Just wow...

Wednesday Night Music Club: In a change of pace the Wednesday Night Music Club will be on Sunday this week while the best of 120 Minutes will be on Wednesday. Part of this is due to the fact that it is my blog and I’ll do whatever the hell I damn well please with it. Partly it is due to the fact that I feel that calendars and clocks are part of an oppressive regime focused on destroying creativity (though my boss never views it quite the same way). But mainly it is because I really, really don’t want to wait until Wednesday to talk about the Polyphonic Spree.

(That would be the wild band shown above. Typically I hate people who decide to videotape shows from the crowd because I never understood what the enjoyment was of capturing out of focus video with really bad sound. However, in this instance it might be the only way to explain what I saw on Saturday.)

Yep, I went to The Polyphonic Spree show in Lawrence on Saturday night and it was, in a word, insane. I’m not sure if there is any other way to describe the band. I mean, 21 people were on stage at the same time. There was a six woman choir performing orchestrated dance moves that consisted mainly of whipping their hair around. There were two violinists, a cellist and a full brass section. There was a flutist (or flautist I’m never sure which is which) who gave the most energetic performance I’ve ever seen with that instrument on a rock stage. (Though truth be told, I’ve never seen Jethro Tull) For crying out loud, they even had their own harpist. To call this a band gives a disservice to the word band.

Leading it all is Tim DeLaughter, the former frontman for Tripping Daisy. I’m not sure where he came up with this idea or how he convinced everyone to go along with it but he has created something that is so amazing I’m not sure if I can describe it. Basically, this band rocks. I saw them at the Granada, which is not a big venue at all, so you just have 21 people going full energy at all times. If you’re not playing your instrument you are singing along. Tim leads the show somewhere along the lines of a religious revival. Standing on the monitors, leaning into the crowd, just exhorting everyone to relish this precise moment.

(He actually said that. “Remember that you will only have this night, this moment, once in your entire life. Make it one that you’ll remember forty years from now.”)

The songs are vaguely psychedelic and half of them seem to be about how awesome the sun is. That probably explains why the hippie girl who was dancing wildly beside me grabbed my arm at one point, looked me dead in the eye and yelled “It’s the sun!” That didn’t happen at the Drive By Truckers show. The clip is from my favorite Spree song, “Hold Me Now”, which is upbeat and happy and just shows how amazing the band is. I was singing along at full volume, as was most of the crowd. If you know me you probably can’t imagine seeing me sing along with the band. I’m usually hanging out next to the soundboard, drinking a beer and complaining about the band’s lack of proper bridge structure. With the Spree you just don’t care about any of that shit. You just want to sing and bounce and feel alive. Outside of The Frames, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band that when I left I wanted to go out and change the world.

Some other highlights: 1) They had a red banner across the stage to hide the setup. When they started playing they put a spotlight on it and someone held their hands up in the shape of a heart. Tim then cut the banner, following the heart shape. 2) At one point Tim grabbed someone’s cel phone (who had it up in the air so a friend could hear) and started singing into the phone, 3) For the encore they came out in their traditional choir robes and walked through the crowd, 4) The show only cost $16 so I paid less than a buck per band member.

Seriously, if you ever get the chance to see these guys you have to. There really is nothing like it out there.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Robert Earl Keen “What I Really Mean”
2) Pieta Brown “Pieta Brown”
3) Richard Buckner “Dents and Shells”
4) Cowboy Junkies “200 More Miles”
5) U2 “Boy”