A Beautiful Surrender

So I went to see Mute Math for the 5th (?) time last night. This time they were playing at the Henry Fonda theater, which apparently has such great security that they don’t even let the musicians in. (The picture above is the drummer from Mute Math waiting to get inside). It’s not my favorite concert venue for a number of reasons. They have the camera Gestapo that of course notices my camera, but not the other 50 that got into the venue. Apparently once you are crafty enough to sneak your camera inside, it’s OK to take pictures. Another great thing about this venue is they like to start their concerts early (which is the reason I missed Mute Math there last time), by 8:30 the first band was off the stage and the concert started at 8. Then Shiny Toy Guns came on, they were pretty good. Mute Math was next and gave an awesome performance as usual. I stood there in a sea of people singing along to lyrics like “Such a beautiful surrender” and “I can’t believe I never noticed my heart before” and wondered, do these people even know what they are singing? It made me wonder, could I write some idiotic catchy tune and sing it with enough intensity that people would sing along, not even thinking about what they are singing? Probably, I’ve come to think as of late that words are pretty meaningless to people. People will sing to anything, I do it too. It made me think of worship, well because Mute Math’s lyrics for the most part are that. I thought about how sometimes I just sing the lyrics because that’s what the powerpoint guy puts up on the screen. I wondered if when I run powerpoint if I could put up some nonsensical lyric to a song and would people sing along? I’d probably get excommunicated or something, but it would be an interesting experiment.


In other news I think I have a concert hangover. I don’t drink, I just think that staying out late and listening to loud music gave me a bad headache haha. We went to this cool record store called Amoeba beforehand and I got some random music including some CD of 1930s recordings of a bunch of women singers from “torrid regions”, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and another Dead Milkmen CD called Eat Your Paisley. I picked up the Joshua Tree cd too by U2, but not for me.