Last night's concert
Feb. 25th, 2011 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amanda_loddenLast night CJ took me to see a band he really likes, Asylum Street Spankers, who are on their Farewell Tour.
There was a minor hiccup as we were sitting at our table before the show started, and CJ asked me how much of their music I liked. I told him that I couldn't really remember many specifics (except for their cover of Nine Inch Nails' Closer-- the Spankers are a bluegrass/folk band), but I remembered listening to all three of his CDs of them, and liking them overall. He looked at me oddly and told me he only had two of their CDs, and in the ensuing "Wait, which albums? No, I remember something called Squirrel Nut Zippers too" conversation, I realized I had conflated the band with another band.
No worries, though-- the Spankers were good, and there's a general rule of thumb of "if the band has a fiddle, Amanda will probably like the show" that held true. Christina, the female lead singer, has a wonderful voice too, which certainly doesn't hurt any. CJ has his own review, which leaves me free to talk just about the parts that I liked best.
At one point, 4 of the 7 band members left the stage, and as Christina explained that they were going to give some of the band a potty break, she pulled out.... a saw. As in: a thing you use to cut wood. By this point in the show, we'd already had a bit of jug-playing, and at some point in my past, probably on an episode of Hee-Haw, I have seen someone "play" a saw by making it twang, used sort of like a triangle in the music-- a single note at a time, as a highlight. I groaned inwardly, thinking "Really? I know they're folksy and all, but really? They're going to go this hokey? Ugh." And then Christina picked up a bow, bent the saw into a curve, and proceeded to play it almost as though it were a small cello, and as the primary instrument in the piece.
It was the most hauntingly beautiful thing I've ever heard. The melody itself was lovely, but the true "ohmygod" factor was the metal's natural tendency to want to repeat a vibration all the way down the length of the saw, creating sort of a ghostly lingering to each note even as the next note was being played.
Today, I am struck with the same feeling that I have pretty much every time I hear a fiddler, which is "I should really learn to play the fiddle." I'm trying to ignore it, because I should also really write more, and I should really learn to sew (er, again), and I should really learn woodworking-- all of which stem from the same base reason of "because it's an art I enjoy." But I confess, I've already Googled from prices on a fiddle, and it turns out that Amazon has a perfectly reasonable student violin for $50, plus some highly-rated "teach yourself" materials that would bring the total order to less than $100. And maybe I'll pick up an extra bow that I don't mind getting all torn up as I play around with a saw. I doubt I'd ever be able to recreate the feeling from Christina's performance last night, but it's still a nifty idea, and I want to explore it.
There was a minor hiccup as we were sitting at our table before the show started, and CJ asked me how much of their music I liked. I told him that I couldn't really remember many specifics (except for their cover of Nine Inch Nails' Closer-- the Spankers are a bluegrass/folk band), but I remembered listening to all three of his CDs of them, and liking them overall. He looked at me oddly and told me he only had two of their CDs, and in the ensuing "Wait, which albums? No, I remember something called Squirrel Nut Zippers too" conversation, I realized I had conflated the band with another band.
No worries, though-- the Spankers were good, and there's a general rule of thumb of "if the band has a fiddle, Amanda will probably like the show" that held true. Christina, the female lead singer, has a wonderful voice too, which certainly doesn't hurt any. CJ has his own review, which leaves me free to talk just about the parts that I liked best.
At one point, 4 of the 7 band members left the stage, and as Christina explained that they were going to give some of the band a potty break, she pulled out.... a saw. As in: a thing you use to cut wood. By this point in the show, we'd already had a bit of jug-playing, and at some point in my past, probably on an episode of Hee-Haw, I have seen someone "play" a saw by making it twang, used sort of like a triangle in the music-- a single note at a time, as a highlight. I groaned inwardly, thinking "Really? I know they're folksy and all, but really? They're going to go this hokey? Ugh." And then Christina picked up a bow, bent the saw into a curve, and proceeded to play it almost as though it were a small cello, and as the primary instrument in the piece.
It was the most hauntingly beautiful thing I've ever heard. The melody itself was lovely, but the true "ohmygod" factor was the metal's natural tendency to want to repeat a vibration all the way down the length of the saw, creating sort of a ghostly lingering to each note even as the next note was being played.
Today, I am struck with the same feeling that I have pretty much every time I hear a fiddler, which is "I should really learn to play the fiddle." I'm trying to ignore it, because I should also really write more, and I should really learn to sew (er, again), and I should really learn woodworking-- all of which stem from the same base reason of "because it's an art I enjoy." But I confess, I've already Googled from prices on a fiddle, and it turns out that Amazon has a perfectly reasonable student violin for $50, plus some highly-rated "teach yourself" materials that would bring the total order to less than $100. And maybe I'll pick up an extra bow that I don't mind getting all torn up as I play around with a saw. I doubt I'd ever be able to recreate the feeling from Christina's performance last night, but it's still a nifty idea, and I want to explore it.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 04:55 pm (UTC)Glad you had fun!