Andrew Bird was willing to be a lot sillier at Webster Hall last night, throwing up his arms clumsily in dramatic gestures and making playful pauses in some of the stylized performances. Characteristic of him, he does it all with a straight face, even when he brought out the sock monkey someone made for him. He held the figure in his hands and took the time to show off his clothing (pin stripe suit), especially the socks, as well as the violin he carries on his back. After this the monkey sat in front of one of the gramaphone amps for the rest of the night.
I’m doing my Coachella coverage from the corner of my bedroom, using my superior technical skills to capture from the live feed. I think I’ll post some mp3s too. So here comes Andrew Bird, with a surprise: he played neither “Simple X” nor “Scythian Empire,” but closed instead w/ “Fake Palindromes.”
This time La Blogotheque has taken Andrew Bird to Montmartre. Quite a few bystanders in these take-away shows (what fun!), and lots of yellow sky and silhouettes. First one is “Weather Systems” and second “Spare-Ohs”.
Okay, it’s been an entire week since the “secret show” at Union Hall, but the Brooklyn Music Lovers Wanting Their Art Pure was nowhere as severe as this Gawker post makes it sound- there was an assertive keeping-the-music-pure request by the same Lou Dobbs prompter, however, and this one said, “Play more small shows in New York!” to which the whole room applauded and Bird shrugged obediently after finishing to sling his guitar: “Okay.” There was also a spinning, two-faced gramaphone type of a thing, which as it turns out is a gramaphone amp that a man in Chicago makes. Someone asked what that was for, and Bird said it was to throw around the sounds of his violin. Someone asked if there was a pet name for it, Bird welcomed suggestions: one I heard, and thought pretty good, was “Spinderella”.
