March 5 2006: Belle and Sebastian, The New Pornographers – 9:30 Club, Washington DC

So the real reason we all came to DC was to see Belle and Sebastian play – I’d have seen them on Boston but they played the Avalon there and I hear tell it’s twice the size of the 9:30 club. Plus Ryan and Heather and Terry and Floch are all just about my favorite people to hang out with ever.

The New Pornographers, sans Neko Case, opened. They were ok. I’d never heard them before, and the show didn’t leave any real urge in me to check them out in the future. Folks really seem to think they’re the shit, but I just don’t get it. Oh well. It was fun to watch them get drunk pulling off their fifth of Jameson’s on stage though, and the drummer was pretty charming with his stick twists and tosses.

And Belle and Sebastian played, and I was kind of disappointed. Which is stupid, because they played a few songs I’d never seen live before, most notably “I’m a Cuckoo” and “Fox in the Snow” and “Electronic Renaissance” – though I kind of fucked myself on “Electronic Renaissance” because I read in Peter Hughes’ recording diary back in January that amidst recording in Glasgow he had gone out and seen Belle and Sebastian play and he mentioned that they did “Electronic Renaissance.” So hard as I tried to forget about that, I knew going into the show that it was within the realm of possibilities to see it played. And if they’d just gone into it without my knowing it would have just blown me away. As it stands, it was really good but that bit of surprise could have pushed it right over the top. Oh well.

And my main beef: when I paid $20 to see the band in 2001 they had a full string section backing them. So, I figure, it stands to reason that when I pay $40 to see them in 2006 they probably won’t have cut the size of the band in fucking half. But they did. Forty dollars is a lot to spend on a show, but it’s kind of justifiable when you assume that the band is flying fourteen or fifteen people to the States and getting multiple tour busses and paying for extra hotel rooms and the like. But nope, the price I paid doubled and the costs of touring went down by half. So Belle and Sebastian pretty much took me for the proverbial ride. I salute them for their clever schemes but now I know how these things work and I’ll be damned if I fall for that one again.

So yeah, I know, leave it to me to be so critical about shit that in the midst of atrocious American imperialism and AIDS destroying Africa and countless children starving somewhere in the world, I can somehow manage to bitch about a fucking BELLE AND SEBASTIAN SHOW. I mean, it’s not like it was even that bad. It was good! It was a good show! It was! I just would have been a lot more accepting if the ticket price was halved.

Spent the night at a rest stop just north of Baltimore and made it home in time for class the next night.