The Decemberists/The Moody Blues

The Decemberists/Heartless Bastards
The Murat Egyptian Room (Indianapolis)
08/08/2009
Score: 9/10

Last night I had the great privilege to attend The Decemberists show at the Murat Egyptian Room in Indianapolis. Fellow attendees were my fiancee Susan and our friends James and Kristi. I had not been to see a show in the Egyptian Room for quite some time. Not since seeing Henry Rollins' spoken word performance a couple years back. All ages shows are always a bit strange to me. I was standing next to this odd looking 13 or 14 year old girl with a Star Trek t-shirt on who was either attending with her father or a really creepy older "date". I'm really hoping he was her dad. Anyway.

The show was amazing. The Heartless Bastards opened. If you aren't familiar with this band, check them out. I've seen them live 3 times now and they were great every time. They are a foursome from Cincy with a fantastic female vocalist. Imagine smoky, southern bluesy rock. Just wonderful stuff. I mentioned last night that they are a band I think would be perfect to see in some rough, smoke filled roadhouse on some forgotten exit off the highway. They played a very short set however, which was disappointing. But they were only the openers this time around, so I was not surprised. They played mostly newer stuff with a couple gems from their first (and best in my opinion) album.

After a short set-up between bands, The Decemberists emerged. They are currently performing in support of their latest effort, The Hazards of Love. They played this album in its entirety without breaks. I had read that they were doing this and was interested to see how it would play live. If you are unfamiliar with this album, female vocalists Becky Stark of Lavendar Diamond and Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond deliver the vocals for the female character's on the album. They are both on loan from their respective bands to tour and reprise their roles from the album. Colin Meloy referred to them as "The Diamonds". Of the two, Worden is the sronger vocalist and her highlight is definitely on the song "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid" on which her range is startling.

After the completion of The Harzards of Love they took a short 15 minute break and returned to play a complete set of old favorites and a few covers. A highlight here was "O Valencia". The surprise of the night however was an extraordinary cover of "Crazy On You" by Heart for which Stark and Worden took the reigns on vocals. As a huge fan of Heart, this was a real "holy shit!!" moment for me.

In summary, this was easily the best show I've seen this summer. It's always refreshing to hear a band play live and actually sound even better than their recordings. Meloy's banter and interaction with the crowd during the second set was a nice pairing with the more serious tone of the HOL set that began their performance. The only thing preventing this show from acheiving a perfect score of 10 was completely due to the second set list where I felt that I didn't hear all the songs I wanted to. But when do I ever? Great show.

Set List:

Part the First:

The Hazards of Love

Part the Second:

July, July!

Billy Liar
The Sporting Life/This Charming Man (The Smiths cover)
Down By the Water
The Crane Wife 3

Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
Dracula's Daughter

O Valencia!
Crazy on You (Heart cover)

Encore:

Raincoat Song
Sons and Daughters

The Moody Blues

Charleston Civic Center (Charelston, WV)

03/13/1994

Score: 10/10

As promised, here is the first live review pairing. It will be interesting as this blog progresses to see how some of these shape up since it is my plan to publish these chronologically to the best of my memory.

The Moody Blues was my very first live concert and at the age of 14, I attended with my parents. My father was, and I imagine still is, a big fan of The Moody Blues. I grew up listening to them and became a fan in my own right as a result. Being my first rock show, I was pretty excited. If I remember correctly, we had nice seats on the left side of the stage. Not on the floor, but in the first section of bleachers. The Civic Center is an arena type setting. What made this show particularly unique was that The Moody Blues were in the midst of a two year tour performing with local city orchestras. They had begun this tour with a now legendary performace at Red Rocks in Colorado. Unfortunately, my memory is a little hazey, but I remember hearing these classic Moody Blues songs with the Charleston Symphonic Orchestra filling in the lush sounds of a band that regularly recorded with symphonies and thinking that I was pretty lucky. If you are at all familiar with this band, you can pretty easily judge for yourself by the setlist that this show was special.

Set List:

Overture / Late Lament

Tuesday Afternoon

For My Lady

Gypsy

Lean On Me (Tonight)

New Horizons

Say It With Love

Emily's Song

I Know You're Out There Somewhere

The Story in Your Eyes

Your Wildest Dreams

Isn't Life Strange?

The Other Side of Life

I'm Just a Singer (in a Rock 'n' Roll Band)

Nights in White Satin

Legend of a Mind

Question

Ride My See-Saw

Introductions all around

The purpose of this blog is two-fold:

1) I plan to review live concerts I attend in the future and

2) Dig back in my history and try to remember all the shows I have ever attended, chronologically if possible, revealing the significance this particular show was to me, what was going on in my life at the time, possibly explaining what, if any, life lessons were learned along the way.

I will post a review of the latest show I have attended, paired with a show from my past. It is my goal for this blog to serve as an informative live concert critique in addition to a somewhat self serving memoir of sorts. I hope it's just a little bit interesting and entertaining. We'll see.

Jay