I took this photo last spring. Right after I’d graduate college and returned home to Douglas to spend a couple of weeks with my parents. I didn’t have much to do, but I took quite a few photos during that time. This bird, which I’ve no idea what type of bird it is, was trying to woo a lady bird a few branches away. He kept singing some angry sounding mating call to her, while she replied oh-so-sweetly. Another male bird, perched on a tree some meters away, kept trying to fly over and greet the lady bird. She must feel special, two males trying to woo her at once! I watched this seduction/defending-turf routine for quite a while. I’m not sure which guy got the lady, but I don’t think I could have told them apart anyhow.

Recent Musicalness

I’m resisting the automatic response to put a summary of what I’m going to talk about in the next subsections here. Curse my technical writing knowledge and curse it because it’s mostly what I do these days.

Broken Social Scene Live in Boulder

A couple weeks back, I saw Broken Social Scene rock the Boudler Theatre. And when I say rock, I mean rock. I counted nine amplifiers on stage, and at any given time there was between seven and twelve people on stage. Feist opened, and then joined the band for a few songs later. “More guitars than anybody” seems to be Broken Social Scene’s battle cry, and the rockstar moves pulled when the opening rift of KC Accidental ripped through the theatre could have badly wounded a stray roadie, should one be foolish enough to wander across the stage.

Last time I was duly impressed with Broken Social Scene’s live act, and they didn’t disappoint. The show was awesome. The company was perfect, and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Spoon Live in Boulder

The indie-rock kids may have been out for Broken Social Scene, but not so many were around two weeks later when Spoon played the Boulder Theatre. This was a chance for older folks to rock out. The guy next to me must have been in his late 40s. Awesome. I hope I’m still watching rock shows when I’m middle-aged.

As for Spoon. They opened with Chicago At Night, the closer to Girls Can Tell, before transitioning into The Beast and Dragon, Adored. Spoon’s albums don’t mess around with wasted moments, and neither did their live show. They rattled off something like seven songs before pausing to say anything at all. This trend continued through the night, with the band playing songs off their last four albums: A Series of Sneaks, GIrls Can Tell, Kill the Moonlight and Gimme Fiction. In the hour and half they were on stage, they managed to play almost everything off Gimme Fiction and a wide array of songs from the other three. I’m not sure the stripped aesthetic of Kill the Moonlight is as brilliant live as the album, but it doesn’t matter.

The show was an old-fashioned rock show, something I’d not seen for many years. Sure, Broken Social Scene played rock music, but ten Canadians on stage don’t make a rock show. The three members of Spoon plus “Head-wound” as Britt dubbed their touring backup fellow put on a veritable rock show and every minute of it was notable.