I finally get a chance to post something! Anywho, a couple weekends ago I went with my roommate to the Decemberists concert in Tucson, AZ. Now before I go on, I'm going to warn you that I wasn't a big fan of the band before I went, and unfortunately I am still not a big fan. I mainly went to the concert because I have family in Tucson that I wanted to see and I figured "what the hell, I might end up liking the band." The theater that the concert was in was pretty awesome, like one of those old theaters you'd see a fun play in. Everything was awesome until the opening band came on, Lavender Diamond. They looked like a bunch of hippies, not that I mind hippies, but I knew the music wasn't going to be all that great and turns out...it wasn't. The lead singer was actually pretty funny in an annoying playfully stupid way. I think she would've made a better comedienne than a singer because she sang about as good as me and I'm not that great. Most of the 5 songs she sang contained high notes that she could barely reach and all the songs were really repetitive, but overall they're not a band you can hate. After Lavender Diamond's short set, there was about 45 minutes of waiting before the Decemberists came on. The lead singer had his funny little spiel telling us to look at our atmosphere and the architecture and then to enjoy the show. As I mentioned earlier, I'm still not a fan of the Decemberists and here's why: 1. Most of the music has a mindlessly-happy sounding beat. I want music to make me think and to stimulate me. 2. Because of that mindless-happy beat, all the songs sound the same. 3. I can't understand most of what the singer is singing which caused me to zone out since I couldn't zone in on anything. They played for an hour and I started falling asleep by the end of that hour. They started off with faster paced songs and then played a few slow and soothing songs (I could seriously fall asleep to their music and that's not a bad thing). When they came back for an encore, that's when the show became a bit more interesting. The lead singer didn't really interact with the audience until the end of the show which was something that I wasn't really used to. During one of the songs he finally put down his guitar and grabbed an audience member's cell phone and stared at it for a while (I'm assuming he was dialing someone). He then started singing into the phone which I thought was extremely amusing because it was a song about guys hating girls or girls hating guys (something like that). The singer then grabbed a giant frog hat from someone in the audience and wore it for a few minutes before returning it to it's owner; also amusing. After the 30 minute encore, the show was finally over. Through the last 45 minutes of the show all I could think about was how I would've rather been working on my grad project than standing there listening to music I didn't like. I do have to say that even though I think the music is crap, I was very impressed with how talented the entire band was. The lead singer switched guitars for almost every song and all of the other band members played at least 3 other instuments. There were also instruments that I haven't seen or heard in years like the hurdry-gurdy. Overall, they're a talented band, but their songs lack oomph and there wasn't any interaction with the audience until the encore making this concert very lame.