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... and your heart is an empty room, with walls of the deepest blue... |
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Wednesday, 27 August 2008 03:21 |
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So I am going to write tonight about the end of my night. Seeing as it is nearly 2 am, I will leave my blogging about the actual convention until tomorrow. This evening I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the Concert for a Cooler Climate being sponsored in part by the League of Conservation Voters. I was especially psyched about this because my favorite band of all time (for the last couple years anyway), Death Cab For Cutie, was the main attraction.
The venue was the Sherman Street Events Center, which, from the look of the architecture, appears to be an old Shriners Temple. (I am not an architect of an expert on buildings, but I am from Chicago, the city of architecture, and the carvings in the doors and moldings looked similar to ones on the Medinah Temple in Chicago) It is a beautiful old building with intricate Arabic carvings around the door frames and little tiny Shriner symbols engraved on the door handles. The room was fairly small... I would imagine that it held maybe 200 people (of course, I have the same ability to differentiate numbers as does the Rain Man), which created a small intimate atmosphere perfect for some liberal rocking out.
The band played all their popular songs -- Soul Meets Body, The Sound of Settling and Cath... to name a few. All the songs were unique from their album versions though, not only because they were performed live, but also because they were done as acoustic versions. Ben Gibbard took on the lead vocals and guitar for most of the songs, and Chris Walla accompanied on the piano and guitar as well as with back up vocals. While this concert was only half the actual band (other members Nicholas Harmer and Jason McGerr were not present), it still had all the dizzying highs and dismal lows that their albums offer.
One thing that particularly struck me at the concert was the liberal overtones of the band's music. While it is no coincidence that a band that I would absolutely love would be strong supporters of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, listening to the lyrics I was surprised how much of their music fit into the theme of the evening -- global awareness. Many of the songs describe frigid winters where the subject's "teeth chatter rhythms in groups of two and three" and (while they did not play it) Transatlanticism mentions the receding shorelines. Okay I am not totally sure that global warming was the point of that song (i am pretty sure it is more a love song) but that could also be a meaning to it all.
My favorite of all the songs though, (okay one of my favorites) is the line in the title of this post. In the song "Your Heart is an Empty Room", Gibbard sings that it is "painted in the deepest blue." Yes, Ben. My heart is painted the deepest blue. More on why tomorrow. Until then, rock on DCFC because you guys are amazing. GO OBAMA!
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 30 August 2008 10:39 )
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