Sunday, February 04, 2007

Welcome to Dreamland at Carnegie Hall

Friday night, I went to my first concert at New York City's Carnegie Hall to see a show curated by David Byrne called Welcome to Dreamland. The concert was his introduction to the Weird America - Freak Folk scene that has been around in the last few years.
I sat in front of Jonathan Demme, too.





First up was CocoRosie. I didn't get any pics of them, but I have blogged about them before. Sierra Cassady sounded amazing with the Carnegie Hall acoustics. They brought along Spleen to back them up, and the crowd really responded to their set. They played a few new songs that sounded good.

Cibelle, the Brazillian singer, then sang one song on her own before the next act, Adem played his set.

Adem
was really good. He definitely fell more into the tradition of British Folk. I liked that he did his song "Spirals"- it's one of my favorites. He had Vashti Bunyan sing his song "Pillow", and it was really beautiful.

Up next was psychedelic country rock band Vetiver. They played a nice downtempo set, and I can't state enough how the acoustics of Carnegie Hall really made these artists sound amazing.


Vashti Bunyan followed, and she was really good. Highlights were when she played "Diamond Day" and "Lately".


Last up was Devendra Banhart. This was my first time seeing him and he was pretty amazing. He played songs ranging in style from folk to a Portugese song to an all out psychedelic rock jam. His guitarist was pretty amazing as well.

The show ended with David Byrne and all of the artists in the show coming out and singing a Moondog song, "Be a Hobo". All in all, it was a really amazing event to have seen.

2 comments:

RG said...

Hey - thanks for the review and pics - I was seriously contemplating flying over from London for the Dreamland gig! Liked the CocoRosie review too - you have excellent taste!

Anonymous said...

hi..we found you at the bar of the russian tearoom, and now we found you here.
who knows where we'll find you next?

Thanks for the pix and the review!

Jill & Drew