First off, I kind of really like the picture above. It might be among my favorite live pics that I’ve taken.
A few years back I had tickets to see Spoon at the Majestic Theater. I can’t remember what happened, but for one reason or another I sold my ticket and couldn’t go. Then the following summer, they were playing a free show as part of the Detroit Tastefest (now known as the “Comerica Cityfest”, but it will always be the tastefest, just as the Fillmore will always be the State Theater, and the way that DTE will always be Pine Knob. But it was on the 4th of July, and I was on the lake, so I called my friend to say I wasn’t going. Then a few weeks later, they were closing out the last night of the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago. I was at the B stage watching the famous/infamous Cut Copy 4-song festival-closing set and didn’t see them.
So when I purchased my ticket for this show, my fourth attempt at seeing Spoon (I really hope someone is reading that will get this joke, but here goes anyway. “Dan, the scholarship committee has decided to give you….a fourth chance.”) And somehow, some way, I made it there for the 3-band lineup. Since I’m always late for shows, I missed the openers The Strange Boys. Sorry for that.
But I knew I was going to get there in time to see the second band, Deerhunter out of the ATL (or thereabouts), I was not going to miss it. I’d seen them once before from the front row at Lollapalooza back year and took some shabby photographs, so I was happy to have another opportunity to hear them and to catch them on film with a legit camera.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the sound at the Royal Oak Music Theater (I don’t remember much about the Bloc Party show there a few years back, a classic night of debauchery for every one of my friends that was there, but I do remember the sound being awful), and this was no exception. The band sounded great from up front, but as soon as you moved back at all it was a muddled mess. It sucked because I knew they were ripping it. Of course, “Nothing Ever Happened” was one of the highlights, but the REAL highlight (perhaps because they didn’t play it the first time I’ve seen them, and it’s one of my favorite 2-3 minute ditties) was their closing “Disappearing Ink”, which they jammed out for probably 7 or 8 minutes. It was pretty killer, bad sound and all.
A few songs before this, Bradford Cox was informing us that even after we left the show that night, he would be with us. He would always be with us. Terrorizing us in our dreams, whether we liked it or not. I thought it was rather hilarious, especially since he was speaking all of this through an echo effect, making it even weirder/creepier. But I don’t think the rest of the crowd picked up on his humor. And just before the final song began, he apologized and said that he would try to redeem himself. And then the band played the aforementioned jammed out “Disappearing Ink”, and in my opinion, Mr. Cox more than redeemed himself, even though I never felt there was anything calling for redemption in the first place. And as always, you can see all of these pics in higher quality on the dailybeatz Flickr page.
I’ve posted this song before, but I just think it’s that great as a quick and awesome rock song.
buy it on 
or amazon
So next up was the main event, Spoon, who fate and circumstance had prevented me from seeing live so many times before. I don’t really know what I was expecting out of them live. But whatever I was expecting was exceeded. I also learned something really interesting about myself. I recognize and can hum along to just about any Spoon song, but I don’t really know the names of any of them. Why is that?
As the show began, I decided I would wait a few songs with my friends before I tried to get some photos, after all, nobody had told me that there was a 3-song limit or anything, and once I left I probably wouldn’t make it back to my friends anyway. So as I entered the pit in the middle of the third song, I took about 10 pictures and was told our time was up. Disaster. Luckily I got a few that were half-deece. So luckily.
As for the performance itself, I think I was surprised by a few things. The first is the energy. I don’t usually think of Spoon as a super high-energy band, I think I consider them more kind of laid back rock. But they were firing on all cylinders, in my opinion at least, and the crowd was enjoying it quite a bit. The next thing I really liked was the pretty cool light show. It wasn’t anything extremely over the top, but it always worked really well with the music. There were these candle looking lights that at times looked a little MTV Unplugged, but all in all it was visually entertaining. The band was in front of these color changing giant geometric shapes that provided a nice contrast against the black backdrop. And the third thing that surprised me was their use of effects throughout. I think this was especially apparent in the official “really cool song that I sort of forgot about and didn’t really know that I liked so much until just now”, which in this case was “The Ghost of You Lingers”. I think it just doesn’t sound like anything else they’ve got, and it was pretty great live with the lights and effects and whatnot.
The band came out for what I remember as a 4-song encore which included (I think) “I Turn My Camera On” among a few others and closed with “The Underdog”. I think this show made me realize how much I really like Spoon even though I don’t usually think to listen to them. But that seems to be the way I feel about so much music lately, so it’s always nice to rediscover.
Here’s one of my favorites from their recent album Transference which I kind of dig and which I was happy to hear live. It’s got a nice breakdown in the second half that I enjoy. Just promise me you’ll wait for it. And then look at the couple of pics I was able to snap.
buy it on or amazon
