11/12/06 - Imogen Heap @ Webster Hall
last sunday was my second time seeing Imogen Heap in concert… and she was uh-may-zing! i almost fear that she’ll someday deflate my high expectations of her live show, but it certainly wasn’t this time. she was as jovial and cute as ever. kinda makes you wish she was a teeny bird you can keep in your shirt pocket to occasionally pet and feed throughout the day. like that old guy, brooks, did in ‘the shawshank redemption.’ what? that didn’t make sense to me either. more about the immi show in part two.
so. sunday was rainy. but not when i arrived at penn station around 6:00. i wasn’t to meet up w/ KT until 6:30, so i decided to walk from 32nd&7th to the union square virgin megastore on 14th&4th. (what a total fuckin’ misnomer. when i got there, people were havin' sex all over the place. the escalator’s barely safe to stand on, people. i’m not lecturing you, i’m just sayin’. and don’t get me started on how a condom is waaay slippier than a banana peel. i should sue.) ten minutes into my walk, i decided it was cold enough to get myself some tea. celestial seasonings’ red zinger, to be exact. i found it at some café along the way and took entirely too long fixing my cup while multitasking w/ the beverage itself, the cell phone i was using, and the earphones of the mp3 player i refused to turn off. props to me for holding back my usual urge to take 20+ more sugar packets than i need (since they’re free and/or i may need them later for a macguyver type getaway). back en route to union square, i realized that my hot tea was, in fact, too hot for my bare hand to hold. i hadn’t really looked for one of those cardboard cup partition thingies, but i blame the cup’s manufacturer for making a product that can’t protect its customer from the very item that cup is meant to contain.
i was wearing a new coat that day and wasn’t prepared for how insulated it would be. so i was stewing in my own juices by the time i got to the megastore at 6:35. red and flushed, i found KT waiting for me near the upstairs literary section. she was reading a pornographic pop-up book entitled “in bed by 8, home by 11: a how-to guide on gettin’ some daily.” no, not really. i think it was some book about tattoos. or so she said. i can’t read, so i took her word for it. wait… is there a porn pop-up book?! yo, i got dibs on the copyright! now all i need are subjects willing to let me…
one ms. KT may very well be my latest friend crush. it’s a mild feeling, but it does exist. good times. it likens back to the feeling you got from making a new friend in elementary school when you’re still surprised that someone in the grade above you thinks you’re cool. ‘hey, so-and-so likes me too! maybe she can ride on my bus and we’ll hang out playing sonic the hedgehog ‘til one of our parents gets off work to drive her home. that’d be neat. we’ll be bestest friends forever and ever! (that is, until 9th grade when she starts dating the guy you had a major thing for in 7th grade; and even though you assured her you were ok w/ it, you secretly despise her and her sz 2 jeans.)
we went to some nearby pizza place that surprisingly won me over. kudos to their pepperoni & mushroom slice. it was yummers. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again… nothing’s worse than bad pizza (well… just about). but, of course, you finish every last morsel of that bad slice since it’s still pizza. raise your hand if you’re a slave to melted mozzarella. ok… now with your hands still in the air, raise something else and maybe i’ll let you be in my pop-up book.
good pizza. good conversation. more good times. we left for webster hall and arrived there around 7:42, i think. to be more precise, we arrived on the same block behind webster hall and saw how long the line was. they were all there waiting to take their real estate exams (inside joke for KT). no, they were all in line for imogen! lovely immi! like i said, i’ll get to her in a bit. despite the rain choosing to fall exactly as we added to the line’s body count, time went by quickly w/ talks of pizzeria uno’s, buffalo stances, and the difference between good and evil being those willing to leave space in a driveway for cars to enter/exit and those who aren’t.
interlude – “whoooo’s that gigolo on the street? w/ his hands in his pockets and his crocodile feet? hangin’ off the curb, lookin’ all disturbed/ at the boys from home, they all came runnin’. they were makin’ noise, manhandlin’ toys…” hmm. everything keeps bringing me back to that damn pop-up book! – interlude end.
the first time i treated myself to seeing imogen live was october 2005 at the canal room. it was just her on a stage w/ her wacky music looping gadgetry. i was verrry close to said stage and the venue’s small size made it quite an intimate evening. good times. last sunday’s show was my first visit to webster hall. i’m happy to report that it was a pleasant one. i knew it was bigger than bowery, but it wasn’t nearly as spacious as i led myself to believe before seeing it. still… i was surprised that ms. heap had made such a jump in venue size in only a year (due largely in part to the OC soundtracks, of all fuckin’ things). not that she doesn’t deserve it and then some.
after a quick unintentional perusal of the merch stand and a trip to the bathroom (complete w/ red moodlighting and purchasable candies), KT and i found a spot midway on the floor to stay put (after being denied access to the not-so-VIP balcony section. fine! i’m afraid of heights anyway, mr. security man!). i know nobody’s reading this, but if by some twist of fate you are and attended the same show, i have a little known fact for ya: that cutie selling beer and water in a ballpark vendor satchel was not faking a bad cockney accent. he was actually australian. go figure.
ok, so by the time we hit the main floor for good, the first opening act had already begun. LEVI WEAVER.
i have yet to ‘google’ him, but he’s some sort of indie, acoustic guitar playin’ solo artist who also does his own backup band looping. i liked him. and not only cuz he’s got one of those scott wolf type baby faces. so he’s either 19 or 29. who knows? he’s a cutie patootie either way. in keeping w/ the school theme… if only he would pass me a note between classes asking if his mom can take us to the movies this friday. we would shyfully smile at each other when we both laugh at something funny; and i would nudge him w/ my elbow for laughing at something unfunny. like anything lewis black is yelling about. why are we watching lewis black at the movies? cuz there’s popcorn involved, that’s why. in the kind of theatre that lets you add your own butter. that’s why. and cuz this crap is what my imagination came up w/ at this very moment. so suck it. oh, right. levi weaver. he did a rendition of radiohead’s ‘idioteque’ that i very much enjoyed, but i can’t tell if it’s just because i’m a huge radiohead fan or because i liked his version. he didn’t really add anything to the song that’s not already in the song, it was just… different. his own. so he gets a thumbs up regardless.
imogen came onstage after his set to introduce the second opener, but this was our first time seeing her since we got there. i think KT said she looked like a cute mary poppins in the suit/hat combo she had on and i agree. seeing her for that brief moment made me anxious for the next act to be over w/ quickly, but he managed to keep my interest for the entire 40 minutes he was up there. i had never heard of him prior to the week before this show, but Kid Beyond is a beatboxing looper. a one-man techno band. i thought he was great… especially for givin’ us some NIN ‘closer’ and portishead ‘wandering star.’ now he would probably be more my type if it wasn’t for that tinge of wannabe-thug in his speaking voice. he’s mr.-clean-bald and i choose to believe that he shaves his head on purpose cuz he’s got that ‘fresh-outta-prison-but-i-still-have-credibility-since-i-only-spent-2-weeks-there-after-being-wrongfully-accused’ look that i sometimes take to. what’s not to like about the conjugal visit fantasy? you don’t even have to talk cuz there’s no time for that! you’re in, you’re out, and you can still make it to the bookstore on a sunday before it closes.
what i loved next was that immi didn’t keep us waiting long before coming back out for her own set. i can’t accurately describe what she was wearing, but her hairdo reminded me of the trojan war. (ok, fine. it made me wanna watch brad pitt and eric bana in TROY. leeme alone. i’ll post a pic and let you form your own thoughts.) she started w/ ‘i am in love w/ you’ and it only got better from there. at canal room last year, it was just immi and her magical noise machines. but this time around, she had a backup band accompanying her on some of her songs. i can’t really compare the two shows since they’re so wonderfully different, so i can’t say which one i would prefer for next time. i suppose any immi is good immi. KT is a newcomer to the imogen ‘scene’ and i kept turning around like a proud parent trying to make sure a childless friend was still watching her daughter do a floor routine at her first gymnastics meet. but instead of saying ‘look at what my daughter can do!,’ i was using bad body language to tell KT to ‘look at what immi can do!’ as soon as i recognized what song was next. i think i even moaned once when ‘just for now’ had started. yeah… i definitely did. that was embarrassing. more good times, tho. thanks, immi. :)
oh.my.god. i almost forgot to mention the idiots in the audience. that’s a separate paragraph, indeed. ok, so i can’t remember what song it was, but immi was playing a slow jam on the piano and some jackass decided to badly clap along. it didn’t last the entire song, but it was still annoying as shit on a new shoe. that shoe being a flip-flop. then there was the drunk couple. can’t have a memorable concert experience without ‘em, can ya? luckily for me and KT, they were about three or so people in front of us. the tall guy had a fro-ness to his tight, curly brown locks and his short girlfriend was just short and drunk. and probably a theater major, as KT pegged her out to be. they seemed to time things perfectly to be just drunk enough to stay upright by the time immi came on. when Frodo raised his lighter in the air, i was inexcusably distracted from the music to stare at him. not because it reminded me that i wanted a cigarette, but because i would allow my attention to be drawn away from the stage for more than five seconds to watch what he would do next. they swayed and toasted their beer cups to immi like bad-mannered medieval mongolians at a drunken dinner sing-a-long, but i was more than able to ignore them for most of the night. until it got close to the encore and they began acting out each song word for word via interpretive dance. i watched for a while and noticed that any time the girl came to a word she couldn’t do charades for, she would just raise her hands as if she were trying to cup rain into her mouth. FUN NEE. i actually busted out laughing during the last song. i just couldn’t believe how silly they looked (since i was sober). some girl behind us then went up to them in what seemed to be an attempt to get them to stop, but she admirably failed. shorty mcdramaqueen simply turned to her and kept on-a-mimin’ to ‘the moment i said it,’ which is such a lovely song. i actually don’t mind that i missed most of it since ‘the other show’ had gotten so amusing. if only the video i took of them came out well enough to upload onto youtube!
back to imogen. she put on a phenomenal show. as i mentioned before, she had a band w/ her for a few songs this time and kid beyond and levi weaver were parts of it. i have no idea what levi and his guitar added to the table, as i was unable to hear what he was playing. maybe he was just there as eye candy. i did enjoy kid’s participation, tho. i couldn’t always tell the difference between what he was beatboxing and what was actually an instrument, but i guess that’s a good thing. it only means he did that much better of a job than i thought. but, man oh man… immi! what a fun, little showgirl she is! but by no means do i mean ‘little’ in the sense of stature. i’m pretty sure she’s close to 6’0” tall. so seeing her dance around the stage was a greatly fun sight. one that was appropriately left out of the canal show. and she’s my precious, little giant, she is. cute doesn’t even begin to describe her between-song banter. i wanted to take her home and serve her tea and krimpets, before tucking her in and reading her a bedtime story. and i do believe she’s made quite a fan out of KT (which i’ll also take a little credit for… you’re welcome, director).
i’m sure i’m leaving out tons of stuff, but i’ll come back and edit if something worth mentioning revisits me.
for now, i invite you to add suggestions to my list of possible porno pop-up book titles:
1) pop! goes the weasel cuz the weasel goes uhhh!
2) c is for coochie… and other bedtime snacks. (in case it becomes a food fetish book)
3) have you got it in you? (just to keep this immi related :D)
so. sunday was rainy. but not when i arrived at penn station around 6:00. i wasn’t to meet up w/ KT until 6:30, so i decided to walk from 32nd&7th to the union square virgin megastore on 14th&4th. (what a total fuckin’ misnomer. when i got there, people were havin' sex all over the place. the escalator’s barely safe to stand on, people. i’m not lecturing you, i’m just sayin’. and don’t get me started on how a condom is waaay slippier than a banana peel. i should sue.) ten minutes into my walk, i decided it was cold enough to get myself some tea. celestial seasonings’ red zinger, to be exact. i found it at some café along the way and took entirely too long fixing my cup while multitasking w/ the beverage itself, the cell phone i was using, and the earphones of the mp3 player i refused to turn off. props to me for holding back my usual urge to take 20+ more sugar packets than i need (since they’re free and/or i may need them later for a macguyver type getaway). back en route to union square, i realized that my hot tea was, in fact, too hot for my bare hand to hold. i hadn’t really looked for one of those cardboard cup partition thingies, but i blame the cup’s manufacturer for making a product that can’t protect its customer from the very item that cup is meant to contain.
i was wearing a new coat that day and wasn’t prepared for how insulated it would be. so i was stewing in my own juices by the time i got to the megastore at 6:35. red and flushed, i found KT waiting for me near the upstairs literary section. she was reading a pornographic pop-up book entitled “in bed by 8, home by 11: a how-to guide on gettin’ some daily.” no, not really. i think it was some book about tattoos. or so she said. i can’t read, so i took her word for it. wait… is there a porn pop-up book?! yo, i got dibs on the copyright! now all i need are subjects willing to let me…
one ms. KT may very well be my latest friend crush. it’s a mild feeling, but it does exist. good times. it likens back to the feeling you got from making a new friend in elementary school when you’re still surprised that someone in the grade above you thinks you’re cool. ‘hey, so-and-so likes me too! maybe she can ride on my bus and we’ll hang out playing sonic the hedgehog ‘til one of our parents gets off work to drive her home. that’d be neat. we’ll be bestest friends forever and ever! (that is, until 9th grade when she starts dating the guy you had a major thing for in 7th grade; and even though you assured her you were ok w/ it, you secretly despise her and her sz 2 jeans.)
we went to some nearby pizza place that surprisingly won me over. kudos to their pepperoni & mushroom slice. it was yummers. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again… nothing’s worse than bad pizza (well… just about). but, of course, you finish every last morsel of that bad slice since it’s still pizza. raise your hand if you’re a slave to melted mozzarella. ok… now with your hands still in the air, raise something else and maybe i’ll let you be in my pop-up book.
good pizza. good conversation. more good times. we left for webster hall and arrived there around 7:42, i think. to be more precise, we arrived on the same block behind webster hall and saw how long the line was. they were all there waiting to take their real estate exams (inside joke for KT). no, they were all in line for imogen! lovely immi! like i said, i’ll get to her in a bit. despite the rain choosing to fall exactly as we added to the line’s body count, time went by quickly w/ talks of pizzeria uno’s, buffalo stances, and the difference between good and evil being those willing to leave space in a driveway for cars to enter/exit and those who aren’t.
interlude – “whoooo’s that gigolo on the street? w/ his hands in his pockets and his crocodile feet? hangin’ off the curb, lookin’ all disturbed/ at the boys from home, they all came runnin’. they were makin’ noise, manhandlin’ toys…” hmm. everything keeps bringing me back to that damn pop-up book! – interlude end.
the first time i treated myself to seeing imogen live was october 2005 at the canal room. it was just her on a stage w/ her wacky music looping gadgetry. i was verrry close to said stage and the venue’s small size made it quite an intimate evening. good times. last sunday’s show was my first visit to webster hall. i’m happy to report that it was a pleasant one. i knew it was bigger than bowery, but it wasn’t nearly as spacious as i led myself to believe before seeing it. still… i was surprised that ms. heap had made such a jump in venue size in only a year (due largely in part to the OC soundtracks, of all fuckin’ things). not that she doesn’t deserve it and then some.
after a quick unintentional perusal of the merch stand and a trip to the bathroom (complete w/ red moodlighting and purchasable candies), KT and i found a spot midway on the floor to stay put (after being denied access to the not-so-VIP balcony section. fine! i’m afraid of heights anyway, mr. security man!). i know nobody’s reading this, but if by some twist of fate you are and attended the same show, i have a little known fact for ya: that cutie selling beer and water in a ballpark vendor satchel was not faking a bad cockney accent. he was actually australian. go figure.
ok, so by the time we hit the main floor for good, the first opening act had already begun. LEVI WEAVER.
i have yet to ‘google’ him, but he’s some sort of indie, acoustic guitar playin’ solo artist who also does his own backup band looping. i liked him. and not only cuz he’s got one of those scott wolf type baby faces. so he’s either 19 or 29. who knows? he’s a cutie patootie either way. in keeping w/ the school theme… if only he would pass me a note between classes asking if his mom can take us to the movies this friday. we would shyfully smile at each other when we both laugh at something funny; and i would nudge him w/ my elbow for laughing at something unfunny. like anything lewis black is yelling about. why are we watching lewis black at the movies? cuz there’s popcorn involved, that’s why. in the kind of theatre that lets you add your own butter. that’s why. and cuz this crap is what my imagination came up w/ at this very moment. so suck it. oh, right. levi weaver. he did a rendition of radiohead’s ‘idioteque’ that i very much enjoyed, but i can’t tell if it’s just because i’m a huge radiohead fan or because i liked his version. he didn’t really add anything to the song that’s not already in the song, it was just… different. his own. so he gets a thumbs up regardless.
imogen came onstage after his set to introduce the second opener, but this was our first time seeing her since we got there. i think KT said she looked like a cute mary poppins in the suit/hat combo she had on and i agree. seeing her for that brief moment made me anxious for the next act to be over w/ quickly, but he managed to keep my interest for the entire 40 minutes he was up there. i had never heard of him prior to the week before this show, but Kid Beyond is a beatboxing looper. a one-man techno band. i thought he was great… especially for givin’ us some NIN ‘closer’ and portishead ‘wandering star.’ now he would probably be more my type if it wasn’t for that tinge of wannabe-thug in his speaking voice. he’s mr.-clean-bald and i choose to believe that he shaves his head on purpose cuz he’s got that ‘fresh-outta-prison-but-i-still-have-credibility-since-i-only-spent-2-weeks-there-after-being-wrongfully-accused’ look that i sometimes take to. what’s not to like about the conjugal visit fantasy? you don’t even have to talk cuz there’s no time for that! you’re in, you’re out, and you can still make it to the bookstore on a sunday before it closes.
what i loved next was that immi didn’t keep us waiting long before coming back out for her own set. i can’t accurately describe what she was wearing, but her hairdo reminded me of the trojan war. (ok, fine. it made me wanna watch brad pitt and eric bana in TROY. leeme alone. i’ll post a pic and let you form your own thoughts.) she started w/ ‘i am in love w/ you’ and it only got better from there. at canal room last year, it was just immi and her magical noise machines. but this time around, she had a backup band accompanying her on some of her songs. i can’t really compare the two shows since they’re so wonderfully different, so i can’t say which one i would prefer for next time. i suppose any immi is good immi. KT is a newcomer to the imogen ‘scene’ and i kept turning around like a proud parent trying to make sure a childless friend was still watching her daughter do a floor routine at her first gymnastics meet. but instead of saying ‘look at what my daughter can do!,’ i was using bad body language to tell KT to ‘look at what immi can do!’ as soon as i recognized what song was next. i think i even moaned once when ‘just for now’ had started. yeah… i definitely did. that was embarrassing. more good times, tho. thanks, immi. :)
oh.my.god. i almost forgot to mention the idiots in the audience. that’s a separate paragraph, indeed. ok, so i can’t remember what song it was, but immi was playing a slow jam on the piano and some jackass decided to badly clap along. it didn’t last the entire song, but it was still annoying as shit on a new shoe. that shoe being a flip-flop. then there was the drunk couple. can’t have a memorable concert experience without ‘em, can ya? luckily for me and KT, they were about three or so people in front of us. the tall guy had a fro-ness to his tight, curly brown locks and his short girlfriend was just short and drunk. and probably a theater major, as KT pegged her out to be. they seemed to time things perfectly to be just drunk enough to stay upright by the time immi came on. when Frodo raised his lighter in the air, i was inexcusably distracted from the music to stare at him. not because it reminded me that i wanted a cigarette, but because i would allow my attention to be drawn away from the stage for more than five seconds to watch what he would do next. they swayed and toasted their beer cups to immi like bad-mannered medieval mongolians at a drunken dinner sing-a-long, but i was more than able to ignore them for most of the night. until it got close to the encore and they began acting out each song word for word via interpretive dance. i watched for a while and noticed that any time the girl came to a word she couldn’t do charades for, she would just raise her hands as if she were trying to cup rain into her mouth. FUN NEE. i actually busted out laughing during the last song. i just couldn’t believe how silly they looked (since i was sober). some girl behind us then went up to them in what seemed to be an attempt to get them to stop, but she admirably failed. shorty mcdramaqueen simply turned to her and kept on-a-mimin’ to ‘the moment i said it,’ which is such a lovely song. i actually don’t mind that i missed most of it since ‘the other show’ had gotten so amusing. if only the video i took of them came out well enough to upload onto youtube!
back to imogen. she put on a phenomenal show. as i mentioned before, she had a band w/ her for a few songs this time and kid beyond and levi weaver were parts of it. i have no idea what levi and his guitar added to the table, as i was unable to hear what he was playing. maybe he was just there as eye candy. i did enjoy kid’s participation, tho. i couldn’t always tell the difference between what he was beatboxing and what was actually an instrument, but i guess that’s a good thing. it only means he did that much better of a job than i thought. but, man oh man… immi! what a fun, little showgirl she is! but by no means do i mean ‘little’ in the sense of stature. i’m pretty sure she’s close to 6’0” tall. so seeing her dance around the stage was a greatly fun sight. one that was appropriately left out of the canal show. and she’s my precious, little giant, she is. cute doesn’t even begin to describe her between-song banter. i wanted to take her home and serve her tea and krimpets, before tucking her in and reading her a bedtime story. and i do believe she’s made quite a fan out of KT (which i’ll also take a little credit for… you’re welcome, director).
i’m sure i’m leaving out tons of stuff, but i’ll come back and edit if something worth mentioning revisits me.
for now, i invite you to add suggestions to my list of possible porno pop-up book titles:
1) pop! goes the weasel cuz the weasel goes uhhh!
2) c is for coochie… and other bedtime snacks. (in case it becomes a food fetish book)
3) have you got it in you? (just to keep this immi related :D)
1 comment:
you write a helluva post
good job hitting all the high points
i wonder what sort of interpretive dance that couple did on the L train back to williamsburg, because god knows they probably live in the 'burg
i have to admit
i didn't enjoy the pizza as much as you did
i found it a tad heavy
and what does it take to move me from "mild friend crush" to "coolest fuckin' person i've met in my lifetime"?
do i have to like radiohead for that?
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