joanna newsom's opening act must die

last night katherine and i went to see joanna newsom, whose first album (plus ted leo, plus the strokes) was my weird, weird soundtrack in san sebastián. joanna newsom is sort of an acquired taste--she has a voice that sounds like a sixty-year-old woman, somehow, never hit puberty--but her songs are very well-crafted, and her lyrics are pretty smart. this was the first show i've gotten to see since nate and jen took me to see regina spektor in new york, who like joanna newsom has a distinctive voice and performs in the postmodern revival of a set of seriously non-pop formats: folk, cabaret, anguished death-keening. both also had opening acts and then waited appallingly long to follow them, which grumpified the shit out of us.

it didn't help joanna newsom that her opening act was, frankly, wretched. at first it was a guy with a wimpy, wimpy michael-stipe-in-want-of-a-cookie voice and some half-hearted acoustic guitarwork. then he was joined by three other wimpy people and they played some monotonous depressed quasi-folk-rock thing at about 20bpm. the worst part was, every now and then they'd briefly bring the volume WAY UP and rock out in a reasonably awesome way. this was so you knew they were capable of being good. they wanted to make clear that being depressing and whiny was a choice. great call, guys.

also, the lyrics were just awful. there is a certain kind of ear for lyrics that has trouble distinguishing between the poetic and the pretentious, and whoever wrote the lyrics for this band had at least two of those ears. possibly more. the words we could make out were complete garbage. i forget all of them, happily. here is their myspace page, in case you're eager to reduce your aggregate happiness level without being exposed to anything profound or musically interesting.

so. we sat through an hour of that, the lights came up, and we all chilled out for a while. in strict demographic terms, i felt that we fit in. a lot of hipster-wear, a lot of people who looked about our age. however, their patterns of interaction were noticeably awkward. also, none of them seemed to be experiencing consternation that this concert would keep them up too late.

and at length, it dawned on me: these are not young awesome professionals. these are college students.

i was aghast. we were completely surrounded by college students. good god, i felt old. we may have fit in, but they had completely different priorities than we did. specifically, we had the priority of not falling asleep in our seats, as well as the priority of ducking out before there was an encore. in our defense, the show ended after 11pm.

joanna newsom, if you're reading this: i'm sorry. you sounded great, your harpwork is some of the best i've ever heard, and the songs from your second album are interesting, to the extent that i was paying attention to them. it's just that after 90 minutes of sitting in the absurdly tiny hellish little seats of the somerville theater, i am uncomfortable and sleepy, and you haven't even started yet. i would have gladly paid the same amount for your show without the opening act. also, it was strange that your backing band was the following:

guy with three different bass drums
guy with accordion and theremin
guy with banjo
girl with glockenspiel who played it for about fifteen seconds during the final song, and that was it
guy with "bulgarian lute"

not making any of this up. the band sounded okay, at least, unlike regina proktor's band, which is almost certainly the worst thing ever to happen to her. or me. i don't even want to talk about it.

in conclusion, live shows are a terrible idea.