Artists: Sufjan Stevens, Akron/Family, Adam Green
Venue: Bowery Ballroom, NYC, NY
Date: October 3, 2005
Before I completely forget this great concert, I’m gonna fill in some quick notes:
Akron/Family: An amazing show by these 4 guys (are they actually a family?). One of them looked like he was possessed or speaking in tongues. Their part of the show felt like I was at some bizarre religious ceremony where everyone (including the audience) was completely tuned into what was going on. There was a fair amount of screaming and general jamming out/over and beyond the call of duty on guitars, and a fair amount of 4-part harmonic barbershop-quartet style singin. What an act!
Adam Green: I don’t know if the front man’s name is Adam Green, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll assume it was. He was this goofy looking kid, about my age, and he gets up on stage and he starts singing and shakes the subwoofers with his deeeeep voice. He has this really funny presence on stage as if he’s kind of nervous yet cocky at the same time. He walks comedically around on stage while singing his lines (in a deep bass voice), occasionally taking a step backward in a “gotcha!” kind of way, often with a twirling of his microphone before the start of the chorus. Although their music was by no means spectacular, they had some funny songs (such as an ode to Jessica Simpson about her declining artistic output), and Adam’s voice and style really made it a worthwhile live show.
Sufjan Stevens: The star of the evening, this man did not disappoint in the least. Although he was sans his band (and cheerleaders!), he played several acoustic pieces on his guitar, and a few on banjo. Sampling from his entire discography (well, except for his electronic “Enjoy Your Rabbit” album), as well as a few cover songs (in one of the most amazing moments, he introduced a cover song as being “so much better in its first 30 seconds than any song he has ever written”, which very clearly was not the case once he played the song (although it was a good song)). This concert was a benefit for Hurricane Katrina victims, and Sufjan mentioned that once or twice, and after almost every song thanked the audience for attending and giving to such a worth cause. I don’t know if it was because of that, or perhaps the acoustic setting, or maybe he’s always like that, but I felt almost guilty in some of his more serious songs–they were imbued with such strong emotion that it felt like he was summoning them from some inner demons that he was struggling to fight. The only thing that marred this experience was some stupid drunk chick shouting “you’re so hot” every so often.
[…] another brilliant band that I was lucky enough to have witnessed at that amazing Katrina Benefit so many years ago, the Akron/Family were both similar and very different from my hazy memories of […]
Specious Logic » Blog Archive » Concert Review: Akron/Family
April 4th, 2008