Birds and Bands

Last week on the elevated section of my train home, a tiny bird flew through the open doors and into my carriage. The doors closed behind it and as people noticed and began to react by shooing it away with clumsy swinging palms or trying to grab it, it flew into walls and scrabbled for footing on metal handholds before fluttering, harum scarum, into my lap. I was holding a book, so for a moment or two it had a safe haven in the crook of my arm, nestling in the folds of my shirt. He stopped there. He preened a bit and looked around him. Everyone in the carriage was staring at me. I didn't move. I wanted him to stay there until the doors opened again. His toes were so incredibly thin and his eyes were black, specular and bright. He was one of those little finch-like birds with red and thin black stripes and yellow and white all mixed in together. The conductor for the train came out of her booth and someone got her attention.
"Oh, okay! I'll hold the doors at the next station. No problem. They don't normally do that!"
The bird hopped up onto my arm, emboldened. I willed him back, but he took off, fluttering and banging into windows and trying to grip the handhold bars. After a few seconds of panic he found another haven somewhere along the carriage, and I stood up to see - he was crouched, shaking, in the space between a slouching, sleeping commuter's back and the back of the seat. A movement from the chinese woman who was asleep would have squashed him, so I stepped forward and gently scooped him out. He took off again and after the conductor held the doors for a minute or more a man in a black suit reached out as the bird fluttered determinedly against the window and grabbed it in his hand. Walking to the doors, he stepped out and threw the bird straight up in the air. I couldn't see, but judging from the way people's heads moved after he did so makes me think the little guy flew off without any ill-effects.

Last night Krissa and I went to see Gomez at Webster Hall. Gomez have been one of my favourite bands since I started university, and I love all their electronic-rock-offbeat goodness dearly. But in all that time, I never saw them live. Last night was absolutely epic. There have been a few times in my life, all music-created, when I have been so full of a type of joy that I laugh. It was so great to hear the opening bars of 'Bring It On' that I couldn't help it. After all that time, loving the music, there they are, and here it is. It's a childish gratification, I suppose.
Krissa and I had a spot on the balcony directly above the band. I've not been the sort of music fan that looks up band members' favourite foods for many years, so much so that I don't even know the names of the members of Gomez. Before the concert my impressions of what they looked like came entirely from the video for 'Whippin' Piccadilly', which I only bought on iTunes a few months ago. Prior to that I went entirely on my imagination. What I wasn't expecting, and I was happily surprised by, was that they looked like the sort of people you normally see setting up the equipment for bands.
They belted out nearly two hours of songs from all their albums, including a roof-raising 'Devil Will Ride' with the vocal fades from the studio version replaced with soaring, surging guitar crescendos that countermanded every expectation of the traditional rock'n'roll surge-surge-fade of energy in instrumental bridges- it was relentless, every time different, every time riffing on the audience's expectations. 'Free To Run' was never one of my favourite songs, but it was mindblowing live, so much so that I listened to it a couple of times today to see what I'd missed listening to the CD version. Even some of the electronica-heavy stuff from 'In Our Gun' they pulled off, with a twenty-five strong complement of pedals, three keyboards, two drumkits (one traditional, the other composed of an array of cymbals and bongos, with tambourine and maracas on the side). 'Ruff Stuff' was brilliant, 'The Sound of Sounds' was rousingly haunting and 'Shot Shot' pounded out as the rhythm of an impromptu mosh pit, with huge crowd-teasing gaps where the song has beat-breaks on the CD. At the end of a four-song encore, they played out with 'Whippin' Piccadilly.

It was bloody brilliant.
My camera died after one shot, but Krissa went on taking photos through the night - they'll be on her Flickr shortly, I expect.

Update: And NOT ONLY THAT. The show was broadcast live on WFUV, Fordham University's radio station, and their archived recording of the entire show can be found here (pops, and I think you need Windows Media Player).
Fucking excellent. I'll listen to it again now.

Second Update: Sounds totally different to actually being there. That honking noise in the opening 'Bring It On' is one of the band (Tom?) on this little hand-held keyboard that you blow through. We could hardly hear it on the night, despite being ten feet away.

Third Update The guy who keeps yelling 'TOOOOM!' and particularly irritating requests for a song ('ROSALEEETAAAAH!') when people were calling for an encore was standing right behind us. Right. Behind. Us.