Blog - /Personal

I went to a concert featuring The National, Modest Mouse, and R.E.M. I caught only the last song from The National, which was pretty good. It was good enough to cast doubt in my mind as to whether they were Modest Mouse — it would have been depressing to miss MM.

Luckily, I didn't miss them, and enjoyed about an hour and 10 minutes worth of material. There was a good mix of old and new. Isaac Brock was fucking fantastic to see in person. Some kids next to me lit up a cigarette when Modest Mouse played the song Fire It Up, which prompted a security guard to take them aside for a talking to. Paper Thin Walls was a personal favorite, due to the walls on my apartment conducting a bit too much sound. The instrumental work in Doin' the Cockroach was particularly snappy. I was able to see one of the band members break out a trumpet with a mute on some of the songs. They did a really good job of bringing the concert songs at least up to par with how they sounded on the albums, which was quite a feat.

R.E.M. was about how I expected them to be. In a word: mediocre. I left about halfway through their set because I didn't hear any of their older stuff.

I enjoyed the setting for the concert. In the backdrop were some hills with a tiny bit of vegetation on them, and a bit of the famous Hollywood sign. Not so enjoyable was the gaudy eyesore of an electrically-lit cross off to the right in the background. With the hills, it was a contrast of majesty and masochism.

There were only a couple of songs from the Modest Mouse set that I didn't recognize, probably because they were from the latest album. I'll have to pick it up now.