*** All the pictures were taken with my camera phone, I left the S90 behind and am kicking myself for it! ***

Last night I went to see Air in concert at the Berklee Performance Center, I have seen over a hundred concerts and I have to say that this ranks amongst the absolute best I have ever seen. If Air is playing in a city near you and tickets are available, you need to do yourself a favor and buy them.

I’ve been listening to Air since “Moon Safari” came out, for some reason I never have seen them live until yesterday, though they have been one of those bands that are on my “to do” list of must see performances. The show last night was amazing for many reasons, in fact one large part of what made it a huge success was the venue itself. Who would have thunk that watching a band perform in a venue engineered to be acoustically perfect (it is a college devoted to music, after all) would make for an amazing experience. Even the band commented at how amazing the sound was in the venue, seriously it’s as if you had a super rich friend that let you listen to his $1 million + sound system.

The performance was amazing, I would compare the show to seeing a great concert pianist or classical concert (not that I have done either or am in the know on those genres). The reason I make the comparison is that the technical level of musicianship was just amazing. Even to a non-musician such as myself, you really could see the level of perfection and complexity in the performance. Not a note was missed and the detail in how the arrangements were built on themselves was part of the show. I honestly hope that there is a bootleg of the performance somewhere out there on the internet. For a live performance it actually sounded like a studio recording. It’s as if Air decided to record a greatest hits album in one session, no retakes and in front of a auditorium of people.

I am most familiar with Air’s earlier material, especially “Moon Safari” and “10,000 Hz Legend”. The band played a little of everything, in fact I honestly hadn’t been keeping up with their new releases and am making it a point to check them out. The encore were two of my favorite songs: “Sexy Boy” followed by “La Femme d’Argent”.

As mentioned before all the pictures were taken using my cell phone… Unfortunately the quality will be terrible, I really wish I had my S90 with me…

I’ve been a fan of The Cardigans for 10+ years now, I heard about them back in the mid 90’s after Lovefool broke out in the US. I was a member of BMG (remember buying music through mail-in catalogs?) and I soon purchased “First Band On the Moon” and “Life”. For some reason I never got a chance to see The Cardigans perform, even though I’m sure they came by the Boston area plenty of times.

As the years went by the popularity of the band in the states waned. The last time they announced a concert was a couple of years ago, but the Boston date got canceled due to a lack of ticket purchases (my loss, that would have been my first Cardigans concert).

Nina is now playing in her (former) side project A Camp, which I mispronounce as A-Camp (like A-Team). Again I missed them perform in Boston earlier this year because I was traveling to San Francisco, so when they announced their last tour date of 2009 in NYC, I made sure to buy myself a ticket.

The albums themselves are pretty awesome, it’s good to hear Nina’s voice again and I appreciate the complex mixture of melancholy and love that marks much of her writing. Personally out of A Camp’s two albums I actually prefer “Colonia”, their newest release. My favorite tracks are probably “Golden Teeth and Silver Medals” and “Love Has Left the Room”. From their self-titled debut my favorite tracks are “I Can Buy You” and “Song For the Leftovers”.

The concert was billed as an intimate night with the band. I’ve never been to this venue myself but it was pretty cool, right on Bleecker St in the middle of all the action of Greenwich Village. The venue was setup with tables surrounding the stage going about 4 rows deep, beyond that was more room for people who wanted to standup. By the time I go to the venue there was already a line around the block of people waiting to get in. Luckily for me I spotted an empty seat at one of the tables and asked if I could join the people there. Lucky for me, I had my S90 with me and I was right dead center of the stage about 15 feet away.

A Camp is comprised of three people, Nina (vocals and occasional harmonica), Nathan Larson (bass and spousal support) and Nicklas Frisk (guitar). Also they had a full backing band including James Iha on rhythm guitar, remember him? This was pretty cool for me, I’m a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan as well and the two times I went to see them he was not their guitarist (this was recently, after the breakup of the original lineup). There was also a backing band consisting of drums, cello, saxophone and keyboards.

The show itself was great but I felt it was kind of short as well, maybe I was just having too good a time? The band performed songs from both albums and also ended the show with a fantastic cover of Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them”. Nina has an amazing voice, a testament that any Cardigans fan will be quick to confirm. After their last song, the Nina quickly ducked out and left for the green room. The venue dispersed and a few of the backing band stayed behind to mill around with the crowd and help sell some merch. Definitely a good performance.

Finally, this last shot is probably my favorite one from the concert. It’s the same picture as the first one on this post except I cropped the picture to isolate Nathan and Nina. I also changed the picture to grayscale (obviously) and painted out some of the highlights that I wanted to avoid (like the spotlight above Nina’s head). I wish I was as good at lighting to make pictures look this good myself – I guess that’s the next area I need to focus on.

A couple of my friends played their last show as a band last night, here are some pics of their set. All pictures were taken with a Nikon D90, the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 lens and available light.

…And things were going great until Ben had to gross everyone out by doing this…