The Sufjan Stevens Concert, Or, How I Spent Saturday Night, Or, Majesty! Beauty! Harmony! They wear all Black, but I'm Sorry to Say No Cameras May be Used in The Allen Room.

My pictures from Saturday night's Sufjan Stevens concert can be seen here. It was the most amazing gorgeous beautiful incredible super cool venue I've been to. To see right out to Columbus Circle and all the cars behind Sufjan and the band was amazing. Usually Sufjan does something silly and gimmicky involving costumes, but this time the whole band wore plain black and it was all so elegant and pretty. I didn't get as many pictures as I'd have liked, because they were crazy there about not letting any pictures. Not even before or after the show, of the stage. They were really on top of it, running all over the place between songs telling people to put their cameras away. I tried taking video during a few songs, but I was so scared of getting in trouble that I didn't look through the lens; I just kept the camera on my lap and aimed in the general direction of the stage and hoped I was getting the band. For the most part, I didn't. But I put so much effort into it that I'll be damned if I don't upload anything and make someone download the fruits of my labor. Here's a YouSendIt Link to my most successful attempt. By "most successful" I mean that I didn't get ONLY the top of the window and the buildings beyond. You can actually see the band on and off. Sufjan's at the piano. This video is of the song called "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!" It's a quicktime .mov file.

Sufjan's really weird. Wehuda tried to get me into him months ago, but I saw his picture and while I thought he was very cute, the stupid costumes and too-small baseball caps looked ridiculous, and I didn't like all the pics of him getting his pimp on. And his 3-sentence-long song titles seemed so gimmicky. Then a while after that, Polter-Cow tried getting me into him but I resisted again because of all the horns; I have bad associations when it comes to horns in music because just about all Jewish music has horns and just about all Jewish music sucks. But then I somehow came to download a couple of songs and luckily they were the perfect songs to snag me with, and I was hooked.


For those of you who are not familiar with Sufjan Stevens or his music, I encourage you to go here and watch the streaming video of his Morning Becomes Eclectic session. It's a great session, though not nearly as good as the show I saw. We had a string section! Wheee! His voice is just so damn pretty. It gives me chills and certain songs make me get teary even though I can't figure out what the hell he's singing about most of the time. It just sounds sad. I'm also linking to this 15-second streaming clip (even though the video and audio are bizarrely not lining up) because it's of the exact part in "Come on! Feel the Illinoise!" that I love. And because Sufjan looks cute in it.

Notable songs in the streaming Morning Becomes Eclectic session I linked to above:
Song #1 - "Casimir Pulaski Day." Liked it first time I heard it, grew to love it. The lyrics are sad and make me shiver.

"Chicago" at around 11:50 in. It's pretty here, but it's better its usual way, when it's fuller and more powerful. I do like the "oohwoahwoah" thing he does at the end of the word "go" in this version. I like his voice whenever he makes it extra soft and high, basically.

"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." at 22:45. This is the song that got me into him. I listened to it over and over and over again for a couple of days straight. I hadn't known who John Wayne Gacy, Jr was, but I realized it was about a serial killer from the lyrics. The way he sings makes you feel the horror of it but you find yourself feeling almost as much horror for the killer himself as you do for the victims. This particular performance of it isn't the greatest I've heard. His voice carries more horror and sadness in the album version, I think.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" at 27:15. I'm only listing this one because it's was AMAZING live. It started quietly and built and built and by the end I had my fists clenched so tight that my fingernails were digging into my palms and the pleasure of what I was hearing was matched by the sadness I felt that it was going to end and I'd never have it back. The "Ah ah ah, dadadah"s were so awesome live, and the snapping at the end rocked, because they all did it and it was really loud and cool. And the way he sang the "half awake, half asleep, I can see you there" was really sexy live.

And you really, really, really have to download "The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!" from the link at the bottom of the page here.

And I totally saw Sufjan Stevens on the F train twice. I jokingly told Polter-Cow that, because I'd seen this really pretty guy on the train who I thought looked a lot like Sufjan, and then I found out that he actually does live in Brooklyn. I was still only around 90% sure it was him because the guy I saw looked a little smaller and more sharp-featured than the pics and vids I'd seen of Sufjan, but the moment he walked out to the stage on Saturday night I knew it was definitely him. He looks much smaller and sharper in person and I so clearly remember him from the train (because he was sitting across from me and I kept staring because he was so pretty and his eyes so blue shut up).