San Deezy Eazy Peazy/Monsters of Folk 2nd Edition

Oh yeah. You better believe I did. More on that later.

I headed down to SD directly after my interview on Tuesday and got there around 4. I basically just wandered around the harbor near the USS Midway and enjoyed the sunshine. It was such a beautiful day, not that I expected anything less from the near-perfect San Diego climate, but really. People were exercising, couples were enjoying their late lunches on the patios of the harbor restaurants and life just seemed right.

Oh. Bon apres-midi.

"Unconditional Surrender"

Some of downtown (how obsessed with the saturation technique am I?)

Made me really miss my old stomping grounds, so many great memories there.

Around 5 I met up with my friend Deron and we made the trek from Broadway to Balboa Park. We found another Spreckles theatre and it looks like this:

At this point I'm thinking,

1) Why have I never been to this part of Balboa Park. I am a waste of human life.
2) Why can't the concert be at this Spreckles.

3) Spreckles must have been loaded.

Then Deron said that on a run through the park one day, he stumbled upon some cute little houses that represented different countries around the world. Apparently on Sundays, the Park puts on cultural appreciation days and you get to visit these buildings and eat their native cuisine. I lived here for five years and know nothing of this. Disgusting. Well, we went searching for them and low and behold.

They look like this:

and this.

There are actually a lot more of these houses but I thought I would just let you see two of them.How undeniably righteous is that?

I'm making sure to go back on a weekend to have the opportunity to go into a few of these, even if it means going alone. I seem to be doing a lot of things solo as of late. I'm kind of digging it.

Concert started at 7pm which means it started at 8:30, obviously. I got myself situated in my seat, which was in the top-most balcony about 100 miles away from the band.

But let's talk about this theater. Gorgeous. Want to learn something today? I thought so. It was built in 1913 by Claus Spreckles, a German immigrant who would eventually come to be one of the wealthiest men in America. His first stop in the states was South Carolina, then soon after moved to NYC and would then settle for a short time in San Francisco where he opened a brewery and made a killing. He ended up using that wealth to purchase large tracts of land in California and Hawaii to grow beets and sugar cane. He would use the capital from those ventures to purchase the Pacific Commercial Advisory, which is now known as the Honolulu Advisor, one of the largest newspapers in circulation today (but for how long, right?). Anyway, the cat had money. And I like what he was doing with it in this theatre.

Here are a couple of wretchedly amateur photos that don't do it any justice at all.

So back to the show. There was no opening band. The curtains went up after keeping the audience waiting for quite some time (I can appreciate anticipation) and the four musicians were having a ball. This concert was nothing short of mind-blowing. These guys were not only extremely talented, but they were having the time of their lives up there. The chemistry between musicians that aren't even in a band together was really inspiring. Monsters of Folk consists of Jim James (lead singer of My Morning Jacket), Conor Oberst (lead singer of Bright Eyes), Mike Mogis (uber-producer and mult-instrumentalist from Bright Eyes) and M Ward (half of the duo which is She and Him).

Mogis had a large hand in creating the Monsters of Folk sound, both as producer of the record and as an instrumentalist.

On the record, Mogis is credited with playing at least 17 instruments, including drums, various guitars, dobro, bass, bongos and a Wurlitzer organ. I'm pretty sure he played all seventeen of those instruments that night. I was pleased.

It was really something special to be there on my own, I sat between two people I didn't know, but there was a lot of freedom in that. I gave myself permission to lose myself and just experience the music on the most personal level. There's something liberating about not feeling obligated to conjure up a verbal reaction in response to everything that's going on.

Between songs, Jim James seemed to be the biggest ham. My favorite part of the night was when there was this long silence as the group was switching instruments and tuning for the next song. Some woman shouted out "I love your beard!!!" obviously to Jim, who was the only one with facial hair past his chin. Conor replied right away saying "We love you too. Thank you for coming out-" and before he could say "tonight" Jim just points at the chick and fires back "I love your beard too." The whole place erupted. They played for almost three hours. Sometimes they didn't even face the crowd. It was as if they were having a pow wow and we were only invited to a few songs. They played for themselves and they played for each other and sometimes they would remember "Oh yeah, people came to see us" and they would turn around and face us again. No one minded. Was it selfish? Probably. But it was the best kind of greed.

Best song of the night? My fave, "Dear God." They saved it for last. Where else would it have fit.