Last night was Jonathan Coulton’s concert in San Francisco, at the Great American Music Hall. It was fantastic. Here are some of my thoughts on the evening:
First of all, when my wife and I saw Coulton in S.F. the last time (in Feb.) we ran late to the show, although we ended up getting good seats anyway. So this time we overcompensated and arrived way too early, scoring us a spot at nearly the front of the line. We had dinner tickets (the steak was frikin’ fabulous, and my wife was disappointed that she’d picked the chicken instead), and met up with AiYume, the guy who co-released his Skullcrusher Mountain video at the same time as mine. This turned out to be a very good thing, because at the end of the evening, we were walking out of the hall at about the same time as the last BART train (the Bay Area’s rapid transit trains) was leaving S.F. and we would have had to take a taxi home if it weren’t for AiYume letting us bum a ride back to the East Bay with him. Good people.
This was the first time I’d seen Coulton with Paul and Storm. Back in the day, when Coulton first started touring, he kind of hooked up with these guys and was their opening act. But now, Coulton’s name is the one in big letters on the marquee with P&S’s underneath. I wonder how they feel about that. In any case, the two acts are a good match. P&S are funny and entertaining, although I have to admit that I don’t dig them nearly as much as I dig Coulton. P&S’s songs are more like jokes set to music than actual songs, and while they’re plenty funny, I can’t imagine listening to them over and over (and over and over) like I do with Coulton’s music. Coulton came out and sang harmony on one P&S song and they came out and sang backup for a bunch of Coulton songs, and like I said, they’re a good match.
I’d posted in Coulton’s forums that I was going to be at the show and that I was going to wear my bright orange Ionath Krakens jersey with “SPIFF” across the shoulders so that if anyone wanted to come up and say hi, they should. I had quite a few people approach me to say “are you the Spiff?”, which was a lot of fun, although it got a little awkward after that. Usually the people just wanted to say hi and that they loved my videos but they often didn’t even think to offer their name, so after I said thanks, there wasn’t much of a conversation going on. Plus, I’ve never really had anyone go out of their way to say hi to me, so I’m not really sure how to respond. But it was very nice and I’m glad I met everyone I did, especially Luke M. and muckalarkuary from the Coulton forums (hi guys).
Because we were at the front of the line, we got front row seats for the show. The stage was maybe five feet away and Coulton was maybe eight feet away. Awesome. During the song when Coulton was singing for P&S, he was looking around and I saw that he recognized a woman to my left and gave her a nod (she was very attractive and wore a bright white YouTube shirt, so I’m not surprised he could pick her out of the crowd. Plus, I think I’ve seen her at events of his before, so they probably know each other). He also stared at me in my bright orange jersey for a couple of seconds while I stared back until he finally placed who I was (we’d met the last time he was in S.F.) and he gave me a little nod. That was nice. I think he may have also said something like “sit down Spiff” as I was scrambling to get to my seat when his part of the show started.
Both my wife and I noticed that Coulton seems to really be improving as a performer. Not that he was ever bad, but he seems more confident now. His voice is clear and strong, he plays the guitar with a little more authority than he has over the last year or so, and he gets a little more physical on stage with facial expressions and dancing around. This may be due to positive influences from P&S rubbing off on him, because they’re very physical on stage too.
His performance was fabulous. He sang most of the favorites, of course. When P&S came out to sing back up on songs like “Baby Got Back” and “First of May”, it gave a whole new character to the song, especially since it’s only ever been just him up on stage with an acoustic guitar before. The three of them together sound kind of like the Allman Brothers or the Eagles or something. Definite southern twang in there somewhere. There was a great zombie sing-along on “Re: Your Brains” (of course), but two songs stood out for me. He finished his encore with a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, which is just a really fun song to sing along too. A guy named Gle3nn recorded them singing “Sweet Caroline” at the L.A. show and posted it to YouTube here. Ours was just as fabulous as that.
But the strong stand-out to me was Coulton’s amazing, amazing rendition of “Mr. Fancypants”. Wha? “Mr. Fancypants”? The song is only like a minute twenty tops. How could that be so amazing? Well, my friends, it’s because of the fabulous machine Coulton pulled out of the case and strapped on for the song in place of his usual guitar. He never told us what the machine was called, although he did say that once he saw it he just had to have it and that it was very expensive. It was about the size of the main part of a guitar (without the neck) and was covered in silver dollar-sized black buttons on every square inch of it. It turned out to be like a mobile sampling machine, where he could tap a button to play a sample he’d programmed into it (it was hooked up to his Macbook on stage). He proceeded to rawk the house with an electronic version of “Mr. Fancypants” that was like nothing else I’d ever heard.
He told us that the S.F. show was the very first time he’d ever played the thing on stage and that he expected complete chaos once he started, which is what he got but in a good way. I was recording the show on my iPod and I’m praying that if nothing else comes out on the recording, please Gawd, let this song come out good. If it does, I’ll post it here so you can take a listen.
I hope he uses the machine for more things. His acoustic guitar is a great instrument, but lots of his songs have strong electronic instruments in them that give them more rockin’ than he can deliver with just an acoustic guitar on stage. With this wonderful machine around his neck though, he should be able to deliver some serious jammin’ as a one-man rock machine.
After the show, I stuck around long enough to say hi to Jonathan and to tell him that the Fancypants Machine was frikin’ awesome (I just now read on Coulton’s blog that the machine is a Zendrum digital midi controller). He was surrounded by people though so I didn’t stick around long and we drove home with AiYume, still glowing from the show. 