Edward Sharpe Comes Alive 1976

Monday night and a short ride to LA, I managed to pop my Edward Sharpe cherry. [continue below]

As an early Christmas present my big sis decided to get us both tickets to see ES&M0s in LA on 12-14-09 at the Mayan Theater. Never heard of the place? Neither had we. Apparently what I heard from the grapevine is that it is a church during the day and a venue at night, although it was pretty voodoo esq. for a church if you ask me; but that's besides the point. Cut to the beginning of the night and we are getting into our car.

Its always a risk listening to a band on your way to their concert. Will you get sick of them before the show even starts? Will you learn all the words to their songs even better than before? Luckily we chose the latter. Using the TuneWiki app on my sis' iPhone, we clarified lyrics that we were a little fuzzy on. We got through a good number of songs before finding our way to the Golden Gopher bar.

We were meeting up with my sisters co-workers and that was their meeting place of choice. I might add, this bar looked like a run down strip club from the outside with a behemoth checking IDs at the door but once inside we were happily surprised. The GG was like a little diamond in the rough, escaping from the homelessness outside and into an actually nice interior with a plethora of hipsters inside throwing back PBR and smoking cigs on the unique outdoor/indoor patio thingy. After a couple drinks it was off to the Mayan theater just down the street.

After paying for parking we walked to the theater but decided it was a much better idea to get some mexican food at El Jardin, conveniently located across the street. For some reason they didn't have soft tortillas so burritos and quesodillas were out of the question. Thats like McDonalds running out of hamburger buns! C'mon Pedro! Oh well, the food was still good yet the hunger in our bellies forced us to miss the two opening acts for E. Sharpe. The first band was a Mexican family(no joke) who I don't recall the name of and the second was Fools Gold. We did manage to catch a mexican music fest at the merch table which was pretty fun. A little shocking to see that the instrument of choice for one member was a cows jaw used like a combo guiro and vibraslap.

Merch concert

In due time with a bit of waiting and a couple more beers later, ES&M0s finally began their set. I had a unique perspective since I had never heard this band live before and had just listened to the album religiously. As most good bands go, this bands live performance put their album to shame. Ok not really since their album is beautiful, but just to hear a different mix of each instrument and to be able to feel the bass in your chest was a great experience. The most band members I counted on the stage at one time was 16 people which blew me away. Not only were they all playing in unison up there, but it also sounded damn good. Flawless if you will. With three big screens on both sides and the middle of the stage, camera angles and video clips of the band were transitioned throughout the whole show. This gave the show a more of a feel of you being in a movie and really took you out of your skin of being at a concert and brought you to another place. Mainly the desert where the band had filmed a series of short clips for music videos and just such occasions as this.

One character of a band member I couldn't help but watch for majority of the show was the trumpet player. With his suspenders and bow tie he seemed like a speakeasy performer. Switching from trumpet to synth to even a giant tambourine kept my attention for most of the night. The entire show went off without a hitch besides for some extra feedback in the speakers. Alex Ebert seemed to get annoyed with the sound guy between singing parts but managed to pull off the songs without hesitation. I laughed at the fact that Alex and Jade switched their conversation in "Home" from being about falling out of a window to how the monitor isn't working right.

After their set ended and their encore was ending, they let the back-stagers come and join them on the stage and dance to the last three songs. A mass of bodies only added to the stage presence on stage and made it feel more like a huge aztec themed party than a concert that you paid $40 to see. But with a sweet lullaby from Alex the night ended and we all headed our separate ways home with another concert under our belts.

All I can say is I had a blast and I'm glad I got the opportunity to see these guys in a smaller venue (but still good sized) before they are playing arenas and you need binoculars to see Jade dance in a circle.