GBV

Katie and I just got home from Oberlin where we saw Guided By Voices play on their "classic lineup" tour. Normally, when we see a show at Oberlin, the room is filled with students, about a quarter of which are young enough to theoretically be our children. Today, the crowd was filled with people who made us feel young, all there to see a band full of guys old enough to be our dad.

Nice.

The most interesting part of the night was the fact that the opening band (whose name I still don't know) played in Halloween costumes. Real costumes, not "look I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses at night" type costumes. Surprisingly, that made it more difficult than I care to admit in deciding whether I liked them. I'm pretty sure that, whether we like it or not, visuals play a large role in creating an opinion about a live band you know nothing about.

Is the keyboardist female? Does the singer look like a tool? Is the bassist a 15-year old burnout?

Today I learned that these questions are indeed important.

And I learned that you can move a lot of cans of Bud Light at a GBV show when they are $2 a pop.