(no subject)
Matt Nathanson
House of Blues, Orlando
July 26, 2006
ok, so technically, it was a pink concert, but we didn't even see her, so i'll continue referring to it as "the matt show" forever and always. because pink sucks. and matt's amazing.
we got in line.. let's see.. maybe at 4? or a little earlier. we did the Pass the Line thing by buying some stuff in the HOB store, as usual. i got a tank and keri got a towel and cards. we used the towel to sit on so we didn't have to sit on the hot cement, and we played a game of war or two before keri got up to go to the bathroom and the line moved forward. i had to pick up both our HOB bags, our purses, the towel, and the cards i'd been playing solitaire with all by myself, because no one around me seemed to give a damn.
about the line. i'd never really thought about it before, but pink has a big gay following. at one point, keri said she figured 90% of the line was made up of lesbians and gay guys, and a few minutes later, i told her that was way too conservative an estimate. i can count on one hand the number of straight people that i could see from where we were in line. it was kind of interesting.
blah blah. anyway, we got inside and ended up 3 people back from the dead center of the stage. i could actually see the barricade in front. i was actually a little mesmerized, and kept finding myself staring at it, imagining what it would be like to stand there at a hanson concert. *le sigh* that was all before matt came out, obviously. but still, what an idea. front row. one day, one day.
my gaze wandered to the side of the stage, where some roadies had been kind of entertaining me for the last hour or so. and suddenly, matt was standing there talking to them. keri must have noticed the look in my eye (and the fact that i'd probably stopped breathing for a moment) and asked me what was up. i just kind of shook my head without averting my eyes and said "matt."
matt came out and it was the most lackluster applause i could have dreaded. keri and i - and matt, i'm sure - all knew it'd be coming. he's really not the kind of guy you can imagine opening up for pink. just this regular-looking guy with an acoustic guitar and poetic lyrics. i'm still confused by it. but he just smiled and introduced himself and said that he loved us all, even though we were pushing him away. that he wanted to be close to us. he kind of pulled a dane cook and said something about making musical love to us. keri told me later that some girl behind her said, in a very puzzled tone, "but he's a guy." lol.
he started out with a song that neither of us knew, and i kicked myself for not getting his earlier CDs before the show. i tried like mad to remember at least some of the lyrics to look up later, and what stuck was the very first line: "i'm wide awake and so alive." i don't know why i forgot the rest, because i was singing along to some of the chorus by the time it was over. oh well. then he introed the next song by asking if any of us had been to cracker barrel, because the next song was about cracker barrel and eating too much cheese. everyone seemed kind of confused and he just laughed and said he was joking and that he was just trying again to get close to us. that song was "lucky boy," which keri didn't know because she still hasn't gotten (or even borrowed) his last studio album.
the next song had the best intro. he said that he's learned at all ages shows that parents don't usually like him swearing around their children, so he was going to edit his usual intro. what's great is that there was a mother/daughter duo at the very front, and he was looking right at the mother when he said that, and then his eyes would find them every once in a while through the introduction. he said this next song was about "making love... hard. and maybe you pull their hair.. and maybe you bite them.. maybe there's spanking." he tuned his guitar a little more, and then said again that the song was about making love, "which is where children come from" and he smiled and looked right at the little girl, and then gave the mom an apologetic face. it was so funny. it was another song we didn't know, but it was really, really good. i was singing along by the second chorus, but i've forgotten all the words now except for the second line in the chorus, which was "faith and desire in the swing of your hips." i love that line.
he dances a lot more than i remembered. i liked it, it was really cute. and he had this button-up shirt that, when he danced and held the guitar close to him, would sometimes ride up and show us a little something of his stomach. and yeah, i'll admit it. i focused on that for some of the time. he's really attractive when you see him in person.
the next song he had to preface by asking us if we'd heard "jesse's girl." then he didn't so much ask as assume that we all had to have heard it. some of the people shook their heads, one of which being this guy just slightly to our right. matt had sung the first line or two of the song, and the guy still shook his head, so matt asked him if he seriously didn't know "jesse's girl" and then he laughed and pointed out the guy's mohawk, which was purple, if i remember correctly. or maybe pink, because a lot of people had died parts of their hair pink for the show. real original. anyway, matt stood there and started explaining the premise of the song, and then he stopped and asked if he got it, and the guy shrugged. btw, i hated that guy. so matt just said to listen and he'd get it, so he sang the first line "jesse is a friend" and he stopped and said "see, jesse is his friend" then sang "i know he's been a good friend of mine" and said "just building on the relationship, you see he's a good friend" then sang "but lately something's changed and it ain't hard to define, jesse's got a girl" and then the whole crowd just kept singing "and i want to make her mine." so matt acted really surprised and stepped back from the mic for a second and then came back and said that he thought we all got it at that point, and just started singing. he sang the rest of the first verse and i guess he stopped right in the middle of "i wish that i had jesse's girl" because some guy behind us finished the line really loudly, and matt mimed how excited that guy must be - in a very flamboyant way. he threw his arm in the air and he bounced his hips back and forth, using "the voice" and all. it was great. and then, quite randomly, he stopped and said that the next song was kind of the continuation of "jesse's girl" because he always thought it deserved an ending. he said that this is what happens when you decide to just screw them both. then he sang "princess" which really excited me.
and the next song. oh, the next song. "this next song is about dating someone who's dating you, and everything's going really great until you find out that maybe they're sleeping with six or seven other people." and i just beamed, because i knew what song was coming, and i was SO excited to hear it again and actually be able to sing along. it's definitely a staple song of his, and he spices it up live, so yeah, i was really excited. i couldn't wipe the smile off of my face throughout his whole intro, and he caught my eyes and a sentence or two of the intro looking right at me, and i could tell that he knew that *i* knew what he was talking about and what he was about to play, and that i was incredibly happy about it. he smiled at me the whole time. it was great. much love for matt, seriously. so he started playing the song, and it was really funny, because the first time he goes to change the lyrics, he could tell what the reaction was going to be because he had this shy little grin on his face. the revised line goes "i was holding you so tight while you were holding him, and him and him and him and him and her" and as soon as he said "her," all the girls in the audience cheered and i laughed.
then he said he only had one song left and that it was a singalong (so i immediately knew it was "answering machine" and freaked a little on the inside), and he wanted to get us excited about singing his song by singing another song that we knew. so he started singing "don't stop believin'" and we always finished the line that he would start. he was a little surprised at our enthusiasm, and it was cute. i think this last song was the one he intro'd by saying that it was about Walt Disney, because as a Jew, he loved it when people built anti-semitic parks that had thousands of tourists a day. or some elaborated version of that. and again, just for clarity, that was a total lie. lol. so he told us the line we had to sing ("i could fall alone if all, if i could fall away") and said "so it doesn't make sense, but you have to sing it" with a little laugh. so we did it a few times and then he started singing. the crowd as a whole wasn't terribly loud, but keri and i definitely screamed the part. love "answering machine." toward the very end, during his guitar solo, he broke a string and people cheered. then he played even harder and broke yet another string, which made people cheer louder, and when he came back to the mic, he said "i broke all my fuckin' strings, sing!" lol.
he left to a pretty loud round of applause, though it did die pretty soon. keri and i turned right away to find the merch stand and leave, and on our way out, i heard a lot of people saying good things about his set. one guy asked his friend if he had other records, and (as keri was pulling me) i said over my shoulder "he has lots of records" and just kept going, lol. part of me wishes i could have stayed and played the part of a rep, telling everyone how amazing his songs were and how they could stream more of his stuff and where they could buy his cds. but we went straight to buy our shirts and then we were gone.
and this was an incredibly long write-up for a concert that lasted 30 minutes, but i love matt just as much as, if not more than, half the people i've seen headline, so oh well.
SETLIST:
1. Wide Awake*
2. Lucky Boy
3. Swing of Your Hips*
4. Jesse's Girl
5. Princess
6. Lost Myself in Search of You
7. Don't Stop Believin'
8. Answering Machine
*those are almost definitely not the right titles, but apparently they're brand new songs that have yet to be released (YAY) and so i just made up possible titles.
House of Blues, Orlando
July 26, 2006
ok, so technically, it was a pink concert, but we didn't even see her, so i'll continue referring to it as "the matt show" forever and always. because pink sucks. and matt's amazing.
we got in line.. let's see.. maybe at 4? or a little earlier. we did the Pass the Line thing by buying some stuff in the HOB store, as usual. i got a tank and keri got a towel and cards. we used the towel to sit on so we didn't have to sit on the hot cement, and we played a game of war or two before keri got up to go to the bathroom and the line moved forward. i had to pick up both our HOB bags, our purses, the towel, and the cards i'd been playing solitaire with all by myself, because no one around me seemed to give a damn.
about the line. i'd never really thought about it before, but pink has a big gay following. at one point, keri said she figured 90% of the line was made up of lesbians and gay guys, and a few minutes later, i told her that was way too conservative an estimate. i can count on one hand the number of straight people that i could see from where we were in line. it was kind of interesting.
blah blah. anyway, we got inside and ended up 3 people back from the dead center of the stage. i could actually see the barricade in front. i was actually a little mesmerized, and kept finding myself staring at it, imagining what it would be like to stand there at a hanson concert. *le sigh* that was all before matt came out, obviously. but still, what an idea. front row. one day, one day.
my gaze wandered to the side of the stage, where some roadies had been kind of entertaining me for the last hour or so. and suddenly, matt was standing there talking to them. keri must have noticed the look in my eye (and the fact that i'd probably stopped breathing for a moment) and asked me what was up. i just kind of shook my head without averting my eyes and said "matt."
matt came out and it was the most lackluster applause i could have dreaded. keri and i - and matt, i'm sure - all knew it'd be coming. he's really not the kind of guy you can imagine opening up for pink. just this regular-looking guy with an acoustic guitar and poetic lyrics. i'm still confused by it. but he just smiled and introduced himself and said that he loved us all, even though we were pushing him away. that he wanted to be close to us. he kind of pulled a dane cook and said something about making musical love to us. keri told me later that some girl behind her said, in a very puzzled tone, "but he's a guy." lol.
he started out with a song that neither of us knew, and i kicked myself for not getting his earlier CDs before the show. i tried like mad to remember at least some of the lyrics to look up later, and what stuck was the very first line: "i'm wide awake and so alive." i don't know why i forgot the rest, because i was singing along to some of the chorus by the time it was over. oh well. then he introed the next song by asking if any of us had been to cracker barrel, because the next song was about cracker barrel and eating too much cheese. everyone seemed kind of confused and he just laughed and said he was joking and that he was just trying again to get close to us. that song was "lucky boy," which keri didn't know because she still hasn't gotten (or even borrowed) his last studio album.
the next song had the best intro. he said that he's learned at all ages shows that parents don't usually like him swearing around their children, so he was going to edit his usual intro. what's great is that there was a mother/daughter duo at the very front, and he was looking right at the mother when he said that, and then his eyes would find them every once in a while through the introduction. he said this next song was about "making love... hard. and maybe you pull their hair.. and maybe you bite them.. maybe there's spanking." he tuned his guitar a little more, and then said again that the song was about making love, "which is where children come from" and he smiled and looked right at the little girl, and then gave the mom an apologetic face. it was so funny. it was another song we didn't know, but it was really, really good. i was singing along by the second chorus, but i've forgotten all the words now except for the second line in the chorus, which was "faith and desire in the swing of your hips." i love that line.
he dances a lot more than i remembered. i liked it, it was really cute. and he had this button-up shirt that, when he danced and held the guitar close to him, would sometimes ride up and show us a little something of his stomach. and yeah, i'll admit it. i focused on that for some of the time. he's really attractive when you see him in person.
the next song he had to preface by asking us if we'd heard "jesse's girl." then he didn't so much ask as assume that we all had to have heard it. some of the people shook their heads, one of which being this guy just slightly to our right. matt had sung the first line or two of the song, and the guy still shook his head, so matt asked him if he seriously didn't know "jesse's girl" and then he laughed and pointed out the guy's mohawk, which was purple, if i remember correctly. or maybe pink, because a lot of people had died parts of their hair pink for the show. real original. anyway, matt stood there and started explaining the premise of the song, and then he stopped and asked if he got it, and the guy shrugged. btw, i hated that guy. so matt just said to listen and he'd get it, so he sang the first line "jesse is a friend" and he stopped and said "see, jesse is his friend" then sang "i know he's been a good friend of mine" and said "just building on the relationship, you see he's a good friend" then sang "but lately something's changed and it ain't hard to define, jesse's got a girl" and then the whole crowd just kept singing "and i want to make her mine." so matt acted really surprised and stepped back from the mic for a second and then came back and said that he thought we all got it at that point, and just started singing. he sang the rest of the first verse and i guess he stopped right in the middle of "i wish that i had jesse's girl" because some guy behind us finished the line really loudly, and matt mimed how excited that guy must be - in a very flamboyant way. he threw his arm in the air and he bounced his hips back and forth, using "the voice" and all. it was great. and then, quite randomly, he stopped and said that the next song was kind of the continuation of "jesse's girl" because he always thought it deserved an ending. he said that this is what happens when you decide to just screw them both. then he sang "princess" which really excited me.
and the next song. oh, the next song. "this next song is about dating someone who's dating you, and everything's going really great until you find out that maybe they're sleeping with six or seven other people." and i just beamed, because i knew what song was coming, and i was SO excited to hear it again and actually be able to sing along. it's definitely a staple song of his, and he spices it up live, so yeah, i was really excited. i couldn't wipe the smile off of my face throughout his whole intro, and he caught my eyes and a sentence or two of the intro looking right at me, and i could tell that he knew that *i* knew what he was talking about and what he was about to play, and that i was incredibly happy about it. he smiled at me the whole time. it was great. much love for matt, seriously. so he started playing the song, and it was really funny, because the first time he goes to change the lyrics, he could tell what the reaction was going to be because he had this shy little grin on his face. the revised line goes "i was holding you so tight while you were holding him, and him and him and him and him and her" and as soon as he said "her," all the girls in the audience cheered and i laughed.
then he said he only had one song left and that it was a singalong (so i immediately knew it was "answering machine" and freaked a little on the inside), and he wanted to get us excited about singing his song by singing another song that we knew. so he started singing "don't stop believin'" and we always finished the line that he would start. he was a little surprised at our enthusiasm, and it was cute. i think this last song was the one he intro'd by saying that it was about Walt Disney, because as a Jew, he loved it when people built anti-semitic parks that had thousands of tourists a day. or some elaborated version of that. and again, just for clarity, that was a total lie. lol. so he told us the line we had to sing ("i could fall alone if all, if i could fall away") and said "so it doesn't make sense, but you have to sing it" with a little laugh. so we did it a few times and then he started singing. the crowd as a whole wasn't terribly loud, but keri and i definitely screamed the part. love "answering machine." toward the very end, during his guitar solo, he broke a string and people cheered. then he played even harder and broke yet another string, which made people cheer louder, and when he came back to the mic, he said "i broke all my fuckin' strings, sing!" lol.
he left to a pretty loud round of applause, though it did die pretty soon. keri and i turned right away to find the merch stand and leave, and on our way out, i heard a lot of people saying good things about his set. one guy asked his friend if he had other records, and (as keri was pulling me) i said over my shoulder "he has lots of records" and just kept going, lol. part of me wishes i could have stayed and played the part of a rep, telling everyone how amazing his songs were and how they could stream more of his stuff and where they could buy his cds. but we went straight to buy our shirts and then we were gone.
and this was an incredibly long write-up for a concert that lasted 30 minutes, but i love matt just as much as, if not more than, half the people i've seen headline, so oh well.
SETLIST:
1. Wide Awake*
2. Lucky Boy
3. Swing of Your Hips*
4. Jesse's Girl
5. Princess
6. Lost Myself in Search of You
7. Don't Stop Believin'
8. Answering Machine
*those are almost definitely not the right titles, but apparently they're brand new songs that have yet to be released (YAY) and so i just made up possible titles.