Just what I needed

The Scene: It's 8:50 pm. I'm in my apartment after a long, less-than-productive day. I'm itching to do something substantial with my evening, be it cleaning or homework, just something better than staring at a computer and grabbing crappy snacks here and there. My phone rings ...continued and my sister is on the other end.

She tells me of a free-with-student-ID concert at the Gargoyle on campus. It's a no-lose situation: I was looking for something, and this was exactly it! So I stop what I'm doing (it happened to be making a glass of chocolate milk) and head over to campus.

I walk in during Graham Colton Band's first song. They played just under an hour and sounded good. Not great, just good. The four-chord fivesome didn't play anything that wasn't on either of their CD's, didn't do much with the songs, but played a clean show. Not bad for a young group.

Headlining was Matt Nathanson. This show makes the number of times I've seen him more than the number of times I've seen Counting Crows. Matt is darn good! This time, more than just him and his buddy-and-cello-player Matt Fish: Nathanson had a four-piece band. They played a number of "hits," rather, songs that are popular among his followers, plus the few singles that I've heard on various (usually independent) radio stations. He's got so much energy on stage and really knows how to talk to and work with the crowd.

Some highlights:

• While introducing one song, he asks if we know "Jesse's Girl," and upon shrieks from the females in the crowd, says he doesn't want to leave people with "blue balls, or blue ovaries." They proceed to play the first verse and chorus of Jesse's Girl before Matt explains why he brought it up in the first place.
• During "Lost Myself In Search of You," he was "rockin' out" so hard that he ripped his pants. Seriously. He managed to borrow some safety pins from someone in the crowd, mentioned how he could be part of Skid Row, and periodically throughout the rest of the show made a joke about how his dick was falling out.
• He introduced the rest of the band Ozzy Osbourne-style. Great impersonation, too.
• While talking between songs, he noticed someone taking a picture, and the flash didn't go off until a time when he knew he had some weird expression on his face. So he stops everything to "pose" for the student to take another shot.
• He got the entire room to sing along to a silly Prince cover and to one of his own tunes. Every last person was singing.