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Squee Sunday

Squee Sunday #6

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Squee Sunday

No yarn or kitties in this week’s post. Today’s Squee is about the concert I went to Friday night at the Trocadero in Philadelphia, where I saw Grandchildren, The West Philadelphia Orchestra, and Man Man (this was the 4th time I saw Man Man; yay!).

Grandchildren I initially thought wouldn’t fit well with the other two bands, but it turns out the studio recordings don’t do their music justice. You get a much better feel of their music from the live recordings. Their drums and bass are cranked way up, and it makes your chest all vibratey. Plus their percussionists are fun to watch. I love it when drummers get into their music.

The video below switches to my favorite song by them, “Saturn Returns”, at about the 2:15 mark. It reminds me a bit of another band I like called Animal Collective.

Then, West Philadelphia Orchestra came on. Looking at videos it seems they have so many members that they don’t all have to show up for things. I was disappointed to not see any strings (aren’t orchestras meant to have strings? Otherwise it’s a concert band, right?) but some of the live vids have violin players.

Anyway, this band had all classical instruments, including a guy toting around a bass drum marching-band style, and a big sousaphone player that danced around in front all wacky. And a clarinet player, yay clarinets! It was crazy to watch the audience while they were on. Have you ever seen people mosh to what is, essentially, a tricked-out polka? Because I have, and it’s awesome.

The video below is from last year. Not all their songs have the lady-singer in front, including the aforementioned polka, but I couldn’t find a version of that song live on youtube that was like what I saw live Friday.

Here’s a video of one of my favorite songs by them. It’s quite an old video. It looks like they had some different band members, and some veteran members playing different instruments than they do now, and not all of them had music memorized yet.

Last, we saw the headliner, Man Man! They put on an awesome show, as always. I was a bit confused by the two dancing girls in front this time. They were never there before and I wasn’t quite sure what purpose they served, haha. Maybe it’s a guy thing?

For the encore they brought out both Grandchildren and West Philadelphia Orchestra to play with them for a few songs.

They’re awesome. I love them. They have songs that sound pretty (and I am a person that dislikes slow songs, usually):

And songs that are crazy:

I can’t see myself ever getting tired of these guys. :) They were being recorded last night, so I’m looking forward to seeing what those will be used for!

That’s enough outta me. What were YOUR squees this week?

 

7 Comments

  1. Sounds like you had a great time!!! Yes, as a former string player, if there are no string instruments, it’s a band… very strange, but maybe , as you said, they didn’t perform that night…

  2. Oh, I’m so excited about all of these YouTube videos, new music is definitely a source of squee for me! And the idea of people moshing to a polka is awesome. (My mom’s family is Polish, and my grandfather was an avid polka listener. It’s in my blood. Or something.)

  3. Thank you for setting up the Squee Sundays challenge. I find I am more apt to blog when I read other interesting and inspiring posts, and can link in to the readership chain.

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