Tim vs. Dallas: One day left of spring break 24 Mar, 2005
This is the chronicle of a concert I went to last Sunday, and the events leading up to it. I just wanted to make that clear because I’m posting it in the middle of the week, now that I’m finally caught up with sleep.
I found out about a month ago that the Kings of Convenience [colloquially called The Perverts among friends] were going to be coming to Dallas (to the Gypsy Tea Room) on their first (to my knowledge) US tour. I’m a very predictable person, and when I mentioned this fact offhand to Kate, she dared me to go because it would be out of the norm (she bet a jumbo jack, our unit of currency for bets at work... how could I resist?). I went ahead bought tickets ahead of time because I somehow sensed that time would be running short -- I’m never on time to things -- and then found out that someone who said they’d go had other commitments and so I was left with an extra, later taken by Will at the last minute.
You’ll never guess the one thing my parents asked as I was heading out (late, of course), was “So you’re sure this isn’t a gay bar?” Hahahaha (we’re still laughing about this) yes, mom.
Traffic was light on the way there, and Google Maps’ directions were spot-on. I parked on the north side of the Tea Room and noticed a line out the door. A little odd, I thought, given that the doors had opened 45 minutes previous, and the line wasn’t moving... after about 10 minutes of waiting, we ended up asking what people were waiting for and it turns out there were two doors on opposite sides of the block and the address on Elm is the “front door.” “Nobody told me there were two holes!” After finding the right door (and the tour bus right outside) we went in to a mostly-empty largish room that is the ballroom.
About 30 minutes later, a frazzled Erlend came out to introduce Feist [didn’t catch her real name, though I should look it up], who was opening for KoC, then skittered off to presumably wake up a bit. Her first few songs were great, after which she asked if we wanted to hear another ballad or something more like a “boom-sha-ka-ka-boom” song. The response was almost exactly the same (in reality I think everyone voted twice!) and so she started the “boom-sha-ka-ka-boom” song which sounded exactly like her accapella interpretation, oddly enough. Then she offered to sing a ballad over the bass line, which brought us all to laughter.
We listened to her mesmerizing voice for the next hour, and then the Perverts came onstage to begin. I don’t remember the setlist but I had the opportunity of standing right next to someone who must be their biggest fan and knew the entire lyrics to every song they sang [I only knew two fully].
At some point, E&E became overcome with the smoke, and asked for the air conditioning to be turned back on. Erlend went into a deadpan tirade - “Why do you people smoke anyway? It’s bad for you,” which drew a few cheers from those of us who don’t smoke, and quite a grumble from those that do. As they got ready to start the next song though, Eirick told everyone “It’s good for you” with a smile, much to Erlend’s chagrin.
Someone yelled out “God bless America,” which Feist and KoC had to ask to be repeated about five times before they could make it out. Erlend explained that he thought it should be “God bless the world,” but that would sound too hippie, so he said instead that it ought to be “God bless America. And Norway,” to which Feist quickly added “and a little part of Canada.” I heard most of my favorite songs, “Cayman Islands,” “Misread,” and a few others that nobody who is reading this would likely recognize.
Once they started playing “I’d rather dance with you,” we knew it was going to be the last song. It was a beautiful rendition, and they came back for an encore, “Little kid” I think, and then everyone started leaving. My snapping fingers exhausted, I took Elm back toward downtown, and managed to get back onto 75 instead of Woodall Rogers, and was thrown northward past the exit I needed (curse you, Dallas road designer).
I thought I would simply take Mockingbird over, which was only a couple miles ahead, but then traffic stopped. And crawled. It took over an hour to make the 2-3 miles till Mockingbird, due to what must have been a very large accident (closing 3 lanes of traffic), and two stalls in the meantime. Once up to Mockingbird though (which was all but closed due to the accident, so I continued on), and past the worst of the Dallas crazies, it was just a few miles till 635. All told, we left at 11pm and I wasn’t home till 1:30. Ugh. I didn’t know that many people were on the streets at that hour.
Pictures are online in the gallery.