Desaparecidos with Birthday Suits at First Ave, 8/28/13

-



Birthday Suits
I try to write about the shows that I go to. Rock concerts are one of my favorite things, but they are fleeting experiences, and it's easy to forget the little magics that make them what they are. I failed to blog about this show for too long, and I fear I have lost some details. Here goes anyway.

Birthday Suits opened. They were a strange, two piece band from the Twin Cities -- a gritty, loud guitar, and a long-haired, head-banging drummer who was fond of theatrics. At one point, he was playing with fistfuls of drumsticks in each hand. During one song, he tied a harmonica to his head with coils and coils of pink surveying tape. The lyrics were incomprehensible, and the music was not my favorite, but there was something really captivating about this band. There are worse ways to open the
show than with a trainwreck.

Desaparecidos: Conor Oberst, Landon Hedges, and Matt Baum
Desaparecidos released one album in 2002 and then broke up. They played a reunion show at the Concert for Equality in the summer of 2010, and I drove to Omaha with some friends to see it. When, last year, they kicked off a short tour in Minneapolis, I went. A few live shows was really all I was hoping for, but then they started to release new music. Over the last several months, they've released three 7" records -- 6 new tracks! At this most recent show, the band announced they'd spent the last week in Battle Lake, Minnesota, hanging out and writing four new songs. They didn't play any of them (they weren't "tight" yet) but I'm excited to hear them soon.

Desaparecidos (L to R): Conor Oberst, Landon Hedges,
Matt Baum, and Denver Dalley
The band is fronted by Conor Oberst, whose on-stage politics will be familiar to Bright Eyes fans. Where Bright Eyes shows are occasionally an opportunity for Conor to express his political views in front of an audience, Desaparecidos is all about politics. It has all the anger of "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and To Be Loved)" in every song. In concert, it's loud and energetic. People mosh, and Denver Dalley shakes his majestic hair around like some kind of rock god. It's a good time.

The band played all of their new releases, and lots off of their one full length from 2002. Here's the setlist:

The Left is Right
Denver Dalley's epic hair.
The Underground Man
The Happiest Place on Earth
Manana
Financial Planning
Mall of America
Backsell
Man and Wife, the Latter (Damaged Goods)
Damaged Goods
Te Amo Camila Vallejo
Survival of the Fittest / It's a Jungle Out There
$$$
Greater Omaha
___

MariKKKopa
Anonymous
Hole in One




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2025 Year in Review

-
Image
 Here’s a quick recap of my highlights for the year 2025. January We began the New Year in Omaha and roundtripped home to Knoxville through an ice storm. I learned to make orecchiette by hand. Construction finally began on my long-awaited lab space at work. February I baked a lot of sourdough using the starter that survived our move home from Australia. I stayed inside a lot with the cat on my lap. I saw Adeem the Artist play the Blue Plate Special in Knoxville and went to Nashville to see Christian Lee Hutson play the Blue Room. I gave a seminar in Pittsburgh, which was fun. Construction continued on the lab. My mom had spinal surgery, necessitating a trip to Oklahoma. March In March we protested unsavory actions by our government, including massive threats to science funding. I saw Bright Eyes in Knoxville and in a cavern in Middle Tennessee and Tulsa with Stephanie. I visited some Cherokee historical sites with my folks in NE OK before I drove home to TN. I stopped in Nashville ...
Read more

2022 in Concerts

-
Image
Living in Perth had many perks, but the biggest downside was the lack of live music. Since moving home from Australia, I've been making up for lost time and seeing as many shows as I can. It was fitting that my first run of shows back was to see Bright Eyes, my longtime fave, who were touring in support of their long-awaited record Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was , released at the beginning of the pandemic. Here's a list of what I saw in 2022. The Bright Eyes Tour 1. Bright Eyes with Christian Lee Hutson at the Sylvee, Madison, WI 3-25-22 2. Bright Eyes with Christian Lee Hutson at the Chicago Theatre, Chicago, IL 3-26-22 3. Bright Eyes with Christian Lee Hutson at the Pageant, Saint Louis, MO 3-30-22 4. Bright Eyes with Christian Lee Hutson at Old Forester's Paristown Hall, Louisville, KY 3-31-22 5. Christian Lee Hutson album release in-store performance at Grimey's in Nashville, TN 4-1-22     Best day ever. We ran into Christian in our hotel in Louisville a...
Read more

What I Read This Year

-
I've been accustomed in my adulthood to reading between 40 and 60 novels a year -- almost entirely science fiction and fantasy. But this year, I spent virtually all of my free time trying to learn Cherokee. It used up all the time an energy I might usually spend on fiction. The books I managed to read this year were largely in support of my language learning, and uncharacteristically and disproportionately skewed toward non-fiction. Here's the list: Cherokee related: Original Teachings: Designed to Stand as One: Early Keetowah Teachings and Traditions by Crosslin Fields Smith Think Cherokee: A Cherokee Language Student Reference by JW Webster Cherokee Reference Grammar by Brad Montgomery-Anderson Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World by Christopher B. Teuton A Lifetime of Healing by Crosslin Fields Smith Journeying into Cherokee: Help and Encouragement for Learning the Cherokee Language by Ed Fields and Mary Rae Other Non-Fiction: The Frogs and Toa...
Read more