Its a Bird! Its a Plane! Its a Disappointment!

Jess and Kate were having an overwhelmingly High Fidelity moment the other day. Minus the Beta Band and Marvin Gaye exaltations. But with some sweeping and deeply felt resolutions about the state of music.

Here's the thing: there is nothing more tragic than an album you love being destroyed by a live performance. Okay, this is possibly a lie, Hutus and Tutsis, etc. considered, but for the music enthusiast, its certainly a bit true.

At least 2/3 of the ladies of TMC had scarring experiences of exactly this sort this past Saturday night. At approximately the same time that Andrew Bird was slowly, slowly subverting all the catchiness of his best melodies in twisted, tortured jamming at the 9:30 club, Spoon was managing to prove that vocals and rhythm are - shockingly - rather important to music making. Unfortunately the indie-darlings of Gimme Fiction et al chose to prove this by only having decent guitars, their failings made all the more apparent as they followed the Roots and surprise guest Lupe Fiasco at the University of Chicago's spring concert, both of whom have most definitely mastered rhythm n' vocals. As for Lauren, we can only assume that the sweet warblings of the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher, state bird of Oklahoma, did not disappoint.



Don't get us wrong - we love live music. Jess has single-handedly seen every band that has ever existed in concert twice, and enjoyed most of them. Its just that some records are better left in the studio.

To lighten the mood, a fun Marvin Gaye fact: he was simply Marvin Gay until he added the e in an homage to his hero, Sam Cooke.