around 7.30 p.m. jesse came by and picked up some money to buy me an advance ticket for the they might be giants concert the next day, but i later found out they'd stopped selling them so i had to get one at the venue. he came as i was cooking (pasta sauce with zuchinni) and attempted to drag me out one more time, but i was adamant in staying at home..

i just watched the us open (tennis) anyways. it was very satisfying. eventually gene called, and we decided to go catch south park at the dollar theater only.. when he came by the apartement and we called the venue, they'd stopped showing it. we were pretty much stumped at what else to do so we mostly sat on the couch and watched nothing.

after me taping an old hole performance off of saturday night live around 10.30 p.m. we got up and left for the video store. we came back with 'closure' a two-video set with nine inch nails, and jawbreaker, and a whole bunch of beer. we only made it through 'closure' however. the beer was quite good, which surprised me coz i'm not a beer-chick.

around 6 p.m. jesse picked me up. i'd spent an hour jumping around to NIN in the bathroom while going a bit nuts with the black eyeliner and purple eyeshadow and probably looked like i was going to a very different show than 'they might be giants', but what can you do.

we picked up his friend jamie and headed off to raleigh to find the venue (same as where the next ani difranco concert will be :) and actually got really lost.. but thanks to somebody with new hampshire plates leading us right, we managed to find the place. i quickly spotted a few purple haired ppl and got a craving for hair dye.

getting the ticket took about 20 seconds. it was amazing. soon enough we were let in, and i figured we'd get a bad spot (it was general admission) because there were around 100+ people ahead of us in the line, but duh! we ended up front row -yours truly was hanging over the security barrier!! the stage was about six feet away. freaky.

we caught up with a few more friends, and after about an hour and a half the lights dimmed and the opening act came on. they were called you were spiraling and were from new jersey (which elicited plenty of screams ;)

i had JP, the guitarist right in front of me, exactly this close up. that's when i discovered that being that close to the performers is a weird thing because... well, they're right there. kind of makes you feel like an ass staring at them. you know?

i tried for a while to casually glance around the stage, but eventually i just gave up and stared coz i mean, the guy was right in front of me - it was pretty impossible -not- to look. *shrug*

anyways. so you were spiraling opened and i don't quite know how to describe them. they were surprisingly good and i liked the way the band members communicated with each other. i think they consisted of a guitarist, a singer/keyboard/synth (er) player, a drummer and a bassist... the singer had a nice voice, like one of those boy'ish popboy voices, it really suited their songs.

they started off with a cover of 'will you still love me tomorrow?' that was really good. i never realised how well suited that song is to be sung by a popboy voice. it had the audience kind of puzzled, though, because we didn't really know what to expect. they soon got on with their own stuff, and i found the set to be somewhat uneven, but with real good things stuck inbetween the sort of bland.

there were two definite highlights - the first came somewhere in the middle of the set, in the middle of a really cool song. because the guitarist was right in front of me, i'd noticed that he'd fiddled with a little thingamajig at the start of the song, but i just assumed it was something for the guitar.. well, it was but.. not what you'd expect.

it was a nintendo gameboy. it had a game up and running, and JP picked it up and pressed it against the guitar making an electronic little gameboy melody run through it, causing the most awesome effect that had plenty of us screaming our asses off. i can't describe it. the melody mixed with a slight distorted sound from the strings being pressed just sounded extremely cool. hah.

the second best thing was the song they ended with. it was another cover.. of... a-ha's "take on me'!! i went nuts. seriously. that was such a great cover, and i love that song so much.. gah. it was great, and a definite crowd pleaser.

and so their set was over and they started to pack up. suddenly i heard the chicks behind me yell "chandler!!" at the guitarist, which had him grinning.. he did look a bit like chandler on friends, though i personally thought he looked more like a shorter pacey from dawson's creek.. but enough of that.

as they were almost done, a stagehand or whatever took off the setlist from where the guitarist had been standing to (i guess) throw it away. for some reason i made a gesture for him to give it to me, and he was about to when the singer came over and took it from him and handed to me.

the couple next to me that had also waved their hands to get it seemed oddly miffed about it and asked me 'did you ask for that or did he just decide to give it to you??' uh...

still, it made me smile. okay. fast forward forty minutes or so...

now, i will not be able to give you a setlist or whatever because *gasp* i'm not familiar enough with their songs. i will tell you the songs i do remember, and the rest of the good stuff. it just might be out of proper order, that's all.

i had the john flansburgh guy in front of me for most of the concert, about six feet away. (about as close as in the picture, if that makes any sense.) i -think- it started with Spider but could be wrong. the lyrics were about a spider.. they continued onto The Guitar i knew i was in for a treat. lyrics like 'In the spaceship, the silver space ship, the lion takes control' are just too funny, y'know?

the people on the stage were sooo enthusiastic, and it really made the whole concert fabulous. i thought i would feel like an outsider because i only know three songs ('Istanbul (not Constantinopel), 'Why does the sun shine?' and 'Become a Robot') but nooo. it helped that they played a whole bunch of new songs that the rest of the crowd didn't know well either, heh.

one of the funnier moments were when the guitarist joined the john's on vocals, and all three of them seemed to be playing some inside joke where john l would say a word, and the other two would repeat it. it kept escalating, and soon it sounded like a mad game of vocal tag. and then the actual song started up and it was.. Mr Klaw!

as it was over, flansburgh told us that this was the very first time they'd played that song live... that they were sort of testing it out to see what the reaction would be (puzzlement) and introduced the next song that was also a first, this time a new song from their online mp3 album at emusic.com.

Highlights:

me to guitarist: Hi! um, this is your setlist so.. um, could you sign it?

arf! he was so nice! he introduced himself as JP, shook my hand and chit chatted. i gushed about the gameboy thing he did and he ended up writing down the band's url on the setlist too. as i turned around i saw that the singer was sitting next to me, so i said: "hey you.. you gave it to me, you sign it."

he laughed and looked to see what name JP had signed it to and went "wait, is that really your name? ending like that? that is so weird! wow! my mom -and- sister spells it the same way and i never see other people who are really named like that!"

we ended up talking for a few minutes (about me not having an accent, and about him having had a swedish roommate that sounded like he was from brooklyn) and then they passed the setlist around so the rest of the band could sign it.

i missed half of the show due to a sudden bout of having to throw up. ick. let's just say i won't be ordering in pizza for a while, eh?