how many yoots were there. This band started its long and simmering heyday in the mid-90s when a bunch of the crowd was in diapers. There were of course plenty of oldsters like us, and even a few people in their 50's and 60's who were probably not relatives of the band-members. Cool.

Once in a while I would see a person with large hair -- like the dude with the monster 'fro or the lady with the gorged-pineapple beehive 'do -- and pray to the seat-gods that they wouldn't plop down in front of me. My prayers were largely answered, although we did have an Asian-themed Iriquois of inscrutable gender sitting in front of us, but they turned out to be very gentlepersonly.

The opening act was The Trashcan Sinatras. I think they came up around the same time as B+S and they're a modest and sweet Scottish band. Three guitars and a groovy percussionist. Somewhere I read that they usually did a four song set before the show, but we got ten songs at least. Since I don't have a deep pop listening pedigree I didn't get some of their stuff -- Chris pulled a some references to George Harrison and and Monkees songs, which was cool. I had heard they wrote songs for Japanese artists and toured there often, even covering some Beatles for Japanese commercials. They just don't have enough lyrical teeth for me, but they're not hard on the ears.

Here we are during intermission. I think we had moved past the Otter Horror and had started talking about something that really scared me -- the tyrannical calculus of babysitter and ferry schedules that would determine our bolting time. Yes, the dirty backside of middle-aged date nights.

But then the lights went down and the place went wild. Well, as wild as seated aging hipsters can get after a large dinner -- applause, a few stray catcalls, and some bellowing from The Drunk Guy.

The opening was pretty gentle -- Expectations, the first track from Tigermilk, an older classic but not a must-have or an anthem by any stretch.

The band played 5 or 6 songs from the new album, which was cool. Of course there were some expected songs -- Piazza New York Catcher and If You're Feeling Sinister and Boy With The Arab Strap -- but there were a couple lovely sleepers, like Lord Anthony (probably included as a commentary on bullying stories in the US media) and Dog On Wheels.

Since this is my second B+S show, I couldn't help but compare.  Here are a couple observations from this show:

1) Benaroya Hall isn't a great venue for this band. They sounded muddy for most of the night -- I got a sense that the sound people were struggling with balance the whole time and I'm pretty sure some of that had to do with the super-live acoustics of the largish room. Could have also been just that the venue staff hasn't done much rock-and-roll.

2) They made a larger effort to "get involved" with the audience: Stevie's singalong thing for I'm Not Living In The Real World, and Stuart's makeup theatrics for Lord Anthony. And of course pulling people onto stage for the last couple songs.

3) Dancing -- A lot of the newer songs are not exactly danceable but are certainly much less book-mopey than early B+S. Hmmmm.. Stuart definitely had way more happy feet action this time. Of course that led to a bit of confusion in the audience. A couple people stood and danced through a few of the songs but their chemically enhanced self-absorption kept them from noticing that the crowd generally was happy with letting Stuart do the dancing. So yeah, we got to see a bit of collalateral tortured-jello-tree and drowning-poodle action. C'est la vie.

4) Yes, we are now three for three (or four for four if you count Okkervil River) on this year's concerts featuring Men With Tambourines. Tinkle tinkle baby!! To quote AC Newman from Maybe There Are Ten Or Twelve -- make of that what you will.



But too soon it was over.  Chris and Nat left just after Dog On Wheels and Kim and I stayed for a couple more songs, but by then the place was a moshpit.  We left after Boy With The Arab Strap and I heard them start Cuckoo..  Looks like that was the last song before two encores (setlist here, but don't trust it completely -- the listmaker missed the Judy encore, and there's no way they played We Rule The School.. I would have cried for that one I'm sure).

On the ferry ride home Kim was fairly generous with her appreciation for the evening, especially being out and about with Chris and Nat. She did point out that this band seems pretty stuck on working out Stuart's issues from high school. Fair enough, but heck, one way or another, aren't we all still working out our high school nonsense? I say: Let he who has not moped a snub cast the first eraser.