Presidents of the United States of America
Saturday, March 22, 2008
This concert was amazing. They alternated old songs and then new songs from their new album, which are growing on me. Their energy is always super amazing. They played Kitty second, and right before the “kitty rear up and scratch me through my jeans” lyric, they cut IMMEDIATELY into playing “superstition” by Stevie Wonder. It was seamless and made for an amazingly mashup. I screamed my face off cuz I love that song too. Then, just as quickly as they cut, they cut right back into Kitty. I can honestly say that screaming “MEYOW” along with a venue full of people is nothing short of religious pilgrimage for me. (Just last Saturday I believe I was in a venue full of people screaming “PENIS”, which, in it’s own ways, was quite religious in itself.)
If you’re familiar with the song “Old Man on the Back Porch,” they busted that mofo out pretty crazy. During the ‘rant’ part where the ‘old man’ tells a story, in the story, the old man says he hears a knock on his door, and was visited in the story by Wayne Kramer of the band MC5. Then he hears another knock on his door and was visited by Weird Al Yankovick. The tangent was met with a lot of confused cheers but needless to say my ears perked up.
The show wrapped up, they had played all of my favorite songs, and you could feel the obligatory encore coming up. After an amusingly short cheer session, they came back out for an encore.
Then, for an encore, another guy came out. Turns out it was indeed the lead guitarist, Wayne Kramer, from MC5, to play the PUSA song “Kick out the Jams,” which I’ve now learned is a half-cover of the MC5 song. (Half-cover in that the melody and the chorus are covers but the rest of the lyrics aren’t covers.) Which looking back was pretty awesome. The exciting part of this, however, was the simple math I had done in my head regarding the previous foreshadowing.
They then played another song I think, and when that ended, and people could catch their breath, mister Wierd Al Yankovick walks the fuck onto the stage with a god damned accordion. I totally knew it, it was completely obvious, but I was hung up on what the hell they could possibly sing… I was going through the PUSA catalog in my head and the only things that were left were some of my favorite songs off obscure singles they released. Sure enough, they didn’t play a PUSA song, but busted out More Then a Feeling by Boston. Weird Al is amazing singer, totally got into the song, and fucking … rocked? on his accordion. There was a fan up on the stage, which I didn’t notice of course because Chris doesn’t have hair, but Weird Al times all of his rocking solos by standing in front of the fan and letting his curly hair waft in the breeze, honestly, it was amazing…. hahaha. We were all literally saying WHAT THE FUCK. IT’S WEIRD AL. HOLY SHIT. OH GOD. The song choice was hilarious, too, because it’s such a Guitar Hero song. Easily one of the most memorable concerts I’ll have ever gone to for this moment alone.
As an aside, Weird Al I think produced their latest music video, so I’m sure he was helping them out or wanting to or whatever. I don’t know, however, if they are on tour with them.
This is the shit I go to concerts for. So awesome.
I gave them 80 of my dollars for two t-shirts, and two CDs.