Sleep Spent

Man oh man, was that show ever awesome! I saw Death Cab tonight at the Fillmore in SF. [UPDATE: It was the Warfield.] They were touring with Pretty Girls Make Graves, who I didn’t know much about. Jason sent me a link to some MP3s before the show, which I enjoyed. But I still wasn’t sure what I was in for.

PGMG was quite good. I particularly liked their drummer. The drumming in any given song was not what I was be expecting, and it was really complex. The guitarist was awesome too. Sadly, I didn’t get a PGMG CD. :-(

Setlist on the next page.

And then there was the entreé: Ben, Chris & Co. In no particular order, they played:

• Pictures In An Exhibition

• Title Track
• Employment Pages
• For What Reason
• Lowell, MA
• Company Calls

• Photobooth

• I Was A Kaleidoscope
• Styrofoam Plates
• A Movie Script Ending
• We Laugh Indoors

• The New Year
• Title And Registration
• Expo ’86
• The Sound of Settling
• Tiny Vessels
• Transatlanticism

• This Temporary Life

The only songs I wanted them to play that they didn’t were “Company Calls (Epilogue)” and “Gridlock Caravans.” But oh, well.

This venue was significantly larger than the El Rey Theater in LA where I saw them last, two years ago. I bought balcony tickets, but due to stupidity, I didn’t remember to print them out. So when I showed up at the Will Call window, they had to call Ticketmaster. The upside was that Jason and I were given General Admission tickets instead of the assigned seats we would have had, so we were right down in the middle of the action. It was great!

It was funny to see the number of people who knew the lyrics to every song, versus the ones that seemed lost when they played anything before Transatlanticism. Some people even yelled from the balcony something about playing songs they came to the show for. Silly poseurs! I thought they worked in just about everything I would have wanted, and they covered a wide range of time.

The drummer was great. He went to town during the end of the “We Laugh Indoors” middle eight. That was always my favorite moment of The Photo Album anyway, and for just that reason.

I’ve got to get to bed. My legs are tired. Note: taking BART into the City for shows = GOOD! Straylight Run at Bottom of the Hill tomorrow night. Rawr!