Blind Pilot at the Bowery Ballroom
by Michael
It seems that every other week I am at The Bowery Ballroom now, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is an expensive thing. In an attempt to subsidize this, I petitioned my dorm to pay for my ticket by having me “host an event” where I would take 5 people who live in my residence hall to see Blind Pilot last week. Little did I know NOBODY WOULD WANT TO GO. So, sadly, this will probably be the last time I get a free concert.
Well, FUCK YOU RESIDENTS!!! The show was amazing, and you were all too stupid/lazy to know it. Luckily, my concert buddy Paolo was willing to tag along.
Laura Veirs was pretty damn amazing filling her role as perpetual unappreciated opener. Luckily I didn’t have to do laundry, because Laura Veirs is still with the Hall of Flames (I’m like Arrested Development with my random self-references). She even dug back and was playing some shit from when she was with The Saltbreakers. If I had to use a witty analogy to sum up how the crowd responded to her it would be this:
Laura Veirs and the Hall of Flames are the reclusive girl from middle school who somehow fights through all her shyness and self-consciousness to perform a beautiful self-composed song at the talent show only to lose to the 3 douchy dudes that lip-synch to LFO.
After Laura’s set, Paolo and I squirmed our way up through the crowd, and got up closer than we probably should have been for not being experts on Blind Pilot. Regardless though, we were in prime concert enjoying spots.
When Blind Pilot came on, a wave came over the crowd that made us all extremely mellow, and also extremely effing excited. Even though I wasn’t familiar with about half the songs they played, I spent the whole show in a trance, wrapt in awe as they played, only coming out periodically to sing along to the handful of songs of theirs I had memorized. I began to melt when Israel just started talking about playing “Oviedo” and kept right on melting. Honestly, the show was possibly one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced.
The one downside to the entire show was the insance cocktease that ended the concert. Their final song was a new one entitled “We Are The Tired” which they announced would be on their next album which they haven’t even started recording, and won’t start until they finish this tour (which is not coming back to NYC). We were left with one of the upbeat amazing pieces of music any of us in the crowd have ever heard, and were made fully aware will not get a chance to listen to again for some time.
In the end, I give Blind Pilot 5 awkward gushes out of 5 (my new awkward rating system for bands I love).
