Martes 5 Oct 2010, 4:55
Mon 4 Oct – Guided by Voices, Times New Viking
Damn……that was a great show.
A month ago, I was fairly certain I wasn't gonna go to this, but the show I originally wanted tickets to sold out, so I chose to go to this one. I ended up going alone, but boy am I glad I went.
So after 6 years of being broken up, Robert Pollard decides to reform Guided By Voices with the treasured Bee Thousand-era lineup (which had dissipated SIXTEEN years ago). They brought a whole tray of beers and a bottle of tequila onstage with them, and drank and smoked while playing onstage!. They were great however. Even in his old age, Bob Pollard still has an amazing, tuneful voice (and he still does those cock rock mic swinging karate-kick moves he used to do back in the 90's!). The other band members would let loose too, with bassist Greg Demos getting really close to the crowd with his guitar-face on and guitarist Mitch Mitchell high-fiving the front row every so often (including myself!)
The majority of the songs played (somewhere around 40) were off of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes (their two most popular albums) with a few off of Propeller, Under The Bushes Under The Stars , and a couple of their many EPs. Seeing as how a lot of these songs had their studio versions recorded on a shitty tape recorder, they came alive in concert like pretty much no other songs.
The openers Times New Viking were a lot of fun! It was a guitarist, a drummer, and a lady with some strange, overdriven keyboard that kinda reminded me of the keyboard parts on Sister Ray or the thing Jack White plays in Icky Thump. Simple, but energetic indie noise-pop, and that keyboard sounded really neat! However, their studio stuff is really lo-fi to the point where it weakens their sound considerably, so just see them live.
The crowd was surprisingly fantastic! I was expecting a crowd like the ones at the New Pornographers and Sonic Youth concerts I went to (i.e. boring and lifeless), but around Hot Freaks and afterwards, a small pit started going (which got very intense at times!). Sometimes it would grow larger, but it was always a lot of fun and not overly rough and dangerous like at a metal or punk show, cause this pit was full of particularly friendly and non-threatening people. And it's always awesome to be moshing to music that is not metal or punk!
The absolute best part of the whole night was when they played Motor Away for the 1st encore, if I recall correctly. These two girls got up on stage and started singing along with Robert, then another guy came up, and within seconds everyone was climbing up on stage to sing along and dance (again, including myself!). I literally stood right in front of Robert as people were hugging and touching and singing along with him. That is by far the best thing I've ever gotten to do at a concert. The security eventually shooed everyone off the stage, but goddamn, that was like something out of a movie!!
Absolutely, unexpectedly fantastic show.