Five months or so ago I was briefly seeing a lovely coffee girl who ultimately didn’t give herself nearly enough credit. She was also a musician and, more importantly, she checked a line off my bucket list (I don’t actually have one of these, way too depressing a thought – but you get the idea) by writing her number on my coffee cup when she handed it to me. Now, I just need to get a student to write “LOVE YOU” on her eyelids when I’m lecturing in tweed and, bucket list or no, I can die happy.

I’m sadly reminded that Indiana Jones is now an “old movie” and thus there is a generation who have no idea how critically formative this movie was to everyone between the ages of 25 and 35. I’m pretty sure this scene is why I will end up a professor instead of a rich private practice radiologist.

Anyway, she had wildly more sophisticated and esoteric musical tastes than mine (not really saying much) and she got me to listen to things like “lounge” music. At some point I clicked one too many times on Spotify suggestions and found myself listening to My Morning Jacket. They seemed to make music that would be a lot better if you were on drugs. Lots of drugs. But they had a music video with a giant lemur monster that I think was a love song and I kind of liked it and I have more money than I do free time so I bought tickets to their show.

By the time the show rolled around last night the coffee girl was long gone and I was on the fence about even going. But then I saw that Band of Horses was playing, so I invited a co-worker and made the trek out to scenic Rochester Hills and the Meadowbook Music Festival. I can’t quite get my brain around a venue called a “festival.” To me a festival is an event, not a place . . . but it’s a less soulless word than “pavilion” so I’m going to let it go. What I can’t forgive them for is that fact that they apparently start the bands at the time actually printed on their tickets. The fact that I arrived twenty minutes after the 7PM time for the show and missed twenty minutes of Band of Horses makes me feel like this guy:

This guy was clearly having an awesome time at the show.

Or a bit like this security guard:

Definitely sure that none of the fun was going to get onto him.

Still, even with the abbreviated set (perhaps further curtailed by the obligatory stop at the vending area for a ever-so-slightly stale mint chocolate chip ice cream cone) Band of Horses was amazing. The lead signer did that thing where he aggressively lit a cigarette to the cheers of idiots who think that buying into Big Tobacco’s narrative that killing yourself by purchasing their product is “rebellious” -

Don’t try to oppress me, man. I’m not some peon. I’m expressing my individuality by smoking.

But the bass player (I love bass players because I know that I could never be a singer or a guitar player or drummer, but I don’t really know what a bass player does other than stand around and look cool, and I think that I could do that.) and his awesome skills at standing around looking cool easily dominated in the charisma department.

The more I look at these pictures the less certain I am that this was the bass player. He seems way too energetic. He’s almost uncool in how enthusiastic he is. Needs to chill out.

Hmmm, or maybe that was the guitar player and this was the bass player. Whatever, they all looked like heroin-fueled rock-stars who ate anti-depressants for breakfast and brought home STDs to their long-suffering girlfriends. And that’s really all I want in a band.

This guy seemed more like what I expect of a bass player. I’m sure that there’s a way to tell them apart based on what their instrument looks like. But I’m too cool to care about something like that. I am only impressed if it has two string-bits – like the one that guy in ZZ Top has, or maybe it was Def Leopard?

Oh, and their music is awesome:

One particularly bitter ex noted that I like to listen to “depressed person music.” Despite a non-trivial amount of pot-kettle fallacy, it’s not an entirely untrue statement. I have been known to listen to the odd song that causes the melancholy to surface like a boil getting ready to be lanced.  Band of Horses definitely falls into that category. It’s not gouge out your own eyes while setting yourself on fire music like Death Cab for Cutie; but it will have you reaching for the Prozac and/or hard liquor. I recorded some on my phone – but I can’t figure out how to export it, so here’s another youtube link, which sounds better anyway and you won’t get distracted by all the douchebags with their phones in the air trying to record the song so they can then upload it to the internet and . . . whatever . . . never mind . . .

Sadly, their set was over by 8PM. Then things got boring – particularly since it was really too loud to actually talk, so I spent the next forty minutes or so indulging in sexual fantasies about hot women whose pictures are on my phone, wondering what kind of asshat brings a cigar to a concert:

See labels

thinking that it would be fun to play with a spotlight but that I’d want to point it at novel things in the crowd rather than the actual rock star:

This is also why they would never let me be in charge of the jumbotron camera. I’d ignore the game entirely to show pictures of people adjusting their crotches.

and pondering the strange Michigan phenomenon in which guys (who probably have hearts of gold and giant penises – only one of each) who look like they might have a serious genetic disorder manage to be out in public with crazy hot girls (here one is pictured wearing fringed moccasins – which I suppose might speak to larger taste issues):

Hot Chick + Dude who looks like he has Fragile X Syndrome = Michigan

Eventually My Morning Jacket came out . . . and the lead singer was wearing some kind of poncho thing. I refuse to look up the narrative of the band and determine whether this is, in fact, his morning jacket. I refuse to do this because if I discovered that it was, in fact, his morning jacket, I might have to kill myself out of embarrassment on his behalf:

Is he actually wearing . . . his morning jacket?

They started off like a stoner band . . . but a few songs in they transitioned into some sort of 70′s rock show with songs that ended in minute long guitar solos that just seamlessly transitioned into the next song that itself sounded just like the prior song. Honestly, I have no idea whether they even played the giant lemur song. The light show was good though:

The light show was well done. There weren’t any explosions though, which is kind of a dealbreaker.

And the audience, who seriously may have collectively been more drunk and stoned than any audience I have ever seen – and in the last six months I have seen some pretty drunk and pretty stoned audiences – really seemed to be getting into it. One Hulk-sized guy became so excited that he faceplanted into the aluminum chair right next to us. The fact that the poncho-wearing guy kept doing vaguely Jesus-esque motions and people kept sort of cheer-praying in his general direction was disconcerting, but seemed like evidence of genuine enthusiasm. And this old couple, who I think may have been lost, faithfully recorded the whole thing.

Yes. I took a picture of people taking a picture of a live music event.

Anyway. It finally ended. I got yelled at by the vendor selling Band of Horses t-shirts because I tried to describe the shirt I wanted rather than indicating I wanted “design #9.” But when I finally made myself understood through pantomime and the waving around of a wad of cash it was revealed that they only had it in extra-small anyway.

Go listen to Band of Horses.

And then there were M&Ms and illegal parking at a gas station.

Because there’s always an excuse to include a picture of Betty.