planetdan

Saturday, September 24, 2005 :::

Mad Genius

In case you haven't heard it yet, Andrew Bird's Mysterious Production of Eggs CD is one of the best of the year. Even more exciting, the dude is like a mad idiot-savant musical genius on stage. He stands up there with a violin/fiddle thing, his guitar, and a xylophone, and he quickly and seamlessly samples his instruments and lays down multiple tracks on top of each other until it sounds like there is an entire string symphony behind him and yet there is only one man on stage. He also seems to stare at invisible people and have conversations with himself, making me think that perhaps the obviously overdeveloped musical part of his brain has left other parts of his brain slightly underdeveloped. Whatever the case, I don't care, because he's brilliant. I saw him tonight at the Cedar Cultural Center:

And they were selling limited edition prints of the artwork he had commissioned for his latest CD booklet, which you can also buy online here, but I bought this one because it represents my favorite song on the CD:

And finally, I was excited to find out that one of my local favorites, The Owls, were the opening act. They are quite the ear-pleasing band as well, although perhaps a little less mind-blowingly insane than Andrew:

Anyway, to celebrate the awesome concert I saw tonight and to spread the joy to anyone who cares, I have temporarily replaced all the songs in my jukebox (on the right) with both acts' newest CDs. Yay!

::: posted by dan at 1:43 AM :: [ link ] :: (4) comments

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4 previous comments:

I saw Andrew Bird for the first time last night and was blown away! I think I could listen to him just whistle for the entire show and still be happy. As long as he threw in a few scratch-his-head-while-playing-the-xylophone moves too.

By

kjk, at 10:27 AM

Andrew Bird is a genius. I have yet to see a live show, so I am most envious of you

By

Tree, at 11:24 AM

I haven't seen Andrew Bird live in years. He used to play with his band Bowl of Fire quite a bit at the 7th street entry and Bryant Lake Bowl. The only time I ever saw Neko Case live was when she opened for Andrew Bird. He seems to have gotten even stranger from your description - a good thing I'm sure.

I absolutely love his voice, and his fiddle playing is AWESOME. He's super amazing and weird as hell. One of my sons plays violin and fiddle, and I used to have this dream (back when Andrew Bird was a fiddle teacher in Chicago) that my son would be able to take fiddle lessons from him. He's so good.

By

stsundown, at 2:10 PM

Once again, you've opened my ears to a great artist! You should get a commission, thank you!

By

Samara, at 12:46 PM

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