London, World Cup Qualification, Monsters of Folk and The Decemberists

This is going to be a long and rambling post. Most of it is going to be specific information about the two concerts I saw this week. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Last weekend was a rather nocturnal one for me. Sunday night found me trying desperately to sleep "early" and utterly failing until 7:30, which made going to class at 1 pretty painful (and believe me, I know how sad that is). Monday night I didn't manage to sleep until 2 a.m., and woke up on account of a too-early alarm at 4:30 before getting up at 5:30 to start my epic London adventure.

It was a really foggy morning. You probably can't tell very well from this photo, but even in the train station there was fog about the rafters. I would have appreciated it a lot more had I not been so exhausted.

The train ride to Paris passed in a haze. I arrived at Paris Montparnasse and had to cross the city on the number 4 metro line to change trains (not to mention going through all of the metal detecting and passport checking hassles that accompany international travel). I arrived in London about 1 p.m., and wandered in a giant square around the two train stations (London St. Pancras and King's Cross) before finally finding King's Cross Road, which, in a seeming deliberate departure from my assumptions, does not at all border King's Cross station. If you were wondering, by the way, if I went to see Platform 9 and three-quarters, the answer is yes. However, it looks nothing at all like Hollywood wanted me to believe, and I sort of wish I hadn't gone. The photo at the right is the area between the signs for 9 and 10. That side trip actually does not belong here, chronologically.

After wandering, I went straight to the hostel. The hostel was an old converted courthouse, right next to a police station. The computer lab was in what used to be a courtroom, and they'd kept all the furniture so that if you wanted you could sit in the witness stand, or where the judge or the jury would sit, to surf the net. I didn't manage to get a photo of that room, which is a shame because it was the coolest part. The walls were all painted in jarring colors, except for my floor, which was blue. I was thankful. I think staying on the orange floor would have been, perhaps, more than I could handle. I was in a dorm of 12 beds, which basically meant a bank of bunk beds with individual compartments -- it was a lot like sleeping in a cubby, and kind of awkward because no matter what time you came to the hostel there was at least one person sleeping, so you could never turn the light on or make any noise. In the photo, the bunk with the suitcases next to it was mine. It was "number H".

I tried and failed to take a nap for multiple reasons. It was bright and noisy, mostly, as people kept checking in and walking around. Finally I got up and started wandering around. I bought some mediocre fish and chips from a kebab stand (because it was the most stereotypical thing I could have eaten) and -- wait for it -- a Dr. Pepper. The DP was really exciting, since I hadn't had one in several months and have been missing it. Sadly, the UK formula (and packaging, but that's not really important) is different enough that it wasn't entirely satisfying. I called the concert venue to ask after their camera policy, and was surprised when I was told that there were strictly no cameras and no cell phones allowed at the show. So don't expect any snapshots of Monsters of Folk, but believe me when I tell you it was epic.

So I went to Starbucks, partially from the shock of seeing one, and got a double espresso to help me stay awake, and then to the nearest Underground station. After some initial confusion caused by the stop I was trying to get to, Limehouse, being a different color than all the other Underground stations, I got on the Northern Line southbound and changed to the Docklands Light Rail to get to the concert venue. I stood in line for about two hours feeling really silly, because even though there was a huge line of ticketed people, I was the only one for over an hour in the "ticket collection" line (apparently they don't say will-call in the UK?)

The waiting paid off, though, and ended up just right of center on the front rail. I met some kids who were standing near me, one from Norway and one from Ireland, who'd met up in London to see the show. Among us we'd traveled quite a way, so that was pretty amusing. Afterward we shared a ride in the cab of the most inept driver in London, who was reprimanded by the police for not using the "shiny things on the side of his car" (in the words of the angry constable) as we were getting out. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The concert was amazing. There was no opener, and they played three hours solid, including almost all of their eponymous record and a lot of tunes from their individual catalogs. Bright Eyes was the heaviest played, maybe because there are two members of Bright Eyes in the band (Mike Mogis and Conor Oberst). The Bright Eyes songs on the setlist were Soul Singer in a Session Band, We Are Nowhere and It's Now, Smoke Without Fire (with M. Ward, as it's recorded), Kathy with a K's Song (duet with M. Ward), Lime Tree (duet with Jim James), The Big Picture, At the Bottom of Everything, and a very folky Hit the Switch. I might be missing some of them. A few of those were just Conor on guitar and Mike Mogis on pedal steel or mandolin, but mostly they were converted into duets. I absolutely loved the Conor/M. Ward Kathy with a K's Song.

The internet lies when it says that M. Ward played O'Brien. I wished really hard for that to happen, but it didn't. However, he did play To Save Me, and Chinese Translation, and that was enough for me. I've so far been unsuccessful at finding a setlist -- there are a few floating around the internet, but they're each wrong in several ways.

Conor was rambunctious, making jokes about the Queen ("London, you're a wonderful son of a bitch -- I'm talking about the Queen"), pouring beer on the snare drum in the middle of a song, standing on the bass drum and stomping on a tom. During the encore, which I think was At the Bottom of Everything, Whole Lotta Losin', Another Travelin' Song, and (I think?) His Master's Voice. After At the Bottom of Everything, Conor had managed to knock over half the drumset, and they had to have a break for the drummer and several guitar techs to try and piece it back together. He ended by shoving his piano off of its platform and being sort off stage by a tech.

The other members of the band (and their drummer, Will Johnson from Centro-matic) appeared to be much more sober. Jim James was giving lessons in saying "thank you very much" in Spanish, and referring to his "sons" Conor Oberst and "Montgomery" Ward. That was about it for banter, though, and after the show the security guards hurried everyone out.

The next day I went to the Tate Gallery and wandered around looking at modern art. Modern art is not my favorite thing ever. I did like one of Jackson Pollock's later pieces (#14, I think?) and there was a giant Monet painting of, you guessed it, water lillies that I enjoyed. The weirdest thing by far was a room full of projected Paul McCarthy videos. Really strange.

After that I just sort of wandered around Westminster and over to Trafalgar Square. Mostly because I felt that I should rather than really being interested in doing touristy things. I'd done those things before, and really the only thing that feels novel about London is asking after an ATM and then realizing you should have said "cash machine". I stopped into a pub for someplace to sit down and listened for a bit to the two ladies speaking Dutch at the table next to me.

The depressing thing about London was that the sun pretty much sets at 4:30 or so in the afternoon -- and by the time it's dinner time, it's been dark for hours and it feels much later than it is. I went back to my hostel and had some pretty decent green curry at the Thai place across the street from it. There was this pair of people leaving and I overheard them say they were going to the Ireland vs. France match, so I had to ask what was up. They said they were headed to the only pub nearby with the game on, and explained where it was. I finished my meal and showed up for the second half of the game. France was up down by one goal, but fortunately it was the second of two matches, and they'd won the first one. All was not lost yet. But in overtime, France scored a goal that should never have happened, since the ball bounced off of Henry's hand. The game ended and everyone was angry. The English folk in the pub weren't rooting for anyone -- some of them were rooting against Ireland and some of them were rooting against France, but they pretty much all united in their anti-French team sentiment after that happened. Every newspaper I saw for the rest of the time in London and on the trains home had the same articles, about the handball incident and the Irish demands for a replay being quashed. Definitely no fun...seems like it might have soured the whole World Cup gig.

The next day was mostly spent idly, until the Decemberists show. I got there about two hours early, and stood in line with a couple of Americans who were working on their masters degrees in linguistics and museum studies respectively. The whole line was just full of American accents. It was a wonder any Londoners actually got in to see the show, though to be fair it was the second of two nights. I had to collect my ticket from will-call again, and got up to the front, where I again met the kids around me. It was one kid's birthday, and that comes into play way later. The couple behind me were pretty hardcore fans, it seemed, even having gone to Portland to see them in their hometown. The crowd was in a really good mood, and no one was pushing -- or smoking! -- and I didn't get beer spilled on me once. Emmy the Great opened. And by that I mean, came out promptly, played exactly thirty minutes, and then there was a maybe ten minute set change, followed by a few minutes of Pink Floyd's Meddle. The English don't share our lazy ideas about how late concerts should go, apparently. That, or there's a noise curfew.

The first set was the Hazards of Love in its entirety, with not even a hello at the beginning and no break between songs. I was told on the phone that there was a strict no-camera policy, which didn't turn out to be the case. I was pretty bitter about having been lied to, but I did get a few shots with my phone to come out relatively clear.

Highlights were any song with the Queen singing (Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond). She was excellent, and that's her and the shadowy Chris Funk on the left. My personal favorite was (and really, has always been) the Rake's Song -- it was Colin on guitar and vocals, and Nate on bass, and the rest of the band furiously playing drums. Really fun.

After the album was completed, they took a fifteen minute break and came back out for a set of songs taken from the last several albums. Colin ruthlessly quashed the crowd's chanting for the Tain, saying they'd just finished a whole hour set and were not about to play a twenty minute song.

The setlist, as I remember it, was The Crane Wife 3 ("and now we'll go directly into the songs about gypsies, shall we?"), Shiny, Yankee Bayonet, The Legionnaire's Lament, Billy Liar, 16 by 32, and O! Valencia. There was a lot of audience participation in Billy Liar and 16 by 32, in which Colin renamed my new friend the birthday boy "Steve" and used him to divide the crowd. I think it made his night, and possibly his life. The encore was Eli the Barrowboy and The Mariner's Revenge Song, at which time the giant inflatable orca that someone had brought for crowd circulation, and which had been confiscated "until the proper time" by Colin Meloy finally came into play.

Mariner's Revenge, if you don't know it, is almost 9 minutes long, and always accompanied by lots of theatrics, live. The audience is instructed in how to scream like it's being swallowed by a whale -- the photo above is Colin and Chris telling us what the sign is. The drummer plays a floor tom and a tambourine, mostly one with the other -- he shattered three tambourines into pieces during the course of the song. He's at the mic on the left wearing a piece of one of them on his head.

After the show I hung around for a while. Usually the Decemberists are pretty good about signing things and meeting fans...however, since they were only playing two gigs in the UK, they didn't so much have a tour bus. Nor did the venue so much have a back entrance accessible from the street, since everything is built rather close together in London. I gave up after maybe 45 minutes and took the Underground back to the hostel. And man, Underground stations are far apart compared to, say, metro stops in Paris.

The trip was totally worth it. Although I can't really think of anything I like more than going to concerts, so that's probably a factor.