I got a chance to see The Decemberists at the Beacon last night, and it was wonderful! They’re another group that I’d never seen before, and the Beacon was as good a place as any to start off. We did have seats way up in the nosebleeds, unfortunately – about five rows from the back wall on the highest balcony. I had to lean forward and peer downwardly for the entire 90 minutes, but it was still a great show. Colin Meloy has a funny stage presence, and I really enjoyed the banter he had with a lot of the band. I’m not an enormously huge Decemberists fan, so I was a little worried that they wouldn’t play too many songs that I knew, but they ended up hitting a lot of them; “July, July”, “The Wanting Comes in Waves”, “O Valencia”, and “Sons and Daughters” were my highlights. They also did “The Chimbley Sweep” and it devolved into this big jam where Colin switched places with the drummer and the drummer came up and played harmonica in the middle of the song. And they did “A Cautionary Tale”, again stopped it halfway, and had some audience members come up onstage and reenact the battle of Trafalgar. Jen, who I went with, was freaking out over the course of the whole show, because apparently she’s in love with Colin. I don’t blame her, he’s a good singer. Great show, though. Unfortunately, I have no photos, as I came straight from a long, snowy day of classes, and I was about fifty feet above the band the whole time.
Let’s change the name of the Beacon Theater to the Bacon Theater.
I also saw Aziz Ansari (aka Raaaaaaaandy) at Think Coffee yesterday. He was just buying a coffee, looking furtive. New York is great.