Thursday, February 19, 2009

Jason Mraz!


Monday, February 16, 2009, was epic. Why? Because it was the day of the Jason Mraz concert.

Jason Mraz has to be one of my favorite artists. His lives are just so amazing! I especially love his acoustic ones with just him playing the guitar and his partner-in-crime Toker on taking care of the percussion. He tends to improvise during concerts and changing around the arrangements of songs so everything sounds fresh and not recycled. That just makes things more interesting becuase I don't know what sort of stuff he'll throw into his concerts.

I went to the concert with my friends Dessi, Ivy, Alexis, Amanda, Avery, and Chris. I tried to get Cameron to go too, but he didn't have the money for tickets, which was a shame. We headed to Elliot around seven o'clock where we found this enormous line, but it didn't take long to get inside and find our seats.

The band opening the concert was named Vedera. Vedera is just an indie band right now that consists of a female lead singer who plays guitar and piano, another guitarist, a bass player, and a drummer. I thought their music was wonderful. Kristen May, the lead singer, her voice reminded me a little bit of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, well at least her singing style. Kristen's voice is a little sweeter and higher but very well controlled.

After Vedera, it was time for Jason Mraz to come out! I was so excited until everybody started standing up. I could not see the stage at all! I couldn't take it anymore so I just headed up to the first balcony, made my way to the first row and to my luck found two empty seats. So, I just plopped myself right there and it turned out to be a pretty good view of the stage since I ended up right in the middle part of the balcony. Then apparently Cameron found a way to get free tickets to the concert so he ended up going as well! Except he couldn't go up to where I was, since it would be rude to ditch the people who gave him the tickets in the first place.

I think the coolest thing about the concert was seeing how Jason changed up his songs a little. This time he put more a jazz/latin feel to some of the more popular songs. I especially loved the arrangements of "Life is Wonderful" and "I'm Yours". The latter song was fleshed out from bare acoustics to having a rich spectrum of harmonies filled by the awesome horn group placed towards the back of the stage. Also for one of his songs, his horn group went up to the balcony, right next to where I was sitting and starting playing from there. It was so amazing.

At the end of the concert, he came out for an encore and played through a couple more songs. He did this awesome thing where he mimicks an instrument with his voice. He's really good at it, especially imitating a trumpet. This time he imitated a saxophone, which was alright, but I was hoping he'd break out the trumpet.

Then, the concert was over, and I was sad. I really was hoping for a longer concert. Oh well, I could always track down another concert and attend that. That's something I'm definitely planning to do anyways. Kudos to whoever decided to bring Jason over to Purdue. It was definitely an great choice!

After the concert I went out to hang out with Cameron and his friends at an apartment till about two o'clock in the morning and then the both of us came back to the dorms and watched Pulp Fiction till about five in the morning. It was ridiculously late when I finally went to bed. I guess the next day I really regretted staying up late because I was falling asleep in my classes all day and was stumbling around and talking like some drunk person.

But, Monday was definitely a fun night and probably one of the best nights I've had for one reason or another.

Verdera info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedera
Jason Mraz info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_mraz

Jason Mraz lives:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l74d1fmZbw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-myHLPTvaM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivjS-OJuCpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e-J-EtJfXY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X_AgLfpndM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lqsZTcGjR4

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