Concerts and perspective

Tonight Zach and I met our friend Jule for the Wild Flag concert at the Union Transfer (also formerly known as Spaghetti Warehouse and for those of us familiar with the building will always refer to it as Spaghetti Warehouse).  The opener was good, but it was a “meh” sort of good. Halfway through the first song I thought – this is the sort of music you end up hearing on the local “easy listening” rock station and ends up being half sung/hummed by people like my mom. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it was that sort of boring music that’s good for being background white noise while you’re focusing intently on something else. The whole set was like that and halfway through it I got so bored I sat on the floor against the wall and started reading from my iPhone.

Wild Flag were so much more entertaining and lively. I was immediately drawn in and entertained by the crazy loud and dancing guitarists. [For those interested, Wild Flag has two members of Sleater Kinney.]  It wasn’t until the last song that I started to wane. I don’t mind the occasional solos or off-shoots in the middle of songs, so long as they don’t go into the mind-numbingly boring Phish/Grateful-Dead-2001-Space-Odessy length. Unfortunately, the last song was getting to that length and I was starting to yawn a lot more and noticed the audience was completely lost as well. Luckily they picked up the vibe again with the last two short encores.

The next concert I want to attend is Beirut in the middle of November. Zach isn’t too keen on them though so unless I can convince Jule to come with me, I might be on my own. [Unless local web friends are interested, *hint*.]

We asked Jule for a ride back to the apartment and as he was pulling away from his parking space down the street he almost turned down the wrong way of a one-way street.
Jule: Can I go down that way? Hmmm… maybe not.
Zach: You could, but you know….
Jule: Yeah…
Me: You could, but it would be illegal.
Jule: The illegality part doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the possibility of being crushed by oncoming traffic.

I laughed and realized that my response was so straight-laced-law-abiding-citizen and his so completely opposite. I inwardly laughed and thought his perspective was much better for being more open (yet safe) than my own. I like it when I’m reminded of that and realized I need that more often.