Age-Old Songs [Counting on an unpredictable tide for deliverance]

My sense of intuition has been serving me well lately. Going back into a building through a different door just in time to catch the person I'd thought I'd missed, going to a lecture that I found out about ten minutes before it began to find myself amazed by a flood of ideas and affirmations, and any number of other, smaller things. It's nice when doing little things on impulse actually works. Especially when it leads to spurts of energy like I've needed these days.

As usual, it's hanging onto it that's the hard part.

John Vanderslice and the Mountain Goats put on an excellent show. So do the Baptist Generals, for that matter, but they didn't really grow on me until the end of their set, and then the others went on and were spectacular so they were sadly forgotten. I ended the evening having broken my no-more-cds-until-winter-break resolution for the third time, and wishing I had had enough money in my wallet to have broken it a couple more times than that. So yes, Life and Death of an American Fourtracker has now been added to my collection. And I added a few more buttons to the denim bag which has become a home for things of that nature. And between sets I read a bit of the Inferno, so that was nice. Yeah, I have a lot of class reading to do, but every now and then it's nice to get back to low-pressure reading and remind myself that I can still immerse myself in books occasionally.

Things about concerts that suck me in (in no particular order):

1. Rhythm instruments amplified so that they vibrate right through you and suddenly you're part of the instrument. The whole room is part of the instrument.
2. Pretty instruments. Electric guitars where you can see the grain of the wood, or pure white violins. Things with pretty or unusual colors or patterns or shapes.
3. Actual people. Before the show tonight, I heard someone asking where John Vanderslice was. "Vanderslice? Last I saw him I think he was outside." It struck me how weird it was that he was a person who could be outside. As opposed to "Vanderslice? I think it's in the rotation rack this week," or "John Vanderslice is supposed to be filed under J, not V."
4. Musicians moving around and rocking out. Especially flailing drummers.
5. Spontaneous, involuntary smiles from the musicians when they get caught up in a song.
6. Audience participation. Those moments where we all get to sing or clap or whatever and be part of the instrument.
7. Shiny things. Granted that's true for me in all situations, not just concerts, but sometimes having the glare from something or other shoot across your vision echoes what the music is doing in a wonderful way. Yeah, that was poorly explained.

I'm not sure why I tried to set it out like that. Obviously all the little things that fit together to make a concert really good can't be listed and still mean what they did all together in that undefinable mix of the show. I have a tendency to do that, to try to describe things by analyzing them, and end up just reducing them to their parts.

It was a good night.