I’ve gotten a ton of google hits already today looking for reviews of this show, so I suppose I had better write one. No photos, because I’m not quite lucky enough to get photo passes for these types of shows at this point. I would have killed for one, though.

We left San Diego around 1PM on Saturday, after Pete was done with lab meeting. The freeway traffic gods were with us on this trip, because we made it to Amoeba Records by 3:30PM. The only really bad traffic we hit was on the 101, but that was only for a short while. We gave ourselves an hour in Amoeba and did pretty well – I found 8 CDs for $60, and I think Pete got 9 or so.

After Amoeba, we were planning on checking in at the hotel and then going to dinner, but after hearing me bitch at a few drivers on the way out of the parking garage, Pete suggested that we get dinner before going to the hotel (I get cranky when my blood sugar is low). The first place we tried to go to, a Cajun grill, apparently doesn’t exist anymore, so we headed to Le Petit Four. It’s a good thing we did, because a) when we got back to my car, we realized my headlights were on (they’re supposed to turn off automatically when the car turns off); and b) we ended up eating dinner in the same restaurant as Ron Jeremy.

My first, and probably all-time best, LA celebrity sighting. On any other trip, this would have overshadowed everything else.

After a good and relatively inexpensive dinner, we headed to the hotel to check in and change before heading to the Hollywood Bowl. Thanks to Rosey for tipping me off about the Bowl allowing people to bring in their own alcohol – we had two bottles of Australian wine that I picked up from Trader Joe’s before heading up to LA. They also allow you to bring in food, but we were quite full from dinner already. My one rant about the venue – there is absolutely no signage indicating how to get to the venue from the 101 North. We got off at the exit that said Hollywood Bowl, and then had no freaking clue where to go, even after circling around for awhile. We ended up being forced to get back on 101 North, get off at a random exit, and then get back on the 101 South. From that direction, the venue is obvious, but yeah, some signs pointing the way from the other direction would have been useful.

Since we spent so much time driving around trying to find the venue, we ended up dropping $13 to park immediately adjacent to the entrance. Since there was an orchestra involved, I was pretty certain that the show was going to start pretty much exactly at the time it was listed to start. And I was right.

We found our seats as Band of Horses were starting their second song. They played a good, albeit short, set. Songs included “The First Song,” “Wicked Gil,” “Monsters,” and of course, “The Funeral.” Sadly, they didn’t play “The Great Salt Lake.” Their sound translated pretty well in that size of venue, although that could just be because I’ve spent a lot of hours with their album Everything All The Time. There wasn’t a trace of the arrogance that Rosey experienced the night before at Cane’s – maybe being in the presence of Andrew Bird and The Decemberists put them in their place a bit. I’m glad that their set wasn’t soured for me by her experience, although I admit I’ll always approach them with a bit of caution from now on.

After a quick set change, Andrew Bird was up. It was just him, a drummer, and a bass guitarist on the stage, but the amount of sound coming from the three of them just absolutely floored me. That man is a master of looping – violin, whistling, guitar, hand claps, everything was looped and he didn’t have a single second of downtime while playing. I was enthralled by how quickly he switched from violin to guitar and back again. Even if his music was mediocre, I would have been quite impressed. But not only can he masterfully play the violin, but he can whistle like no one else I’ve ever heard, and his voice is beautiful, especially when he uses vibrato. And his song writing is excellent. The set mainly focused on songs from his most recent album Armchair Apocrypha, including “Fiery Crash,” “Imitosis”, and “Plasticities.”

He was quite animated while playing, tossing his head around even while looping most notes that he played. He looked like a quintessential musical genius – I can’t really explain it, but it was quite engaging. I would be really interested in seeing him play with the LA Philharmonic backing him at some point – take note, Hollywood Bowl! He definitely enjoys layering a multitude of sounds, so it would be neat to see him do it without all the looping, even though the looping is impressive in and of itself.

At this point I was starting to get ridiculously excited to see The Decemberists (!) backed by the LA Philharmonic (!!). Fortunately, the set change was once again rapid, even though it involved taking down the barrier in front of where the orchestra was set up. Colin Meloy and crew walked onto the stage to deafening applause and yells, and immediately lit into “The Crane Wife 1 and 2,” unfortunately not following it up with “The Crane Wife 3,” which is easily my favorite song off of their new album. The night consisted of songs off of a wide range of albums, which seemed to please the audience, who was more familiar with them than I would have expected. Thank god LA is a town of hipsters. The songs that they played consisted of, roughly in order:

• The Crane Wife 1 and 2
• Bagman’s Gambit
• Infanta
• We Both Go Down Together
• Los Angeles, I’m Yours (naturally)
• The Perfect Crime 2
• The Tain Pt.I/Pt.II/Pt.III/Pt.IV/Pt.V (awesome)
• O Valencia (probably my favorite of the evening)
• Odalisque
• I Was Meant for the Stage (last song of their regular set and my new favorite Decemberists song)
• The Chimbley Sweep (encore)