John Vanderslice is awesome. Just saw him at the Middle East upstairs last night. He has this uncanny knack for always picking opening acts that are fucking awesome. This time it was
St. Vincent. St. Vincent is a one-woman band. She playing electric guitar classical style, keyboards, sang (of course), and had some sort of weird kick-trigger box machine thingy. After her third or fourth song she invited her friend up to "help her sing", which ended up being him proposing to his girlfriend on stage. After allowing everyone to bask for a moment, she said, "OK, this next song's about murder" and proceeded to sing a song about a woman shooting her womanizing husband. Fucking awesome.
JV himself was bad-ass. It was just him and his drummer, who somehow managed to play keyboards with his right hand while holding a steady beat with his left hand and feet. He also had a guest hammer dulcimer player on a song, a guest bass player on a few songs, some guy who sang Letter to the East Coast, and about 10 drunk hipsters who sang inaudible backup on Me and My 424 (which is a love song to a four-track tape recorder). Good times.
While I was there I saw
Peter Peter Hughes, the bass player of the
Mountain Goats (who are probably the only band with whom I am more obsessed than John Vanderslice) and tried (with little success) not to be a retarded fan-boy. Sorry Peter.
After all that,
Heather and I took the quickest cab ride ever home and I drunkenly ate almost an entire thing of hummus while the cat tried to throw up on my pillow.
My head hurts now.