rEELmandy: What Do We Do? The Decemberists Know

Considering I’m only 25, I’d say there have been about 10 experiences that have changed my life. And the people who have these experiences, and claim to have had them, know how I define life-changing. It's not a new take on your destiny, it's not necessarily a movement away from your current situation, it's not even that you realize that you need to “be a better person”, or anything unnecessary like that. It’s that the moment itself makes you utterly grateful. You are, more or less, impressed with the idea of being alive. You move on from these moments with a newfound ability to get through all the shitty days in the hopes that sometime in the near future your life will change again.

Radiohead at Embarcadero. R.E.M’s Monster Tour, Arcade Fire. Parque Guell in Barcelona. Kissing a lover in Berlin. Extra Action Marching Band at the Casbah, The Flaming Lips everywhere I've seen them. These, though mostly music related, are my most recent memories that involved times of transcendence.

But I have a new one. Saturday night, 7/7/7, Heather and I were lucky enough to witness possibly one of the most magical moments in my personal experience with music. I feel that even typing the word music is near blasphemous because it is all too common and vulgar. A longtime favorite band of mine, The Decemberists were playing possibly the most beautiful venue in the world, The Hollywood Bowl. On top of these facts, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra was finally setting their music to its full potential.

At one moment during the show, faithful leader Colin Meloy quipped that his music was always written and intended to be heard the way that he was hearing it that evening. If you listen to any one of their albums, especially Castaways and Cutouts & Her Majesty, The Decemberists, you can tell that they did not have the budget to afford more that a few violins, guitars and banjos. So after years of patiently listening on shitty speakers, ipod buds or (ekk) my computer, I too was able to experience that fruition with them.

I don’t want this to be a regular concert review. Yes, they played personal favorites, The Bagman’s Gambit, We Both Go Down Together, and Los Angeles I’m Yours (to ironic cheers during the line, “but oh the smell of burnt cocaine, the dolor and decay”). But the song that made me nearly fall to my knees in anticipation was the epic Odalisque. The arrangement of this song was taken far beyond even its regularly impressive minor-key chord progression. The guitar solo sounded even more like The Beatles “She’s So Heavy” and the orchestra was simply on fire.

The chord progression and final payoff during, “And what do we do with ten baby shoes, a kit-bag full of marbles and a broken billiard cue?” sent my soul (yes I said soul) to a level that no man, drug, friend, place or sound has ever taken it. For so many years, these lines have epitomized the empty feeling of having no money, no possessions and no clue of what the FUCK to do with life. What do we do? What do we do?

What we do is make music. What we do is try desperately, in any way we can think of, to express this all-too common emotion to others that we are sure know how it is.

There was nothing I could do to stop the stream of tears falling into my glasses and onto the concrete. Heather was feeling the same way, I can only imagine, and so were a few people right around us. There were a few seconds I really thought I was going to completely lose it, but thanks to the antics following the end of the song, I was able to be distracted. I know a lot of people that for one reason or another claim to not be able to, or not “choose to” cry. From the bottom of my heart I feel sorry for these people because when something gets inside of you that deeply, there is hardly any other way to express it.

While I do have a love affair with the Internet and all things Youtube, it was a tough decision of whether or not to post the following video. All I ask is that if you watch it, you please also buy/watch the (HOPEFULLY!!!) forthcoming DVD of the entire show.

Thanks for listening…