Friday, December 28, 2012

..And Concert Dressed (Part II)

(Please take the li'l quickie poll.  The explanation is here.)

We were ready in plenty of time.  The Birchmere is a local music hall that's been around for a long time.  I avoided it in the past for three reasons: I heard parking was difficult, the neighborhood was iffy, and my wife and I could never decide on what to see.  Our tastes were quite different.

A few years ago, the redid the venue and added on-site parking.  A couple of years ago, we finally made it to the Birchmere.  I can't recall what we saw there.

Purple Nails Too!
Christine Lavin and Uncle Bonsai were playing there last Sunday.  Christine is a left-leaning folkie whose songs have a humourous twist.  For instance, she has a song called "Regretting What I Said" wherein she apologises for wishing all sorts of bodily harm to come to her boyfriend because he decided to go on a (solo) ski trip without talking it over with her first.  One of her albums is titled "Cold Pizza for Breakfast" wherein she discusses the merits of just that.  "What Was I Thinking" describes her wearing a formal dress that she bought at the last minute that turned out to be awful, and letting her hairdresser try a new (perm) style on her ("what was I thinking? / I can't believe what I see / I look in the mirror / Art Garfunkel's looking back at me"), among other disastrous lapses in judgement.  And I'd like to note that the song she usually calls "Regretting What I Said" is properly called "Regretting what I said to you when you called me at 11:00 on Friday morning to tell me that 1:00 Friday afternoon you were gonna leave your office, go downstairs, hail a cab, to go out to the airport, to catch a plane, to go skiing in the Alps for two weeks. Not that I wanted to go with you; I wasn't able to leave town, I'm not a very good skier, I couldn't expect you to pay my way, but after going out with you for three years, I don't like surprises.  (And it's subtitled 'A Musical Apology')."

Uncle Bonsai consist of two women and one guy.  He writes songs, plays guitar; the women sing (he joins on some songs).  One of the songs they did was called "The Grim Parade" about how the kids in this family are lethal to pets; another was a "children's song" (and they air-quoted it as well) about all of the different monsters living in the house and how the kids should go to bed NOW.

So another outside comfort zone thing was going to a show where Meg Will Laugh.  I know my laugh is not very feminine, but Meg deserved a night out.  I'm ready for a comedy club now.  Or the Fringe Festival.

Charity didn't know either artist but I passed he a bunch of songs and she agreed it would be fun to see.  I think I can safely say we both enjoyed the show.




1 comment:

  1. I've visited comedy clubs "dressed" on a number of occasions, in a number of cities, and often taken other T people with me. It's one of the best things Meg could do after dinner for an evening out, particularly with Charity, and/or with a group. It's always a good time.

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