As I was mentioning in the last post, last night Sheri, Robb and I went to see the Decemberists at the Civic Center in Asheville, NC.

The show was amazing. Anyone who owns or has heard the Hazards of Love - particularly if you only thought it was so-so - should really try to see this tour. It's a "good" album, but it is wonderful when performed live. The first half of the concert was the Hazards of Love - straight through, start to finish. For those who may not know, the Hazards of Love is a concept album. It tells a single story and there are no real breaks between "songs" - one simply flows into the next (some more obviously than others). I found it very impressive to watch the band play it all the way through without so much as a pause - through instrument changes and all. It really kept the story flowing and, most importantly, maintained the mood the tale created.

But, to my surprise, that was only half of it. After they had finished the Hazards of Love, they took about a 20 minute break before coming back to play a second set, which was much more like their usual show. That is to say, there was a fair amount of bantering with the crowd and Colin making up crazy and bizarre personal myths on stage. In this set, they played a little of everything from 5 songs to the Crane Wife (basically, all of their previous records). Those tunes, being more familiar to me, were also very enjoyable and I was glad to see a more 'typical' Decemberists show in addition to the previous musical narrative. In this set I was glad to hear The Crane Wife (3) and Chimbley Sweep and Robb was glad to hear Leslie Anne Levine (which he'd apparently had stuck in his head for a while). In an amazing instance of unexpected randomness, they ended this second set on a song by Heart of all bands - Crazy On You - which I maintain they could only pull off because they had two female vocalists with them for the performance of Margaret and The Queen from the Hazards of Love: Shara Worden (aka, My Brightest Diamond) and Becky Stark.


There was one minor downside. See, I had been carrying my camera around Asheville all day. When Larry, Sam and I went to see them a couple of years ago (at the TN Theatre in Knoxville), we specifically asked if we could take flash pictures during the show and were told "absolutely". So imagine my surprise when we get up there and there's a big orange sign on the door which literally says "no cameras of any kind". What? I asked an attendant about it, to which I was told "only camera phones - no flash". I asked why and was told "I guess the band don't want it".
I decided to pursue this conversation for just a minute. I asked the attendant if it was simply that flash photography was prohibited (I wasn't intending to use my flash anyway), to which she nodded and said "only camera phones". This irked me because those aren't remotely the same thing.
So anyway, I took my camera back to the car and went in without it. But THEN, I saw 10 or 20 people using cameras with flashes throughout the show - sometimes very obviously. Also, I can't make any sense of "I guess the band don't want it" since their website has a place for fans to upload their own photos from the tour.

In the end, I probably enjoyed the show a little more because I wasn't concentrating on taking pictures, but I really would have liked to have had a few. I'm going to post something on the Decemberists message board - maybe I'll get an explanation there.

That annoyance aside, we had all had a great time. :)

~PS

Awesome concert. We need to play guitar soon... just have to finish packing and moving first... :(