Music: Ditty Bops

On Friday I went to a great venue in Berkeley call Freight & Salvage. The name comes from the business that was there before, a salvage yard, but that was about 40 years ago. It’s a totally cool, non-profit, coffee house and music venue. With room for about 400, it’s an intimate place.

There were definitely 400 people there for the second night of the Ditty Bops’ sold out visit. I was introduced to the Ditty Bops by my friend Staci a few years ago as her favorite band. After seeing them live, I’m headed towards that camp. Playing mostly acoustic instruments the two main girls and a couple of their friends played a show like few that I’ve been to. My ideal show goes about like this: sit down, reasonable volume (no ear plugs required), intermission instead of an encore, and small. I guess this sounds a bit like the symphony, but who to say they got it wrong? This one hit all those points. They even said on their second to the last song that it was the last one, and that they wouldn’t be leaving the stage, but that they would play an encore.

Anyway, I found a seat about 3 rows from the front where I could soak in all great tunes. With a single microphone (and pickups for the instruments) there was no place to hide. Their talent was astounding. Singing in multipart harmonies and playing stringed instruments I haven’t seen before, they definitely are at the top of their game.

They are definitely a quirky bunch. For a tour a couple of years ago they decided to take bikes on their next tour, from LA to New York. They didn’t just put them on their bus, they rode them across the country. Their new album is the first pop-up cd I’ve ever seen. Just like a pop-up kids book, the front cover has a slide down panel and the inside contains a ship that moves when you open it. Even the track list on the back is given special treatment. Only one song at a time show up in a little window in a cloud as part of a rotating list.

For some reason the video I uploaded doesn’t want to play, click the link below to view it.
Ditty Bops in Berkely

Read More Here:
http://www.thedittybops.com/

Watch More Here:
http://www.youtube.com/v/i4-LnHr34Lk
http://www.youtube.com/v/qkEaDXpqF4U

Decemberists, Knoxville & Nashville

The last two days have been great. I was able to catch the Decemberists in both Knoxville and Nashville. The two shows were in really different theaters. In Knoxville, they played the Tennessee Theater, a place where you’d be just as likely to see an opera. It had two levels where everyone had a great view. From the top level we could easily see the stage and were able to sit the whole time, a luxury at a rock concert. In Nashville at City Hall all the tickets were general admission with barely any standing room. My friends from Vanderbilt found a great spot right near the stage. The feel of the second show was entirely different. Perhaps it was because I was closer, but I really think the fact that everyone was crammed in took the energy level up a notch. At one point, Colin Meloy, the lead singer, put the band to sleep and had the entire crowd sit on the floor and be quiet.

Gillian Welch, an amazing blue grass singer, came out for two songs. It was a lot of fun to see two great artists play together. download here, 100mb.

Both nights they played the Mariner’s Revenge for an encore. It’s definitely one of their most entertaining tracks. If you haven’t heard it, the story goes like this, two men are in the belly of a whale when one tells the other the story of how their “lives intertwine”. Shortly after a boy father dies, his mother takes a young new lover who leaves her saddled with debt. On her deathbed the boy’s mother asks him to find this evil man and get revenge. After many years the now grown boy hears about a sailor who matches the description, so he decides to hunt him down. He sets sail with a band of privateers, after several months they find the ship and as they’re about to attack, a giant whale attacks both ships, kills the crew of both leaving only the boy and the sailor, then the boy tells him the story of hunting him down to get revenge. download here, 200mb.