doodledee

Checked out Badly Drawn Boy's show at the Fine Line last night. I wore a stocking cap to the show. Because it's winter and that's what I do, I wear stocking caps. Well Damon (the Badly Drawn Boy) wears one, too. It's kind of his thing. So the audience is full of dudes in stocking caps. I didn't notice until a couple of songs in, but when I did it was kind of creepy. Like, here's a room full of doofs in stocking caps, bobbing their heads to British acoustic pop and furiously taking mental notes so we can all run home and blog about what we thought of the show. Looking around that place, if the Fine Line had gone up ala Great White, all the authorities would have found the next morning would have been 50 pair of melted Buddy Holly glasses, piles of smoldering long sleeve/short sleeve tshirt combos, and 300 MPR membership cards. And probably more scooter keys than you'd expect. But I digress.

The show. The music was good. A nice long set. He played a lot of down tempo stuff. Real mellow and stuff. Then he'd toss out one of his more poppy songs, just to make sure nobody fell asleep. There were stretches that were arguably a little too saddo - here's yet another song about a funeral, ugh - but If you ask me, it was just fine for a Sunday night. Not as much off 'One Plus One' as I would have liked, but I'm not going to complain.

I think BDB is pretty big in the UK and he seemed a little disoriented by the casual vibe of the crowd in Minneapolis. At one point he commented on the lack of huge applause after each song by saying "I'm not sure if you're liking what we're doing up here." (He backpedaled quickly, saying we were a great crowd, which we were, but admittedly a casual one.) During one song he took the mic and wandered around on stage shaking people's hands. I'm sure back in Manchester people go gaga over the opportunity to touch greatness, but last night it just came off kind of forced and a bit weird. By the end of the night he almost seemed kind of humbled. That or extra drunk, one of the two.

Official BDB Site [badlydrawnboy]