Friday, October 19, 2007

another thursday night at the 930 club

seeing matt nathanson in concert has been about four years in the planning for me. honestly i've had conflicts every other time he's been anywhere near me. but, the wait was definitely worth it! obviously i already knew i loved all of his songs - but his stage presence is just great. think a very dirty dave barnes.

and the added bonus with this show is that ingrid michaelson opened up the show. tragically she only played for about twenty minutes - and left out my favorite song (the hat) - but she was definitely just as quirky as usual.

and after she went off we had more than an hour to kill (who wanted to see melee anyway?). so we frolicked over to duffy's (that guy's a genius, by the way) for some beers and tots. after watching endless shows about whether joe torre was going to stay or leave (he left) we decided to head back for the main act.

i guess i should mention this was a (very) early show. the doors opened at 5pm! so it was now about 7:30 and matt was about ready to take the stage. i figured it would be somewhat crowded - but i'm pretty sure the place was sold out! for an early show on a thursday night - i was shocked! and to think they had another show that night (the wallflowers) - they must have done a killing at the bar last night!

so how was matt nathanson? pretty much amazing. and except for the guitarist looking like fidel castro in his green military shirt (and he even popped the collar toward the end!) - his band was pretty much lame. although matt's personality and banter with the crowd more than made up for his pathetic band members. at one point he heard someone yell out something about the red sox....

did someone just say something about the red sox? [cheering] i was born in massachusetts. are they playing right now? [someone yells, yes!] awesome, how are they doing? [yelling] oh, they're losing? [more yelling] no, they're winning? [even more yelling] oh, it's 0-0? great! so i don't really know anything about sports - does washington have a team? [people start shouting at him] oh, they're in the national league? so that's a different league than the red sox? [lots of yelling] oh, their name is the nationals? the dc nationals? that's lame. so does everyone just adopt the baltimore orioles as their own? [at this point half of the crowd cheers and half of the crowd boos] wow. sorry, i didn't know.

ok, so back to the music. he played a nice mix of new and old stuff - mixed in with a lot of guitar tuning. i mean like a lot a lot. it was weird. and it's not like anyone would have been able to tell the difference anyway, right? so in between all of his great songs he threw in two great covers. the first he described as the best song ever written - laid by james. but then he corrected himself and said this next song was the best song ever - don't stop believin' by journey. and the crowd (obviously) went wild! the only thing that could have topped that was if they had covered soulja boy and done the dance.

and the best part about the whole night? we were home before 10! a pretty tame night compared to the one some of my coworkers had - winning itouches and six hours on a private jet. man, i always miss the good parties.

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