Evelyn Evelyn concert.

Mang this has been such a great weekend. Hope tomorrow is good too.

Evelyn Evelyn concert tonight. Christine and I drove to Waltham where her mom is staying, and had an (extremely) early dinner. Then she took us to Riverside Station, from which we took the green line into Boston. Got off; Google Maps directions to the House of Blues told us to go west. So we started walking where I thought west was, but I dunno, the streets are labeled weird or I was looking the wrong way, because I thought we weren't on the right intersection, so we turned back the other way. But halfway down the block, Christine realized that we were now walking away from the sun, so we had been going west in the first place. So we turned around, and right when we started walking back we passed..Amanda Fucking Palmer.

Just..walking down the sidewalk. On her phone. Probably tweeting or something. Then I kind of made a fool of myself by stopping and kind of staring for a second and then kind of shouting 'OH HI'. Then Christine basically did the same thing. She was nice about it, she waved and was friendly. Then we all kept walking, but I was confused because I thought maybe we were going the wrong way after all, so I said loudly, kind of to Christine and kind of to AFP's back, 'Wait, so is it that way?' (gods I'm so dumb) but she told we were going the right way, and how to get there.

Christine basically had a heart attack.

Anyways. Got to the venue. Our seats were..way up on the third floor balcony. (Sadface.) It was way different from the concert in..October or November or something, in Brooklyn. That venue was a lot smaller (at least from where I was standing, fucken three feet from the stage). House of Blues has chairs everywhere..it just felt a bit weird, sitting down, not to mention so far up.

Doors were at six, stuff started around seven. While waiting, Christine and I ridiculed several of the venue's filler-music choices, and made a game of trying to guess whether the people filing in were there for Amanda Palmer or Jason Webley. Sometimes it was pretty easy, sometimes it was..really hard. I wonder what I look more like. We decided that we don't feel like we look enough like Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley fans.. Lots of people were wearing some kind of outfit mimicking AFP's Dresden Dolls getup or Jason's..uh..baggy long-haired hatted thing? Hipsters we sorted almost automatically to Amanda, more folk-looking-people to Jason. One guy was old and long-white-haired and dressed all in white, it was kind of awesome; we named him Dumbledore. Sitting in the row ahead of us was a guy dressed like a sailor..

Anyways. Sxip Shirey first. Geeky-awesome strangely-rave-worthy music, using all sorts of found-object and improvised combination instruments, including the Sxipenspiel:



I'd only heard Sxip once before, briefly onstage with AFP during her tour in the fall with Nervous Cabaret. He does this weird cool on-stage sound-mixing stuff with bells and whistles and kazoos and..lots of crazy stuff. It's kind of fantastic. Plus he did this piece imitating New York; in my opinion, making the city is a very good thing for a sound-maker-person to do. (That sentence sounds silly.)

Then Evelyn Evelyn. Amanda and Jason are..just great. It's difficult to describe the act. Jason is the twin always wiping things down with that red cloth, and Amanda is the one who keeps pursuing Twix bars. It's funny, and a little bit disturbing too. They're really into the act, and pretty damn good at it too. They're intense and timid at the same time, and very good at being nervous. For the encore they shot Sxip, who was being obnoxious, and then took five minutes to get their ukulele ready for playing.

After a change-out-of-the-giant-dress-and-makeup break, Jason Webley. This man is amazing. Sad to say, I'd only heard a few of his songs before tonight. As with Amanda Palmer, I discovered him through Neil Gaiman's blog. (I feel like all the famous people I really really like are all connected..) I think it was when Mr Neil posted the video for 'Eleven Saints'. My favorite of his songs was 'Icarus' (probably because of subject matter more than anything else), and maybe still is. I dunno; I bought one of his CDs afterwards and I'm really liking all of these. Anyways. He's funny. His stage personality is almost the opposite of Amanda's: While she's loud and rambunctious and 'FUCK YES', he's more quiet and apologetic and 'yes please'. And he has this mini stage he stands on, and makes his own percussion with his feet while he plays his accordion or guitar.

Then Amanda FUCKING Palmer, who basically had the same amount of stage time as the twins. (I'm not complaining.) I realized that I like her covers of Radiohead rather more than the original Radiohead songs, so this new album of covers should be good. I dunno what else to say..I've already talked about AFP a bit too much on this blog, there's nothing more right now. (The encore was a drinking song. That was fun. It involved everyone in the place pointing in the air and spinning around twelve times until drunk.)

Afterwards Christine and I stood in the sign-line. I've already gotten all my AFP stuff signed (lol such a dork arggghhh) but I bought a Jason Webley CD (and now have listened to it two and a half times) and they were giving out packs of EE playing cards to people who got stuff. Anyways. When I meet famous-people-I-really-like, I make them things. Andrew Hussie (of MSPA) got a clay Maplehoof. This time I made a couple of teeny Elephant Elephants, the two-headed elephant friend of the twins'. They liked 'em, yay! (Pictures later.)

So uh..that makes my count of non-classical-music concerts up to two. One a straight-up Amanda Palmer concert, one an Evelyn Evelyn. God I'm such a dork. I guess I just don't have enough money to see anyone I don't really really love. This..this was worth it.

Then when I got home I drew a sunflower. Because I haven't been drawing enough lately and I need practice. -wow so random-

Christine's leaving tomorrow morning. Bad thing: Christine will be gone. Good thing: I will be able to walk across my room without having to step around a big ol' futon mattress.

Good night.

Olivia