some live music moments this year (in near chronological order)

I usually make a top five gigs list as the year winds up, but tonight I am thinking about those amazing, stupendously heartbreaking moments that you get sometimes with live music, the ones that you go to concert after concert searching for… and it seems like a nice gesture to list some of this year’s here.

Jon Rauhouse’s lap steel solo in the middle of Deep Red Bells, Neko Case at the Clarenden Hotel, Katoomba. You could have heard a pin drop in the nano-moment it ended.

Neko Case singing Middle Cyclone, thrice over. I never noticed this song until I heard it live, and now it haunts me (‘to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love’).

Andrew Bird’s Table and Chairs, Sydney Opera House. I was so happy I cried, goddammit.

El Gatillo, Calexico. Metro Theatre. Four guitars, and it just builds and builds. So evocative. It was just at the Metro, but it felt like the open road. It felt like everywhere (but mostly Arizona…. but also… everywhere). And that whistling…

There’s this song that Catherine Traicos sings, a cover of a song written by her friend Marcus. It kills me every time…

Emily Lubitz’s covers of Famous Blue Raincoat, Suzanne and Hallelujah at Monsieur Camembert’s Leonard Cohen Birthday Bash at Notes last night. That girl has such an amazing voice. I will never have those moments back. I wish I could hear her sing each song again.

And every time I went to a gig with Dave this year and caught him smiling. Queuing with him at late, free Spiegeltent shows. Seeing him so happy at The Royal Crown Review and Qwirz. Him helping me buy my beloved Andrew Bird tshirt (my one and only concert tee). Watching him, poised and pensive, whenever he photographed. The times his arms were around me. And every time I saw him smile. And those smiles. Those smiles.

now, where to hang it…

I just bought my first fine art print!  I have been obsessing over dkim’s prints for ages and will one day have a house full of Charley Harper.

But for now, I am the soon-to-be proud-owner of a Julie Morstad.

This is the artist that did the cover and liner note illustrations for Neko Case’s spectacular (and much cherished) album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and I’m pretty sure she is also responsible for the super awesome video clip for the first single from Neko’s current album, Middle Cyclone. If ever a music video was made for me it was that one: kestrels, bookcases, girls in knee high socks, a killer whale, and a beautiful siberian tiger.  I discovered today that she has also done a stunning set of ABC cards that I simply must own.  Isn’t the U for Umbrellas one delightful?

Obviously, I am a fan.  I am really excited and can’t wait for my new print to arrive.  It doesn’t even go with my room, really… but I have always loved it.  I first saw this particular illustration at tinyshowcase and have been rather obsessed with it ever since.  I do love tea, afterall… and am an expert dish stacker from way back.  I know this is only the beginning of an owning-art obsession… I am going to have to make friends with a picture framer.

Nothing else much to report.  I haven’t done much this week except go to work, come home and cook, make and enjoy sprawling all over my beautiful stripey red bed, watch Dollhouse, and hang out with Dave.  All incredibly rewarding activities, to be sure.

to ride the bus to the outskirts…

                           (of the fact)

                                                          (that I need love)

My friend Rowena and I caught the train up to Katoomba on Sunday afternoon.  We arrived to dry heat and the humming of cicadas at high altitude, and immediately found a nice shady, spot in the garden where we could sit on the grass and drink gin and tonics.

Which was perfect… the cicadas, the moments that you spend with women which lead you to realise that you could have/should have been childhood friends, all of it…

Because the rest of the evening was spent with Neko Case.

Neko and her band played a very small intimate show at the Clarendon Hotel in Katoomba on Sunday night.  And we were seated right at the front of the room, only about a meter from the stage.  It was so wonderful being able to watch Jon Rauhouse on the banjo and lap steel up close, and he told a hilarious story about being mistaken for a miner by a 14 year old boy on the plane over.   The banter between the band members was just lovely, as always.  They know how to make a crowd feel at home, even if they themselves are jet lagged or jittery. 

I was just generally enchanted and exhausted and brilliantly happy.  The whole evening was wonderful.  Even the opening act, Jordie Lane, was a revelation. 

Listening to music that I love so dearly live always leaves me a little emotionally raw.  So I am a little ragged around the edges today… but am going for another dose tonight at the Recital Hall nonetheless.

I am holding out for Star Witness.