chesnutt and richman @ the cedar

march 16, 2008 @ 19:49


Friday night I made a last minute decision to hit the Cedar for the Vic Chesnutt / Jonathan Richman "double-bill of the month, if not the season". I was mostly in it for Vic. He's moody in all the right places, soft in all the others. At least to me. Your miles probably vary.

Last time I saw him was back when I was using javascript to pop to larger images. That was the tour he was doing to support 'Silver Lake'. Which was a great album, btw. Especially 'Zippy Morocco'. Which is still great on a lot of levels. Though the novelty is obviously gone. But whatever, still great.

On Friday the Cedar was set-up in the always unusual 'open floor with chairs on the wings' formation. Open floor meaning "open for dancing". Which would normally be fun, except nobody dances to Vic. Because he's profoundly undanceable. So here's Vic, up on stage, staring down at what was literally an open floor. And here's us, sitting off to the side in chairs, sipping our decaf and eating our cookies. Not dancing. It was a really weird vibe. Eventually some late arrivers went and sat on the floor. That helped I think. Ok, no it didn't really, but it was still better than the superweird empty floor situation. So thanks to them for trying.

Nutshell review: very nice. Better than I expected. Jaded as ever. Always with same 'tired of everything' vibe. Even a bit of in-your-face freakfolk politics to kick off the weekend. Zero regrets. Wish it would have been 7 songs longer.

After the break the floor filled up with Richman fansters who wanted to stand up front and get their guitar spinning Lesibian Bar game on. So they did. And I stood in the back on the soundboard riser. And ate my cookie and sipped my decaf. (Again.) And it was alright I guess, but yeah, I was there for Vic, and this dude wasn't exactly dialing me in. Too playful? Or was it just too silly? Hard to say. And don't get me wrong, it was fun enough. So I'm not sayin' just sayin'.

Vic Chesnutt [vicchesnutt]
Vic Chesnutt - Cleveland, Ohio - 3/10/2008 - similar setlist [bt.etree.org]
Jonathan Richman [vaporrecords]

[comments]

  1. dad thought:

    Another damn overtime, and I need to sleep off this fever.

  2. dave thought:

    i'm not sure if that's a lyric i'm supposed to get or if you're just liveblogging your life in my comments section. or maybe a bit of both?

  3. dad thought:

    The former hadn't occurred to me, so probably mostly the latter. But if I thought about it awhile I am sure I could come up with a reference to some obscure lyric.

  4. dave thought:

    that's what i was afraid of.

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