Once, upon a time…
I got the chance to see Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of the movie Once, in a nice little ballroom in San Francisco back in November. I e-mailed someone my reaction to the show, but never got around to blogging it. So, with them recently winning the Academy Award for Best Song, and starting a new US tour, I figure that’s as big a hook as I’m going to get to recycle this text, so here you go, more of an e-mail style read than a blog essay thing…
They were good, but it’s an odd concert.
Usually, when you go to a show, it is people who all like the same music. Now, for some reason, this crowd didn’t have that vibe. It was clear they were there because they liked the movie “Once.”
You didn’t get the sense these people usually are turning off NPR and going to a night concert.
First, I arrive and they are all seated on the floor. Fair enough, no need to stand until anything happens, only… it was clear they thought they were settled in for the night. Like, people whose friends had yet to arrive, they had their jackets spread out to make room for them, etc. There was no standing in their planned futures.
I got up around the fifth row of people from the stage, and at about 5 minutes until showtime, the first two rows got off the floor and stood in front of the stage. From the third row back, they clearly seemed horrified by this malfeasance and were holding their ground. Only, there was now a six foot moat between the third row, and the greatly-compacted first two rows standing up at the stage. You could clearly see people on the sides starting to make their way up to fill the gap, and the third row and many rows behind them aren’t moving.
So, I decide, screw this, get up and go stand near the people at the stage. Apparently, this was not acceptable to the person whose view I just blocked (they are still on the floor, keep in mind, so if he intends to stay on the floor, the stage is chest level for me, so I will be blocking his view of Glen’s foot). So this guy says, you’re blocking my wife’s view. Why do you think you can just stand wherever you want? We’ve been sitting there for a half hour now.
I explain that within 5 minutes, only the balcony people will be sitting, and that at a general admission show, you stand wherever you want. If someone were blocking my view, I’d move accordingly, and if I’m blocking their view, they can do the same. He then said, what if I decide to push in front of you? I tell him to go ahead, and he wedges himself into the 8″ gap between the last person in the second row, and a bass speaker on the floor, the corner of which I selected specifically so I could rest my arm on it. So, having pushed himself directly in my eye line, he turns around squashed and triumphant and says, what would you do to that, and I non-chalantly take one step to the left, my view once again unobstructed.
His poor wife, clearly not enjoying seeing her husband be a jerk, though also not surprised this persona exists, just asks him to come back with her and to forget about it. That’s sort of the end of my encounter with them, except for the fact that they seem completely oblivious when Martha Wainwright is doing her opening set.
As I have a lot of performer friends, you know that although the audio is projecting out from the stage, a lot of the noise from the audience is heard loud and clear onstage. These people, now joined by their obnoxious friends, never stop talking throughout her entire set (just her and an acoustic guitar five feet away, mind you).
Loud, dull, and non-stop, part of the new cell phone culture that seems to constantly need to narrate a life, blissfully unaware that it’s a boring one. On two separate occassions, Martha actually stops the song and asks people to stop talking and mentioned there is a foyer if they don’t want to hear her.
Normal people would get the hint, especially when most people around these idiots start clapping, and looking at them. Instead, the female friend that joined them later decides better and starts yelling “Get over yourself! We’re not hear to see you! We can do whatever we want!”
I do feel vindicated at this, knowing that my earlier exchange occurred with complete and utter assholes. I mean, I’m no huge Martha Wainwright fan, but she was pleasant and trying to entertain us. It’s not really an adversarial role, just additional entertainment.
When the Swell Season came on, they piped down a bit more, but there was a noticeable difference in the audience reaction between the “movie” songs, and the “other” songs. Movie songs got attention, other songs were sort of treated as filler, although it was all delightful, fun, and in the same exact spirit as the other tunes. I knew going in (partially for this reason) that this would probably be my only Swell Season show, because if I like them, I’ll just switch over to the Frames. I normally don’t follow mellow coffeehouse strummers with some piano and string players. I like rock and roll, drums, and electric guitars. So, these songs will eventually get tarted up for the Frames or be an acoustic set in the middle of their future shows, I would imagine, especially as three of the extra musicians added to fill out the music were from the Frames.
So, there was something off about the whole event, seeing as we were all people in a room who liked a movie. We weren’t Swell Season fans, per se. We just connected to Once and wanted to extend that connection in person with the people responsible for its magic.
I don’t want to give the impression that The Swell Season were off and responsible for any of this. They did a fun, inspired set. He is clearly the showman, and she is bookish and quiet. So, when he’s front and center, it is effortless and self-effacing, and when she is front and center, it seems like she is challenging herself to do it.
I’m completely glad I went, amazed at the rudeness of some of the crowd (especially people who want to be close to the stage and act like that), and the best moments of the night were the small exchanges that brought me up near the stage in the first place: the little sparks that shot between them when they made eye contact and both broke into big smiles at one another, his look of joy when she sang, and his complete ease and candor at what he called “the best year of my life.”
Tags: concert, Glen Hansard, Once, review.