Bird watching

The man, the myth, the legend

2005 - Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Internship buddy: "Hey man, you should go to this show with me."
Me: "Who is it?"
Internship buddy: "Andrew Bird. He used to be in Squirrel Nut Zippers, but now he's just doing solo stuff."
Me: "Huh. Squirrel Nut Zippers? Like the swing band?"
Internship buddy: "Yeah, except it's nothing like that."
Me: "Well, I love a good show. I'll definitely go."

I didn't go.

September 2nd, 2007 - Bumbershoot in Seattle, Washington

Me: "WOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Amy, Jason, and Hannah: "WOOOOOOOO!!!!"

We were drunk. Andrew Bird? Not so much, but we hardly paid attention to that. Or him, as he performed right in front of us at the Starbucks stage. I took in a couple songs by myself, but overall I missed the majority of it.

January 3rd, 2008

Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha finishes 13th in my year end favorite albums chart.

I've had a strangely long history with Andrew Bird. He swings in and out of my life, trying to force himself to become a bigger part of my life but constantly being rejected by my bad decision making or alternative, non-music related interests. Even when I listened to him finally over the last year, I recognized him as a very talented musician but something didn't quite fit for me. He was great, but not for me.

In short Andrew, it wasn't you. It was me.

However, something happened. I don't know what, but I changed and one day his album Armchair Apocrypha started speaking to me. Next thing you know, he went from not even being in the top 50 of my most listened to artists in Last.FM to the seventh most listened to one and the second most listened to in the last three months.

While I was down visiting for Sasquatch and tomfoolery and hanging with Jorgy and Erik, Erik outright asked me "was Spoon really your favorite album last year?" I thought about it for a second and said "I can't think of any reason why that's changed, so yeah I guess so." That was likely true at the time, but now? It's a whole new ball game. Just for funs sake though and to give Erik a new perspective on what my musical tastes have diverted towards, here is my Top Five Albums of 2007 - Redux.

1. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
2. LCD Soundsystem - Sounds of Silver
3. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
4. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?

I cannot even imagine what a full thirty album list would look like, but I have a guess it would be wildly different. But no less, the point of this exercise is Andrew Bird is the man. I can't wait for his new album, and the mere fact that he himself is saying that he's incredibly impressed by it (as he says in his New York Times blog here) just gets me more excited.

Not bad for that guy from that swing band that used to be kind of popular in the 90's.

Not bad at all.