Continuing the Tradition

It seems that every year for quite a few years now, awesome concerts have happened in the vicinity of Halloween. Do people just like to tour in fall? Is fall in the midwest just that awesome? (yes, by the way)

This year is no exception, of course. Otherwise why would this post be happening? In fact, this is just one of two shows within proximity to Halloween....next Saturday will bring me The Mountain Goats at the Cedar Cultural Centre. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about a 3 hour show that was the fastest 3 hours of my entire life. It felt like I sat down, magic happened, and then it was over all too soon. I also found myself wondering why I had ever thought that close to $60 per ticket was egregiously too high of a price to pay for that show and had needed to be essentially talked into it. Why why?

I speak of an Evening With Monsters of Folk. I've mentioned this band to you before, just prior to their album release. I did mean to do an album review immediately following the release, but I've been meaning to do a lot of album reviews and none of them have happened. I'm not going to apologize to you all for that, but I will apologize to the members of the bands whose albums I was going to review, because I mostly had nothing bug complimentary things to say about the albums. But very few people listen to my opinion on music anymore anyway.

Regardless. Monsters of Folk is Conor Oberst (who is pretty much in the top 3 most amazing people in the world), Mike Mogis (who helps out a lot of people and forms the other stable half of Bright Eyes (probably my favorite band), M. Ward (who I had respect for, but now that I have heard him perform live I have TREMENDOUS respect for and will proceed to purchase all of his albums), and Yim Yames (AKA Jim James from My Morning Jacket...who I thought was a bit boring until I heard him singing live last night and realized how ridiculously awesome he is). And they put on one hell of a show. There was no opening band. Just them. Doing their "supergroup" stuff along with things from their respective catalogs. Which meant that, for the first time ever, I got to hear Bright Eyes live. I've been listening to Bright Eyes since 2003 and I've never ever ever ever ever seen them perform live, so I was really hoping that last night since Conor and Mike were on the same stage, that would finally happen. And happen it did. They sang several songs, all of which I liked, one of which I learned was written in the parking lot/backstage of the 400 Bar right here in Minneapolis. But! The best song. Was the first song. 3 songs into the set, I heard the instrumentation for "Soul Singer in a Session Band" (which is a pretty fantastic song, but not my favorite), and I thought.....this is really going to happen. I'm finally going to hear Bright Eyes live. And hear it I did. And there were actually tears in my eyes for the duration of it because I was so happy that after 6 years I'd finally gotten to this moment.

And so....thank you Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis. For that moment after so long.

The rest of the concert was spectacular, but those 4 odd minutes were some of the happiest of my recent life.

Everyone..........please check out this band. There's more amazing talent among those 4 individuals than in entire ROOMS full of people sometimes. This is something rare, something special, and something that only comes around a few times per generation.