love vibration

being a fairly avid 20 hz reader, and not having seen a single post about the josh rouse show at lee's last night, i wasn't expecting a huge crowd on a tuesday night. boy howdy was i wrong! it appeared to be near capacity, and with a much different composition from most of the hipster shows i go to. i'd say it was about a 50% people like rob & i (youngish, indie) and 50% other (older, country-ish, overalled, big haired). who knew josh rouse had such a diverse fan base?!

josh started his set at around 10.45 with "it's the nighttime" from his new CD 'nashville'. however, the majority of the set were older songs from '1972', 'dressed up like nebraska', and 'under cold blue stars'. quite a few of his songs were arranged much differently from the album version, one example being "comeback (light therapy)"... voted best song of the night by rob & myself. he included all of the crowd pleasers, and seemed to satisfy most of the requests from the very vocal crowd. best shout out i heard last night, midway through the set? "JOSH ROUSE!" uhhh, yep. he is. i also must mention the crazy dancing observed last night. by men... middle aged men. well, dancing interspersed with dozing off. because it was a week night.

he ended the show with "slaveship" (complete with enthusiastic hand claps from the whole audience) just after midnight & sent us home with big smiles on our faces. if you've never heard josh rouse, imagine the feeling of a summer road trip with a good friend, windows down, hot air blowing your hair around and feeling utterly content. seriously. that's what his music feels like. try it, you'll like it.