On a rare journey into our city for good food and great (and I mean great) music, Kristi and I joined our beloved friends Jason and Sharon (and Bill Gates) for The Swell Season at The Moore. Oh my. Bono has my heart, but Glen and Marketa are fighting him for it after our musical tryst last night. I defy you to find a better live front-man (in a small setting – Bono reigns in the stadiums) than Glen going right now. I had high expectations going in and they were exceeded – which is usually not the case (see: Sting at the gorge playing for about 60 minutes). Seriously, he was fantastic – and strums one smooth guitar. I was very impressed at his rapport with the audience. He seems steeped in the Irish tradition of Stream of Consciousness which he mingled brilliantly with humor in introducing songs. The best interaction may have been when someone yelled “Congratulations on the Oscar!” in between songs. Glen said “Tanks!” and then described the funny tension in having made a movie totally outside of the Hollywood “system” but having been given its greatest award – it’s about 2/3 cool and 1/3…. He said something to the effect of, “It’s like when you kick your ball – you kick it and think it’s only going to the curb. But then it goes across the street, over your neighbor’s house, over the field and you say, ‘wow, I kicked that fuc$*&% ball far!’” [Pause for laughter—clearly the image is of being smug with one's ability to boot the ball]. He continued, “But then you’re like, ‘I want my fuc$*&% ball back!’” I’m sure with the success has come the loss of some of the simpler / peaceful aspects of life.

 Overall, it was like that experience when you read about an unusually awesome concert in the paper that you had turned down tickets for and you start looking for a pillow to scream into. I was there this time, baby! He intro’d the night by expressing concern over feeling sick and having low energy. Then they proceeded to play for over 2 ½ hours and closed by bringing back the opening musicians (Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Liam Ó Maonlaí of Hothouse Flowers fame) and rocked Dylan’s Forever Young (sorry, Jason – I almost didn’t want to tell you about missing it). What a fabulous show. Sooo, I’ve got some good work to do in getting to know The Frames and trying to understand more of Glen’s eclectic spirituality – seems to have a Celtic-pagan-Christian-fusion thing going on. Here’s a video of them covering a Michelle Shocked song, Fogtown – they played this one last night for us as well *sigh* (wordpress isn’t letting me put the video here) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrlkDfk_f-c