No More Kings

So I just got back from the big show at Battery Park. The one with Yo La Tengo, Stephen Malkmus/Jicks, and Laura Cantrell. The one where they were handing out magnets with this logo.

Any discussion of a big free show usually starts with a discussion of the show environment. I showed up at about 1 pm, an hour before the gates were opening and promptly got in line behind at least a thousand people. I used this time to read some of The Manchurian Candidate (I thought I should actually read the novel, but it's quite pulp) and to start having my skin burned by the sun.

The crowd had a pretty good vibe as we were let in--there was no ridiculous running for lawn space as happens at the Bryant Park movies. I wasn't sure if people were going to sprawl or crowd for this show--some people had the full-on lawn chair and backgammon setup and there were a lot of people with blankets. I brought a spare shirt to sit on.

Everyone sat for Laura Cantrell. A kind of front-of crowd standing area started for Malkmus and after that it was pretty much all standing. It seems like they stopped letting people in pretty early, so when the standing started there was a lot of extra space, which was nice because there wasn't the two-people in my shoe sensation that one gets at Siren. There was some funny high school kid dancing going on. Also a lot of people who seemed unaware of Pavement...it seemed like there was this consistent 1:4 ratio of some guy telling 4 other people "he used to be in a band called Pavement." I guess the upside for Malkmus is that people weren't yelling for a lot of Pavement songs.

I was hoping for "No More Kings", but it wasn't coming. Here's the original School House Rock version. And note the additional last line in the Pavement cover.

So the show:

Laura Cantrell was good. I enjoyed her very professional band and smart cover selections.

S Malk and Jicks were pretty much the same as every time I've seen them...moments when I think they are SO much better live than on record, and then they mess up. I've seen them now 4 times and there are times when they seem really tight but then something gets unplugged or Malkmus forgets a lyric. I guess that's just part of the fun vibe. They are a fun band and this was a good show overall. I wish they'd brought a second keyboard rig though, and done a kind of Fiery Furnaces treatment to the new songs that deserve it (Pencil Rot, for example). They also played a bit shorter than expected...the sponsor guy tried to get them to come back for an encore, but they wouldn't.

Yo La Tengo might be the most likable band ever and I've seen them many times, in many settings. The sound was bit harsh during their set, I thought, but they played lots of favorites...Big Day Coming, Tom Courtenay, Autumn Sweater, Stockholm Syndrome. They also played something that seemed like it was from their sea life movie scoring. They also played shorter than I thought they would, but it was a very Yo La Tengo performance, lots of Georgia, Ira and James on everything and they ended by covering the Ramones.