As a recent transplant to the St. Louis metro, I'm dying to see the inside of the Pageant, the Firebird, or about anywhere else. There are still a few bands that I adore who I haven't seen in concert yet: Death Cab For Cutie, Iron & Wine, Patrick Stump; and there are some favorite acts running through the city: Jack's Mannequin, The Decemberists, Gold Motel. And I'm dying to get out. But the lack of employment leads to a lack of spending money leads to a lack of live music in Sammi's life.
What I miss about Chicago (well, one of the myriad of things) is the concerts in Millenium Park. This year's lineup, like last year and the year before, was incredible. Here my choices for free concerts were Maroon 5 (blech), Barenaked Ladies (a dose of 90's nostaligia), and a couple of blues acts who didn't even blip on my radar.
Conveniently, the boyfriend and I have our anniversary in October. For our one year anniversary, we saw The Decemberists play their then new album The Hazards of Love at The Riv in Chicago. It was beautiful and amazing and way better than listening to the album. Even Steve was into it. Last year, we played to Steve's interests and went to a Ring of Honor Wrestling show, because it fell directly on the day of our anniversary. But, because I've earned enough "Good Girlfriend" points from all of my four hour forays into the world of pro-wrestling, the selflessness with which I have forked over the remote to check the score of the game or watch Sports Center (Exceptions: When Top Chef, Project Runway, NBC's Thursday night line up, or Glee are on), and the long trips to see his grandmother in Rockford (which I actually really love doing), I have gotten to choose this year's anniversary excursion. And I choose Death Cab.
Ben, Chris, Nick, and that other guy...Image snagged from Culturespill.com
Death Cab For Cutie! I had a whole summer where I laid on the couch watching the video for "Title and Registration" on repeat because I was in high school and thought that maybe, just maybe, someone would take out my blackened paper heart and replace it with something hopeful and beautiful (listen, Junior Year of high school was a dark miserable place, don't judge). It was also around this time that I fell in love with Bright Eyes and The Decemberists. This signaled my transformation from angry pseudo-punk (read: emo-ish, listens to Green Day, MCR, and puts safety pins all over her uniform) into what a girl down the hall from me in freshman year of college would describe as the "Girl version of Seth Cohen, but WAY less conceited)".
Seth Cohen also adores Death Cab. Image snagged from saulp.tumblr.com
So, Death Cab has been an integral part of my life, and I can't wait to see them. We'll be going Friday to buy tickets at the box office, because if you do that you manage to avoid all of those wonderful convenience fees. Speaking of which, reading This Article from the A.V. Club has lead me to shake my head in sadness. Walmart and Ticketmaster are teaming up to double the price of your tickets with as many fees as they can justify. I'll be doing my best to avoid this option...which shouldn't be a problem seeing as how I have little to no money for any concerts beyond Death Cab... glorious Death Cab.
