Lewies Blog

I arrived early for the Dead Can Dance tour in Washington, D.C. and spent a while outside looking out at the park in the surrounding area. The sky was gray and looked like it could rain. The excitement in the air of things to come was building. After a half hour the area was getting flooded with people and I went back inside.

I waited in a very large line before the show started to get a voucher for the live album. The lines were not setup well and many people were complaining. The guy behind me went to the New York showing the other night and he said it was nothing like how it was at this place. He was really upset.

It turns out that the problem was due to how accessable the shirts were to the people selling them. They would spend a few minutes hunting for different sized shirts in different piles on the floor. Many people didn’t know what they wanted until they got to the table since you couldn’t see the products while you were in line. It would have been better if they setup the table on the lower floor so that there would be moore room to get to it, and everyone could see the products from a farther distance.

Many people in line ahead of me left for there seats. I stuck it out and sort of got lucky. I asked for a voucher for the live CD, but the guy handed me two vouchers. I didn’t realize it until after I had walked away and was halfway to my seat. I figured it was probably one for each disk since it was a double-disk set, but that just didn’t make sense. After the concert I took a closer look at what I had and discovered that I did in fact have two seperate vouchers.

I got to my seat and was out of breath. Just as I sat down, the lights dimmed and the show began. Talk about perfect timing! My seat was probably the worst seat that you could get. It was on the very top row and the farthest back. It was a good thing that I purchased the tickets when I did or else I wouldn’t have gotten a seat at all. I still had a good view, but my eyesight is not what it used to be. I still got to get a new pair of glasses soon.

Dead Can Dance put on a really great show tonight. I had to stop myself from moving my toes along with some of the songs. I could hear a few people singing along with a few songs. The concert was a spectical of lights. Along with many classic songs, a few new ones came out. It was interesting to see the excitement from Brendan Perry as he moved with the music while he sung and played different intruments.

While Brendan was playing Severance at the end, he had one instrument that was really odd. It looked like a drum, but had a handle that he would crank on the end. I had always thought that the sound it made was a violin or a reed instrument. He was able to change its notes, but I couldn’t see the details of the instrument itself. It was odd and I am curiouse as to what it is. (Thanks to Jocelyn, I have found that it was a Hurdy-Gurdy.)

In the end, Lisa Gerrard really surprised me with a song that was quite different then the types of songs that she sings. The whole audience was just mezmorized. I didn’t know she could sing that way as well. I think the title of it is Hymn for the Fallen, as it is the last song listed on the advertisement of the live album.

I tried to get some pictures with my camera phone, but the quality was just horrible. I also tried to take a voice memo of the crowd going crazy during one of the times that everyone went off stage and came back on. Unfortunately, I didn’t tell the phone to actually save the memo. Here are some of the pictures:

On the way out, I got a free sampler CD from Asleep by Dawn magazine. Half the bands sounded a bit gothy, but I signed up to get a free subscription anyway. Some sounded a little bit like the Dead Can Dance folks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 at 1:52 am and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.