Review by Emily Hawthorne, First posted 6/22/99 to The Landing.
So Saturday night, Jess and I went to see Andrew Bird and his great Bowl of Fire. It was AMAZING. See, I had been awake for 36 hours going into the evening, because i had stayed up all of Friday night because of ASP (if you know what that is, MAJOR Emily points to you). Needless to say i was a little tired. So. We went to RiteAid first to make copies of advertisements for the Shrub, which were distributed in a record store and the club. In the record store, we tried to get some promo SNZ posters that were tacked to the wall BEHIND some other posters but the guy was like "i'm not supposed to." Phooey. Anyway, on to the show. Jess, being the goddess she is, got in free and had a photo privileges. Oh well, we can't all be that cool. :) It turns out that there are 2 opening bands, and i'm struggling to stay awake. Jess kept buying me Cokes and i had to keep eating ice. The first band, the Vibrasonics (or something), was pretty country-like upbeat rockish and they were fun. Jess pointed out that Andrew was hanging out with himself in the back of the place by the mailing list sooooo....we decided to go sign it. :) We started talking to him (what a quiet guy!) and Jess was trying to say interesting stuff and i was just saying weird things like "i love your shoes" and "Chicago has everything" and then we talked about the opening bands some and stuff. My favorite quote was when he said, "I love beer! I'm all about beer!" Let me remark that he is a pretty good-looking guy. Got a pic with him. :) The next band, the Handsome Family, came out and played. They're a guy and a gal from Chicago who write macabre songs with neat lyrics. They were funny people...very nice, too. The girl kept saying funny things like "This song started out being about snow, but now it's about death." Oh yeah, there were like 20 people in the small club where we were. This couple next to us asked me where i got my shirt (the navy SNZ shirt with a can of Hot Swing on the front and stuff) and it turns out that they drove all the way from Pittsburgh for the show and they're just as obssessed with all things Zipper-like as Jess. Well, almost. We were proud. Ok, Andrew came on finally around 12:30. My head was spinning from tiredness. That is, until they started playing. I am totally digging that bowl of fire! After the first song, Andrew joked around, saying that they were "feelgood band of America." They are definitely a very good-looking group, but that's beside the point, right? Anyway. The sound was tremendous and i was finally able to be active without eating ice. Ahh, it was such a good time. Jess took 48 pictures in all, including the 4 or 5 crappy shots that i took. We felt all cool and stuff. Jess also set up her little recorder to tape the show...and near the end of it, the drunk bassist from the first band jumps in front of us and yells "THANKS FOR COMING OUT!" RIGHT into the mic. He tries to give us a big drunken hug and i was like "um, thanks for playing." We laugh. The set ended around 2 am and i went and asked Kevin the drummer if i could snag Andrew's setlist. Since they played songs from the new album, i'll just recreate exactly what Andrew wrote on the list. Candyshop T & T Eugene Cock o'the Walk Pathetique Coney Island (you're gonna love this one!) Idiot's Genius Vidalia Wishing for C. (Contentment) Dora Fatal Flower 50 Pieces The Confession FNB (?) Because After (cover of After You've Gone...on Kat's CD) Cuanto (Latin jam, baby! this was the fiesty encore) And somewhere in there, Jess and I got Andrew to play Glass Figurine (yay!) and Minor Stab. Tres cool. After the show, the four guys hung around and we got to talk and hang out for a little bit. Because i'm cool like that, I had my Thrills CD with me and got them all to sign it. They wrote cool things on it. And because i'm nice like that, I gave Jess my liner notes for her to get their sigs too. :) Andrew is a little difficult to talk to at first, but he was still cool. The other 3 guys, Josh the bass player, Kevin the drummer, and Colin the guitar boy were soo nice. I was even talking to Colin about how long i had been awake and how much they made it all worthwhile. Kevin was the nicest of all. The moral of the story is: go and catch Andrew if you can! It'll be intimate and fun, even if you get home at 3:30 am and you were up for 43 hours. Hopefully the pics will turn out great and everything. The only things I remember about the ride home were us listening to ourselves on the tape of the show, Belle and Sebastian, and Jess rolling down my window and steering into the path of sprinklers on the side of the road. Thanks Jess. "Uh, Emily, are you going to be able to remember this show?"