I saw The Mountain Goats.
Friday night John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats played a show at Ithaca College. I am a fairly big fan of the band and I had never seen them live so I was excited, especially because it was going to be a solo acoustic set and I only really know his stuff from the times when he recorded on his own. And as I thought, he did a lot of older songs which I appreciated. The show was pretty packed, I think around 500 people or at least that’s what John said on stage at one point. There were some technical difficulties throughout the show. First, during one song he broke a string and had to stop to replace it but found out that he didn’t have the right string so he had to borrow a guitar from the opening duo. Later he got his guitar back. Then twice, fuses popped and all the lights went out and the mics stopped working. But despite these issues, I still very much enjoyed the show. He has quite a collection of songs (500+) so it was nice that I recognized at least a few of them. If you haven’t ever listened to them, I would really recommend the album All Hail West Texas and The Coroner’s Gambit. Those are the two that introduced me to the Mountain Goats and I still find them to be my favorite, even though I haven’t heard all of them or even close to all of them.
Also, on a side note to any person out there who likes to take photos at live shows, please don’t be a distraction. I realize that you want to take pictures but when your picture taking is detracting from the music (especially when it’s a quieter show) you need to stop. There was some anonymous Canon shooter in the front row who was way to trigger happy and it was really annoying. I mean through the first hour of the set it was *buzz click* *buzz click* *buzz click.* I mean maybe it’s just my style but I like to just listen to music at live events. Call me old school, but I think that the readers of this blog will appreciate the fact that I just watched an awesome show and got to tell them about it rather than being able to show them a frame by frame replay of it. And if I do bring my camera, I try to be conscience of those around me and try not to be a jerk about it. But that’s just me. Peace.
2 years ago
