Melancholia
This was a melancholy weekend for me. I hardly had any direct human interaction at all, although I did chat with the guys behind the coffee shop counter a couple of times (nice as they are, I hope the cute women will be back for the fall semester. Grin!), and I called my Mom today. she just got back from a week on Cape Cod (our family's traditional vacation spot), and spent a week in London last month.
I had a lot of indirect human interaction, though: I went shopping yesterday, though I didn't find much of note. I restrained myself from buying the recently-published hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's stories; I'd like to buy them eventually, since I like Lovecraft enough to have them in hardcover, but it's hardly a pressing need. But I did buy some of the books for the next round of SF books discussions.
But I spent a lot of this weekend feeling kind of aimless, restless, and tired all at once. Too much anxiety.
I'm not generally as big a fan of their slower stuff, although I do like "Paradise", for instance. But I think the show would have gone better if they'd mixed things up a little more, since the rest of their up-tempo stuff was together at the end of the show. (And, unfortunately, the rocking "Sail Away" seems to have fallen out of their set, and "Would I Lie To You", one of the best songs from their new album, is not in their set.) I also had the feeling that they were playing around with their arrangements and trying out some new elements of their songs. So since this is their fifth show that I've been to, it made everything sound a little strange to me.
Or maybe it was just me.
They did do an amusing cover medley of "Aiko Aiko" (sp?) and "The Women are Smarter" as their encore, as well as "The Edge of the World", one of their best ballads, from their first album. And they came out for a second encore - which they'd never done at any show I'd seen before. They also played a couple of songs I didn't recognize, and I wondered whether this was new material (they were doing "Phases of the Moon" live long before the third album came out) or outtakes from earlier albums, or simply covers of songs I wasn't familiar with.
I wouldn't say this was their best show, although it's hard to beat the fact that we had front-row-center seats for their show at Summerfest earlier this summer.
The opening act, The Why Store, are alternative radio darlings as far as I can tell, and have some things going for them; they're a little more tuneful than the typical alt-rock act, and their lead singer has a great voice (and actually reminds me both visually and vocally of Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson. I'm always a little annoyed at groups which refer to themselves in their songs, as in their anthemic "High", but overall I'd say I'm curious to buy one of their albums.
I also received my latest order from Amazon.com, which included several Dorothy Sayers mysteries and a bunch of CDs.
And now, I'm not sure what I feel like doing. But I don't think it involves going to work tomorrow. But I'll probably go anyway; we got a deadline coming up.
And the programming staff reviews.
Ugh.
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