supercheesegirl

Last night Jorn and I went with Dann and Jorn's friend Erin to see Annie and Royksopp. Jorn and I were both unreasonably excited about this show--two bands that we both like were playing together and with no crappy opening bands! We were so excited about this show that when we found out the show conflicted with Chelsea's flight plans, we made her take a cab to our apartment and get a key from our upstairs neighbor rather than have one of us miss the show. (Which seemed really, really mean to both of us, and I sadly offered to miss the show so I could stay home and let her in, but Jorn put his foot down and insisted we were both going and there was no reason I should miss it. Besides which, we figured that Chelsea is almost 17 and can take a cab from the airport all by herself. Which she had no problems doing, and she called both us and her mom as soon as she arrived, and then she cheerfully played nintendo till we got home, so it was fine.)

Anyway. I'd never been to the Paradise before. It was fine--not going to be my favorite club or anything, but cool. I was most interested by this one lighting thing--when you're facing the stage, way off to the right was a balcony, and there were lights on the wall in primary colors, so that the people on the balcony looked like they were iPod ads. Anyway, we arrived in plenty of time to get good spots near the stage. The show was sold out so it got pretty crowded. The crowd was not spectacular, which I'll talk more about too. There was one guy in a wheelchair--not that I have anything against guys in wheelchairs--but they put him right in the front, which was also fine, but you'd think that knowing it was a sold-out show, they'd put him in position ahead of time and then leave him there till the end of the show. No, they brought him in about ten minutes before Annie started, so the whole crowd had to shift over and make room, and then took him away after Annie, and then brought him back right before Royksopp started so the whole crowd had to shift over again, and it was really packed by then and no one wanted to give up their good spot so we just were all smushed against each other. Also some idiot had put down his mostly-full beer right next to the wheelchair so when the wheelchair moved the beer fell over and spilled all over the floor next to the stage, and we had to stand in this sticky puddle for the whole show. Very icky.

ANYWAY. Annie's band consisted of two dudes, one who had cute blonde Norwegian-guy dreads and who played guitar and drums, and the other who had crazy indie guy hair and I guess was mixing. They went on a little after 9:00. Annie herself is hella tiny! She was wearing three-inch heels and was still very small. But totally cute. Mindy would've loved her. She did a lot of the songs off 'Anniemal', including "Chewing Gum" and "Heartbeat", and a new single that's coming out this fall called "The Wedding" I think. All through her performance some jerk next to me kept drunkenly yelling crap about how awesome she was and how they should let her dj. Jorn was most amused by a comment that I didn't hear--when Annie said this was going to be her last song, the guy said, "It better be 12 minutes long!" He was pretty much a total dumbass with a really annoying voice, and also his dancing was life-threatening in such a crowded room, but what can you do? Ignore him, avoid the swinging limbs, and pay attention to the cute Norwegian girl on the stage, that's what.

After Annie's set, a few of the people in front of us, closest to the stage, decided to leave, so we got their (beer-puddled) spots. Royksopp went on shortly after 10:00. Royksopp turned out to be two (also Norwegian) guys. I'd do 'em. They played a bunch of songs off their first album, which I have, and most of their new album, which I don't have. I admit, I liked the older stuff better, but I want to hear the new album all the way through. At some point. I'm kind of on Royksopp overload right now. Dann left kind of early, but he was there primarily to see Annie and hadn't heard Royksopp before, and there was a nearby party that he was planning to catch, so that was all good. I really like Royksopp (at least, the first album) but it's cool if it's not his thing. Jorn and Erin and I stayed close to the stage, but a few songs after Dann left, and as it was rapidly approaching 11:00, I told Jorn I was going to sneak out of the crowd and buy a t-shirt before the big end-of-show crush. He could see the set list from where he was standing, and he told me they still had at least six more songs plus two encores. I said, well, damn, and stayed put. A few songs later, when I was becoming really peeved with the undulating pack of hipsters surrounding me, Jorn said he was getting pretty sick of the crowd too and we snuck out, leaving Erin up by the stage. The club was really, really packed. I decided to buy an Annie t-shirt (it's totally cute with a little shadow puppet kitty on it!) and Jorn decided to buy a record. He needed my money to do so, but I'm cool like that, I had brought extra. So as we're standing by the merch table, Annie herself walks out from the back area, and Jorn borrows the merch table's marker and asks Annie to sign his record! He was really psyched to meet her, and she was really nice. Also, in the three-inch heels she was not quite as tall as Jorn. So liiiiiiiiiiiittle! Then we hung out by the merch table (it was in the hallway to the exit) and waited for the show to end. It continued on. And on. I mean, I like Royksopp a lot but this was kind of silly. During their (I think) second encore Erin came out and found us and we headed out. It was like 11:30. We were home by 11:45ish, and then we got to hang out with Chelsea, and unsurprisingly, I fell asleep on the couch.