A, Like Awesome, Café Du Nord San Francisco LIGHTS Show, Review

Wow, it's two weeks since I blasted home on my bike from work in Berkeley so that me and my S.O. could make it across the Bay Bridge to get to Lights acoustic show at Cafe Du Nord before the 7:00 door opening. It's never too late for a review though. Even if some of the details may have slipped my mind the memories of the show still linger like a beautiful dream where when you wake up you can't remember all the specifics but the feeling remains, the body remembering.

Also, some of the good citizens attending the show followed the historic tradition of Bay Area defiance and ignored the prohibition on video photography, so my memory is supplemented by, and the rest of the world can now watch, the recorded performance of Honey I Shrunk the Kids (see playlist below) and many of the other more familiar sixteen songs played that night. BTW- thank you to everyone (especially Kayla lights-love.com) who have put videos on line for all the shows. The Philadelphia Up Up and Away video is so amazing it is now one of my favorite for introducing Lights to the uninitiated. So following is the play list and some random thoughts, memories, questions, and bon mots about the concert.

On Thursday August 5, 2010 the traffic was light on the Bay Bridge and we made it to Café Du Nord, located a couple of miles west of the city center on Market near Castro, by 6:40 and joined the hundred or so already in line in the chilly wind under the grey blanket of foggy skies, part of the continuing coldest San Francisco summer in everyone's memory. Thanks to some Team Lights members, Lights was given hoodie to wear when she arrived earlier in the day. During the show she gave thanks and told us she wore it all day long.

Rachel Goodrich (http://www.myspace.com/rachelgoodrich) opened at 8:00 with a too-short set of her eclectic "shake-a-billy" style music that has earned her the title of Queen of the Miami Indie-rock Scene. She charmed the crowd with her warm personality and music that included a mix of instruments including guitar, kazoo, ukulele, and the Peruvian charango (reference for those of you who attended). A band of Rachel's friends planted in the audience with drums, tamborines, and other melody-makers joined in during songs and finally on stage to get the crowd participating in her last song, Light Bulb, off her Tinker Toys album.

After a brief break LIGHTS hopped onto the small stage in the intimate downstairs venue packed with about 200 people, a few in tables up front, followed by about a hundred in a dozen rows of chairs and the rest in standing room about 10 people deep in back. Lights looked great with Rainier a boldly prominent feature on the landscape of the stage, possibly an effect of the therapeutic foggy San Francisco air to which Lights also attributed a particularly straight part in her comb-over that evening.

The play list in order played was:

1. February Air
2. The Listening
3. Second Go
4. Quiet
5. Last Thing on Your Mind
6. Honey I Shrunk the Kids (Note: at first I wasn't going to include this 20 second seranade on the song list but decided to since its appeared at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qUMsS0lAqM. I missed what led up to it. Anyone remember?)
7. Romance Is
8. Up Up and Away
9. Casanova
10. River
11. Face Up
12. Pretend
13. Fall Back Down
14. Saviour
15. Drive My Soul
16. Pity Scene (encore)
17 Cactus in the Valley (encore)

Lights said she liked being back in SF and told us this was the first show of the six to sell out. She noted that we were there during an interesting part in her career where she could do this series of six small acoustic shows and that she may never do it again or at least not for a long time. (Hopefully she'll get over that thought and gift us with some more acoustic shows and albums every now and then.)

The audience, which had been wrist-banded, hand-stamped (twice if underage), and given a copy of the acoustic CD at the door was clearly thrilled to be there, but seemed almost shy during the performance (same as JtB noted about the LA crowd). The room was not as boisterous as it sounds to be on some of the videos from the east coast shows and a couple of times Lights had to prompt for more singing-along. I sensed quiet reverence and adoration from a group of dedicated, core fans who did not want to interrupt Lights, wanting to soak up every sight and sound, waiting for the last piano or guitar note to fade to silence before daring to break the spell by clapping. Still, there was singing and banter and overall it felt like one of the most, if not the most, serious assembly yet of Lights Army on the West Coast.

Lights filled the time between songs, and at times during songs when she'd stop playing, with short stories about the songs and random observations. (See Katrinamargarita's excellent recap on the forum at http://board.iamlights.com/index.php?/topic/7183-sf-acoustic-show-recap/ for some of these). I am always fascinated by what Lights has to say (as long as she speaks slowly enough for me to understand what she's saying) and as far as I am concerned she could extend the length of all of her shows by speaking extemporaneously for a longer time between songs as she did this evening. Heck, I'd go just to listen to her chat with the crowd. Given the intimacy of the venue, it was as close as we'll come to hanging out with her in her living room and listening to her play and sing, and she likened the shows to just that, saying that she just doing what she normally likes to do at home.

At one point Lights discussed how in her life she has had to become comfortable with things about herself that she didn't like- for example, kids used to make fun of her "E.T. fingers" until she was told they were made for spanning octaves on the piano. She says her ears have been called "elf ears", but they were buried under Reinier, so I couldn't verify that. Currently she said she is trying to reduce the use the words "like" and "awesome".

Lights told us the story of writing the song The Listening, how it was a rare collaboration with a friend in her living room. She said she had to get up and take a pee when she did the whole song came to her all at once (which is why you may now see it referred to as the "Pee song"). She told us not to think "Pees excuse me..." when the song starts, but guess what.

Equipment- Most in attendance probably noticed right away upon arrival the unfamiliar blonde guitar on the stand on the stage. It turned out that it was a new guitar and Lights did introduce her (and I forgot her name- a little help please). During the show Lights misplaced her favorite guitar pick, explaining that she has thirty of the same kind but really likes only one of them. She didn't give up on the pick, looking for it before a couple of songs. Wonder if it ever turned up?

There were miscellaneous references to movies (Shrek) and board games that I didn't catch because I was too mesmerized by the music. She stopped in the middle of Second Go to explain that "Conquer a ladder then slip on a snake" had something to do with the game Snakes and Ladders, which apparently is called Chutes and Ladders in T Dot. Go figure, I always thought the line was a reference to Original Sin and the Fall of Man, but that's just the way art is.

At one point Lights started to ask where people had come from and it turned out fans had come from as far away as Denver and Calgary. Lights then asked how many people in the audience were from San Francisco and she got a somewhat tepid response of eight or ten. This was probably was because most fans there were from other San Francisco Bay Area communities but not San Francisco itself. I am curious about how many came from out of the Bay Area- Sacramento, Reno, So Cal. etc.

So Lights played for over an hour (somewhere close to 1 hour 15 or 20 minutes). That was really long time, but as usual with her concerts it seemed to rush by too quickly. My favorite part? Probably her playing Drive my Soul as a finale. I guess I was expecting it sooner as she's done at the other concerts and I wasn't sure if she was going to sing it at all, especially after Saviour, which I was kind of expecting as a finale, maybe because it is on the CD. Time stops for me when she hits the high notes of Drive My Soul and I won't be forgetting that any time soon, ever. Thankfully she gave us a cool down with a couple of encore songs and then the night was over with a big crowd gathering around the small merch table on the way out.

I bought a handful of CDs to give to friends and left with great memories feeling really hecka lucky to have been able to attend this special performance. The bliss that followed me home has decided to stay- the cats are chasing it around the living room right now. Thanks again Lights and crew for the gift of this concert. I hope you're planning on taking a big left hand turn at Vancouver and heading our way this fall with Adam and Maurie.