Ninja Ship

No one I know has ever really heard of The Decemberists, or have listened to The Decemberists, and when they do listen to The Decemberists, they don't really know what's so special about The Decemberists.

The Decemberists played at The Pheonix last night, and it was Special.

Their music is kind of like psychedelic pirate music. And the members are like crazy drama-music teachers from Oregon who makes really cool music. They played everything from the violin, to the accordian, to the upright bass, to the xylophone-type thing that has strings instead (I'm not sure what you call it), to the so on and so forth, they're very musical let's just say.

The reason why I liken them to drama teachers is because their show was extremely theatrical. Colin Meloy, the lead vocalists and guitarist, kept switching between a British and Oregon accent, they were dancing jigs up on stage, and at one point, they sent this guy with two small brass symbols to run around the crowd, jumping up into the air and smashing the symbols together along with the music. Then for the song, The Mariner's Revenge Song, half the people on the floor were instructed to scream at the top of their lungs like we were being swallowed by a whale, the other half had to moan and groan, and the people in the balcony had to make exclamations about Mothers and whales and death. The Pheonix was packed shoulder to shoulder, so imagine all us geeks, freeks and aeroplanes wailing at the top of our lungs. That's not even the best part! For one of their last songs, they got all of us to sit/crouch on the floor and just imagine everyone at the pheonix sitting down all at once, and when the song suddenly picks up, everyone pops back up like jack-in-the-boxes, all together like one giant wave of people.

So I was almost an hour late for class this morning.

I admit, The Decemberists' music isn't my favourite music in the world, but it's GOOD and it has personality and drama. There were a lot of die-hard fans in the crowd who knew all the words, and then there were some like Ryan and I who were really enjoying the experience. Then there were the people who just didn't look like they knew what was going on - like this one chick on the balcony who wouldn't sit her ass down and Colin Meloy refused to start the song til she did. Some people need to learn how to have fun. I had fun, did you?