Panda Bear at 93 Feet East

well, first off the not fun news. i was supposed to work this show but this morning the fella over at 93 feet east emailed me and said "i am so sorry adam but we don't have work for you to do today, sorry". so i had to be a normal person who saw the show just like everyone else. ok but to the show. it was surprisingly not so great. first of all it was really quiet. not only could mark, whitney, and i carry on a conversation with our voices at a normal volume but at one point during the set the crowd was actually louder than mr. noah lennox. that being said the crowd wasn't really into it. now it was a sold out show but after about 10 minutes of Panda's set 25% of the crowd left. on all the flyers for the show the only mention of opening acts were "special guests" so either some locals brought everyone out or the crowd was really here for animal collective having not heard the bear's solo stuff. personally i thought it was an ok show. for an experimental venue 93 feet east is way too big and way too yuppie. i think that a little more effort could have been put in on Panda Bears part but i would still give him a b+ and as we all know that is still above average. he played what i would hope is basically all of his new album person pitch and after having heard "comfy in nautica" and "bros" i hate to say it but it seems that only 50% of the album will be mindblowing. the other 50 will be nice music to fall asleep to perhaps but i want to be sucked into his shit like a yves klein painting. the other funny thing about the show is that no one in the very shitty crowd was moving at all. this is the town of new rave for fuck sake people could have at least swayed. basically everyone just slowly sat on the floor and fell asleep. however the only true consolation of the evening is that Panda Bear and i were the only two people wearing baltimore orioles hats, perhaps in the whole country.

oh but here is something really special. i found a podcast of panda bear playing a whole set on this guy's portuguese radio station (even though noah's from baltimore he now lives in lisbon)

http://podcast.radio.ist.utl.pt/mafama_20070107.mp3

hands down this is freaking awesome