The weather was amazing, it was one of those summer days that makes you glad that you somehow managed to get through the winter again. Clear and sunny – Puget Sound so blue it looks like a dream. Just one of those days designed to be played out in Seattle.
We went to Mandy and Jason’s and ate some kabobs on the porch. Flipping great! Brandi left for the airport, and it always makes me a little melancholy to see a friend leaving, but I managed to buck myself up by drinking more whiskey.
We moved a table out to the porch and played cards and had drinks and watched the sun slowly sinking in crazy, summer orange behind Lake Union. I was flirting with the idea of skipping the concert we were going to so we could just continue to relax and enjoy ourselves, but we were seeing the Mountain Goats. This is them:
That serious looking guy towards the front is John Darnielle. I don’t know how he does it, but this guy manages to lock so much emotion into a song that even after 182 listens, some of it still leaks out and slaps me around. His songs affect me in a way that no other song writer has been able to. And his shows always seem like a visit from a funny friend who knows how to push your emotional buttons all crazy; not because he’s necessarily vindictive, but because it’s exactly what you want and need.
Sunday’s show was strangely solemn. The crowd was whisper quiet. They all seemed to be into it, and John and Pete were giving their all, but it was almost spooky quiet in there between songs. It’s like we were all waiting with hushed breaths for something else amazing to happen. It was a good show, it was unfortunately a short show, but I again realized that I could scream out songs I wanted to hear all god damn day, but he was still going to play stuff that I didn’t even know was exactly what I needed to hear.
At every Mountain Goats show I’ve been to, and some that I’ve heard copies of, there are a large number of people shouting out unprovoked for him to play Going to Georgia. Sometimes thay just drunkenly scream, “Georgia!” It has become some sort of concert mandate now, like that drunken nimrod who shouts out, “Freebird!” It’s a crowd favorite, Going To Georgia, and John never plays it. I heard one person throw it out there Sunday night, as if in passing, and then he played it. It felt momentous and it felt perfectly in tune with everything else that day somehow.
My words always manage to feel clumsy when I try to talk about The Mountain Goats. There’s some kind of magic there that defies being brought to light. I will just say that I cried like a child who has his soul filled.
Sunday was a good day.
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