This one's for Matt:

During a break at the New Pornographers show tonight, they had a Q&A session. There were some lame things about Canada and some random song requests, so I yelled, "What's your favorite song on the radio right now?"

Rather quickly, Kurt-the-drummer answered: "Shania Twain! Oh, that's embarassing, but I love that Shania song. It sounds like Abba or something."

"Yeah," Carl said, "we were just talking about this. When you hear a halfway-decent song on the radio, you have to be real supportive, like with a retarded kid. 'Oh, there you go, that's a good job!'"

Then they told some stories about Newfoundland (?) and did a rather lackluster version of "Ballad of a Comeback Kid," which is too bad really as it's my favorite song on the album. At any rate, it's an interesting comment.

The show was good overall, but the crowd was annoyingly lackluster. The rondo in "Testament to Youth in Verse" was really really good. They covered, pretty clearly without any preparation, three (!) Journey songs during the second encore, prompted by someone's random comment. They all seemed very comfortable--at times it felt like we were sitting in on a rehersal. Very nice. More dancing next time though, you New Yorkers.
posted by Mike B. at 1:10 AM 0 comments