So I’m at a D’s concert, obviously, in a big, wide outdoor arena.  I was with friends, but I don’t remember who they were.  We got front row but way left, all the way to the edge. Yet, Colin was still somewhat center of me. Oh well.

They come out, people cheer. They start to play Hazards, but the song is all gibberish (in my head). Somehow my POV switches to a person’s video camera, which Colin has noticed and begins to sing to. It’s kind of fisheye-y.  As he sings, you can see he’s a little out of it, and he starts forgetting lyrics.  Then, out of the blue, he stops playing.  The whole band stops.  He says, “I’m sorry, but something’s not right” to the audience, then he and the other D’s proceed to pull Jenny’s organ station and Moen’s drums closer to the stage, basically putting the whole thing closer to the audience.  We erupt in cheers.

Then they start playing a really, really weird, psychedelic version of Hazards.  Everyone’s like, cool, but it’s barely audible through the speakers. So everyone starts shouting, “Turn it up!” and pointing their index fingers to the sky². There might’ve been booing involved, I don’t remember; what I do remember is Nate Query throwing his bass down, doing one of those loud whistles where you put your fingers in the corners of your mouth, and shouting, “You know what? FUCK YOU” and then leaving the stage.  I remember him wearing a weird black barbershop quartet hat, but it was black and had a lot of shiny jangly jangles on it — something, I assume, John Popper would wear.  Anyway, the rest of the band follows him offstage.

At this point I’m confused.  I turn and notice that my friends — and mostly everyone else — has left, marching in a giant swarm of humanoids towards the ticket office to demand a refund.  I hurry after them.  But about halfway there, I turn and look at the stage — and notice the D’s going back onstage and grabbing their instruments to play.  So I shout, “Looks like they’re coming back!” and suddenly there’s a stampede as everyone rushes back to the stage.  I’m running my ass off, thinking I’m gonna lose my sweet spot!

As I’m running I pass by a giant, gnarled foot, draped in a blue and yellow sundress (flowery pattern, I think) down to the ankle. I’m supposing this belonged to some giant woman, but I can’t confirm this because my alarm clock went off and woke me up.  And that’s my dream.

Finally, something interesting happens with my life, which means I can update my blog.  I feel bad, because my last blog was harping on Portlanders, calling them “two-dimensional.”  I should say some Portlanders are two-dimensional.  It was all tongue-in-cheek to begin with, I swear!

Anyway, this past weekend was, since Musicfest all the way back in September, my favorite weekend that I’ve had since moving to Portland.  Why was it my favorite weekend since moving here, you ask?  Because I got to see the Decemberists play twice, AND I GOT A BACKSTAGE PASS.

Read on, reader.As some of you may know, I am a big fan of the Decemberists.  So much so, in fact, that I have been a regular poster on their online message board, /orate, since 2005.  While not the most frequent poster there, I do post with enough volume and wit¹ that I am pretty well known.  When I lived in Boise, I was the lone Idaho poster (there was another guy for a while, but he has long since disappeared from the board).  It was nice because I had a unique location, but it sucked because I was nowhere near any other posters.

But now I live in Portland, and one of the great things I’ve been able to do is meet some fellow /orators.  It all began with Missy and Paul, with whom I went to Musicfest NW.  A great time was had, but I was broke back then and had no job, and constantly felt like a mooch.  So it felt good to have a bunch of money now and the freedom to use it as I wished!

But that’s not the point.  The Decemberists played the Edgefield, an outdoor venue in Troutdale, on July 18th and 19th.  I bought tickets for both nights².  As I waited for these two fateful days, I learned that two fellow /orators, Nate and Nate (heh, okay, Nate and Natty), were coming from Kansas City and Atlanta, respectively, essentially “trying on” Portland for size, and also to hang out with us awesome /orators.  Additionally, Guin and Emyli, boardies from here in Ptown, had tickets³.  We decided, with this many people, to enact the 2nd Annual /Orate Field Day, wherein we would go to a park and hang out and play some kind of Outside Game (not to be confused with Video Games, a popular indoor venture).  I missed the first field day, for reasons I do not remember.

Okay, that’s all backstory.  The two Nates went to Seattle to see the whole D’s show (Blind Pilot, Andrew Bird, the D’s) with Missy and Emyli on Friday, so Saturday meant they were driving into town.  Eventually we all met up and headed straight to the venue.  This was about 2pm.  Please note that there were other folks with us (Missy’s husband, Nick; their roommate Gabby on Saturday; and Guin’s husband Jeff on Sunday), and they are all very great people, but this is a /orate blog post, so it might center mostly on /orators.  I’m just saying.

The heat was something else.  It wasn’t terrifyingly hot, but it was hot enough to be Extra Sweaty.  I had arrived in my Old Skool /orate shirt.  The board has two /orate shirts, one made a couple of years ago by a very very awesome man named Chris (though the design was by someone else … Casey, I think), and one recently made by Julie and pressed? silk-screened? whatever by Missy.  They both turned out great, and I still wear the old shirt even though it’s an XL and it’s a bit big for me.  It’s also one of those thicker cotton shirts, which meant I was in Sweat Mode very early in the line waiting.  Fortunately, Missy had brought me one of the new /orate shirts, which was a light American Apparel affair that helped cut me down to Light Sweat Mode⁴.

So we waited for the gates to open, and drank McMenamins beer and hung out, etc.  The only thing of interest at this point was when Nick busted out his guitar.  I learned that Nick was left-handed, and played guitar left-handed.  This intrigued me, and I asked to borrow his guitar.  I spent the next ten minutes or so trying to figure out how to play chords upside down, because playing a guitar left-handedly if you are right-handed⁵ is damn near impossible.  But playing it upside down actually isn’t so bad.  It’s just a matter of relearning chords, which is easy if you are good at non-traditional chords.  Also if you find how to play an E chord and just barre it up and down the neck, that works too.

Anyway, to bust through this: the gates opened up, we got front row center, we waited in the nearly-blistering heat for an hour, then the bands played.

Blind Pilot was first, and they were really good.  I was a little disappointed (a little, honestly, just a tiny bit) because all of the wonderful musicians I saw live aren’t on the album.  I hope they get used on subsequent albums.

Then came Andrew Bird, who sort of blew me away.  The looping (ironically?⁶) gets repetitive after a while, but the songs were really strong and “Imitosis” is just an awesome song.  The second night he played “Dark Matter,” but he introduced it with a bunch of names, one of which being “Sweetbreads,” which made me think he was going to play the totally awesome acoustic version of the song from Fingerlings; alas, this was not to be.

Then the Decemberists came up and were fucking awesome.  As usual.  Hazards of Love is like watching a theatrical piece: it has ebbs and flows and it builds and falls and it’s just great.

One of the funny things about Saturday night was that Colin threw a pick right in my direction — and it bounced right off the top of my head, flying behind me, into the crowd.  I was bummed that I didn’t get a pick, but hey, who else can say that Colin Meloy threw a pick at their head?  (Strangely enough, this was attempt #1 of 3 to get a pick in my hand.  More on this later.)

After Hazards, the D’s go off and then come back on to play a second shorter set (shorter because of the Edgefield’s noise curfew, not because they wanted to).  Saturday’s second set was relatively par (though Oceanside was unexpected).  As they’ve been doing for the whole tour, they did play a kickass cover of “Crazy On You” by Heart, which was rad.

After the show we waited for Nick to return (Nick didn’t have tickets to the two nights, and went off to perform guitar magic) so we could leave.  But it took him too long so we went to get food instead. He ended up arriving right when we made this decision, but we still got food.  I don’t know why I’m typing all of this, it’s very trivial.  My point is that the McMenamins 1/4lb happy hour burger is Pretty Good.

Then I went home and went to sleep!

SUNDAY started with the 2nd Annual Portland /orate Field Day.  This is a fancy way of saying we ate cupcakes and played kickball.  It was boys vs. girls and yes, the girls won, mostly because we men were too distracted by their complaining and general girlishness to see that we were losing.

After the game, as we were eating cupcakes with enough icing to caulk a bathtub on them, Missy received a very important call.  It was from an important man telling her important news: that anyone who was wearing the green /orate t-shirt would be getting backstage passes after the show.

Needless to say, we were all kind of stunned.  I can’t (and don’t want to) go into details as to how these backstage passes were obtained, but let it be known that I am deeply grateful and indebted to those who procured them, and also must thank Colin and Jason, the D’s band manager, for being so totally and completely awesome and kind towards us nerdy message boardies.

At some point after getting this information is when we decided to improv a song.  Gabby has video of this song, and I will share it with you when she decides to upload it to YouTube.  Regardless, it’s silly, and I’m ridiculous.

Anyway, prior to going to the show we stopped at Guin’s house to gather ourselves.  Emyli wasn’t able to get a ticket for Sunday’s show and was left to babysit Guin’s kids (hehe, I make that sound so awful … sorry).  In the end we lost Gabby and Nick as well, as they had to drive back to Tacoma to work on Monday.  But we did pick up Jeff (Guin’s husband) and Shelby (their friend, very stinky), so it kind of evened out.

This post is getting long.

The point is that Guin and Jeff had a bunch of pirate masks.  Jeff’s a pirate in his spare time.

… I can’t believe I just typed that.

But he is, and so they had a hundred or so paper pirate masks just, you know, lying about.  So everyone⁷ at first thought, Hey, let’s wear pirate masks during the second set!  Which turned into, Hey, let’s bring ALL the pirate masks and hand them out for the second set!

My favorite part was when we decided that we⁸ would hand out the pirate masks to everyone else, but not wear them ourselves, making it extra “WTF”.  Finally, cleverness invaded our⁹ stupid idea.

The second day of music was just as good as the first.  Blind Pilot, great.  Andrew Bird, awesome.  The D’s, awesomely great.  Like I mentioned earlier, Colin threw a pick at my head.  Well on Sunday night he threw ANOTHER pick at me, which I missed.  And then, later on, he threw a pick which landed almost directly into the palm of my hand, which, mind you, was not outstretched to receive said pick.  It was destiny!

Before the D’s played, Jason, the band manager, came up and presented us with six! backstage passes.  As the people around us began to wonder just how the hell we got these passes, we just smiled and remained calm, because we were, at that moment, Total Badasses.

Then we realized there were seven of us.

Shelby somehow got short straw’d as the one who would stay behind while we went backstage.  It was a sad, sad moment, and generally kind of awkward.  But fear not, dear reader!  Because we got her in.  Read on.

As the Hazards set closed, those damnable pirate masks got passed around.  When the second set began, no one from the band really noticed that a group of people were wearing pirate masks on their head.  Now, the second D’s set from Sunday was much more awesome than Saturday.  Why?  Because they played Bachelor and the Bride, but also they played SLEEPLESS.  If you’re a D’s fan, you may not have seen that coming.  Neither did Jenny Conlee, the keyboard player; she was asking Nate, the bassist, for the chords before the song started.

Two other things: one, while doing his ridiculous spiel for “Dracula’s Daughter,” Colin FINALLY noticed the scent of weed pervading the venue.  He said something really funny regarding it and the song, but I can’t remember it well enough to reprint it in the same hilarious fashion.  So, like many stories, I’ll just say, you had to be there.

Also at some point, I think during O Valencia, is when he noticed the pirate masks.  He said, tongue-in-cheek, “We didn’t sanction those,” and asked everyone to take them off, so “we can see your beautiful faces.”  Or something like that.

Now!  The most important part.  Backstage!

Honestly, most of it is a blur because of the free PBR, but it was still awesome.  We met all of the bands, Peter Buck! from REM! was there, Shara had hurt her knee at some point and was icing it outside, so we all crowded around her like the nerds we were.  The other members of Andrew Bird’s band were there as well, Mikey and Jeremy, and they were great.  Jeremy was even kind enough to use his all access pass to get Shelby, who had been waiting patiently, backstage with us.  So thank you for that, Jeremy.

Everyone was very gracious to us, especially Nate (the D’s bassist), who looked exhausted.  We ate tacos and Missy finally got her “glare” from Colin on camera, and we didn’t make total asses out of ourselves.  All in all, a great success. And a lot of fun.

And that’s that weekend.  Thanks to Missy for setting up the backstage passes in the first place, and to all the /orators and friends and family of /orators who came out and had a blast.  I can say without hesitation that it was one of the best weekends — hell, best TIMES, period — that I’ve had here in Portland since moving.

My only regret is that I wish I had written a better blog post encapsulating it.  Oh well! 

I will end by saying that the Wednesday after this whole weekend shebang, I got on the bus to head home from work and, long story short, Andrew Bird was on my bus.

ANDREW BIRD

I know, it’s impossible to tell that it’s him, but trust me, after seeing him backstage and saying, “Your set was great” to his face (to which he mumbled, “Thanks”), I can say with assurance that it was him.  That’s his violin case, too.

THE END!

- Went to Music Millennium to get my vinyl copy of the Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love signed by members of the band.  Very weird experience, especially after making this video/song in response to this tweet by Colin Meloy, the lead singer.  I couldn’t look him in the eyes for fear of catching a glimpse of recognition … That’s the guy who did “Linda”?

- After signing, proceeded to get completely trashed with my /orate friends at Paul’s house.  Like, drunker than drunk.  I’ll put it this way: I puked.  For the first time since I was, oh, eleven.  I am not proud of this whatsoever.  In fact, it’s kind of infuriating.  It was partially because I am used to parties with Keystone Light¹.  It’s not hard to pack away a few of those in a night and not feel anything.  But I was drinking good, strong beers, and I was drinking far too many of them. There is a video of us singing “The Rake’s Song” on YouTube but if you want to see it you’ll have to search it yourself, cause I sure as hell am not posting it.  Regardless, I am so drunk I’m on the floor, semi passed out. Ugh, it makes my stomach churn just thinking about it.  I had fun and I love my friends, but I refuse to be inebriated that much ever again (especially cause my dad reads my blog, for pete’s sake!).

- The next morning found me calling in sick to work².  I slept at Paul’s mom’s house, which is in the wilds of Gresham, and besides I was hungover.  Now this would not have been a big deal whatsoever … except that my brother decided to head into the clinic that same day to get a check.  So the following conversation occured:

BRO. Hey Boss, I’m here to get a check!
BOSS. Hi Josh’s brother!  How’s Josh doing?
BRO. He’s great.
BOSS. GREAT, HUH?
BRO. Yeah, I mean, I guess he’s great ’cause he didn’t come home last night.
BOSS. EGADS!

Meanwhile I’m at the Tin Shed on Alberta trying to determine if I really want to eat biscuits and gravy³.  When I went to work the next morning I wasn’t sure if everyone knew I played “hooky”⁴.  This made the bus ride rather worrisome — would I be tested?  Tricked with questions created to deceive?  Led astray by the same people who hired me?

Instead I found out that no one else knew besides my boss, and she gave me lighthearted shit about it all day long.  God I love my job so much⁵.

- This past weekend I traveled back to Boise, just to hang out and see my friends and family for a bit.  It was a lot of fun, and a lot of really interesting things came from it.  I saw a Snuggie for the first time ever.  I wore said Snuggie, complete with a wig.  I drank a lot.  I also found out that I am an idiot and should’ve pursued a particular woman in the past, rather than shrinking back and being a socially awkward nerd.  I couldn’t help it (at the time); I was broke and felt like a loser.  Now I don’t feel like a loser at all but I am in Portland and she is in Boise.  Ugh, it’s always something, isn’t it?

So, uh, if you’re reading this, dear lady, you know who you are and maybe you should move to Portland?  That would be awesome? kthxbai

- Oh, and recently I released a free single that you can download.  It’s called “Mary! (Get Frisky!)” and you can grab it from my other website.  Here is a picture that you can click that will help guide you to a favorable destination:

- OH AND MY DAD HAS A BLOG!  He is the coolest.  Check it out!  http://rockinjohnnyb.blogspot.com

Okay that’s all! Hooray!

colin talkin to some girls

I’m not shy about my love of the Decemberists.  At one point I owned five of their t-shirts and an assortment of CDs and vinyls (some of which were all but stolen by my ex-girlfriend), and I can play almost all of their discography on guitar, and know most of the lyrics by heart.  So when the time came for them to play the Crystal Ballroom, I was excited.  Like, little girl excited.  Little girl watching the end of American Idol excited.

This was going to be a special concert because it marked the first time I was going to a show with fellow members of /orate.  /orate is the Decemberists online message board, and I’ve been a member there since 2005.  It’s really the only forum I frequent anymore (besides a couple of other forums that I check and post on occasionally), and I’ve made a lot of great friends through it.  It only seemed natural that we all go to the show together! The only problem was, the show sold out.  Quickly.  And I’m constantly poor, so I waited and it was too late and I couldn’t afford scalper prices.  But I managed to get an extra ticket from the adorably awesome Ashley, who gave it to me in exchange for a song, which I wrote just for her, and remains hers.  If you want to hear it, you’ll have to ask her first.

Anyway, long story short, I got into the show.  And I have shitty cameraphone pictures to prove it.

We were also the first in line, thanks to various /orators getting to the Crystal super early.  The rest of us arrived and just hung out.  I know people in line were pissed but meh, what can you do?  We got to the front of the stage and stayed there for the rest of the show.  Hence the following close pictures.  

loch lomond!

First up was Loch Lomond, a self-proclaimed “chamber folk” band from Portland, who have been touring with the D’s since the tour started.  They were, in a word, wonderful.  They had lots of band members who would switch instruments, which I always love.  The songs were definitely folky, the dynamic slow-LOUD-slow types which cescendoed in mere seconds.  They had a great audience who was very appreciative of every song they played.  And the omnipresent Dave Depper was there too, a Hush Records dynamo who I last saw play with Norfolk & Western at Musicfest.  Dave apparently had a kickass mustache but shaved it prior to the Portland show.  He also told a very clever whale joke, which I will not repeat on this review simply because it must be told out loud. Once Loch Lomond cleared out we waited for the Decemberists to arrive.  And then they did.  And it was Good.  

john moen and chris funk, barely visible.

While the setlist was, ultimately, uninspired (playing three of your new songs in a row, only two songs for encores, and one of those songs being only two minutes long, for example), the Decemberists always put on a good show.  Or Colin does, at least.  But one cannot fight the “ghosts” (as Colin called them) of the Crystal.  They were having technical issues and ultimately a fucked up cord and weird monitor issues cost the audience “On the Bus Mall,” as Colin traded his 12-string, thinking it the problem.  I only wish that he wasn’t so staunch on playing the 12-string for certain songs.  There might be some merit to playing “Bus Mall” on a six-string!

They sounded great, however.  Chris Funk’s guitar was a little loud at times but it was usually during songs that were meant to be loud anyway.  They played “The Island” which is always great, and “Culling of the Fold,” which is probably the most energetic songs they do.  Again, for Colin at least.  He goes nuts during that song.  That photo at the beginning of this review is from Culling.  He kicked a couple of people (including my friend and fellow /orator Lindsay) and I heard he cut a girl accidentally with his guitar, which was perched on this girl’s shoulder as he put her head in his hand and sang to her.  He gets a little creepy sometimes, let’s face it.

colin crowdsurfing

And then Colin went crowdsurfing.  Sort of.  He fell into the crowd and they held him up, at least.  Then they put him down and he was right in the middle of the crowd.  You can see that he crowdsurfed as far away from the /orate crowd as possible.  He probably thought we were going to steal his microphone or his pants or something.

Yeah, the encore was a let down.  They played “Raincoat Song” which is a cute number but it’s only two minutes long, and then they played “Sons and Daughters” and let no one up on stage except for a little girl.  At other venues (like the next night in Seattle) they let a bunch of people on stage to sing the final refrain.  What’s the dealio, Decemberists?  I know you hate the Crystal but we fans love you and want to sing “Hear all the bombs fade away” on stage with you!  Is that too much to ask?

After the show I got a picture with Uncle Paul, who is the man referenced in Colin’s 33 1/3rd book about “Let it Be”, the man who influenced Colin’s musical directions.  So that was cool.  I also got a picture with Mark, the head moderator/admin guy for /orate.  They were both super drunk, which was great.

I have officially seen the Decemberists four times now.  The peak show was January 22nd.  This one was probably third (the Boise show being fourth).  I still love them, however, and can’t wait to see them on tour for Hazards of Love.  They’re planning on playing the album front to back at each show, which should be a treat.  Unless the album sucks.  Then it could be the worst tour ever.

smoke 'em, gramma!

I really don’t have much to say, other than this will be my 100th post on the ol’ blog.  I think the transfer from my blogspot account was successful, wouldn’t you agree?

Tonight (in about an hour, really) I am going to see the Decemberists play at the Crystal Ballroom.  I have no money and yet I still got a ticket.  How, you ask?  Well a very nice lady from /orate gave me a ticket in exchange for a song.  Her name is Ashley and her username is Quag, and the song is called “Quaaaag”, and it’s all hers and no one else gets to hear it unless she allows it.  I think it’s a pretty good song, but she hasn’t responded to me yet so she might hate it.  Maybe she’s regretting the whole transaction in the first place.

Expect a review of the show on Trifecta tomorrow.

It’s going to be a lot of fun because there are a bunch of /orators who are going to be there, including one of the mods, mts.  Yes, I am a big nerd and have lots of friends on /orate who I know in real life now.  It’s cool, okay?  All the kids do it.

I also just ate a really delicious slice of pecan pie that my brother made.  It’s giving me a heart attack it was so good.

Anyway, I’m happy that I could grace your presence with 100 blog-filled posts.  Here’s hoping for 100 more!