Devotchka

Trying to get a cab in the city on a Friday night is on par with trying to park in the city on any given night. A half hour of waiting and anxious banter left me a little iritated, a little rattled and ready to jump into action.

"Fuck this! Let's go!" I said and off we sped for the Independant on Divisadero.

After finding an adequate parking spot on Fell we made our way for the doors of the Independant. I knew at this point we were cutting it close and I didn't want to continue this trend of arriving late to concerts. The last two being Sleater and before that Psychadellic Furs. No! I demanded punctuality. Granted we'd already missed, no scratch that, skipped the openning band to drink at home and save a few bucks, I wasn't missing this band, or arriving late.

"Give me two fat tires and a Corona." That's all we needed at the bar and then I had enough time to grab cash from the ATM for more drinks later and to make our way to the front of the crowd where I spotted my classmate, Darren, and his fiance Christina (soon to be wed in the Black Rock desert during Burning Man.) We exchanged a few hellos and then I waved over Lu & Ilya and we proceeded to take our positions at the foot of the stage. Not two seconds later did the applause start when Nick, Tom, Jeannie and Shawn took the stage.

From the first notes of Tom's Violin we knew that it would be a great night. That sad lonesome, haunting violin carried with it the very grief and mystery of Eastern Europe. Nick lifted a bottle of wine to his lips and toasted the crowd who in turn toasted him back. He pointed the bottle to the sky taking a big long draught of red and layed into his guitar with Jeannie on upright bass and Shawn laying down the back beat.

The music of Devotchka is an oscillating ferris wheel that spans the expanse of Europe dipping into the world of Mexican Mariachi with persian and near eastern rhtyhms. Lyrics in French, English and Spanish round out the pan-galactic sound that crosses as many countries as the instruments employed: violin, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin, upright bass, sousaphone, drums, trumpet, accordian, toy piano and a theramin! Did I mention that Nick plays the tambourine with expertise employing a half full wine bottle of flying vino as his striker??? Well he does.

Its not that you haven't heard this music before. You might have run across it in a dream where you sat in black and white with a paper thin moustache in some cellar cafe in a dark corner of Paris talking about your eventual breakup with a woman who would only be seen from above the brim of a hat with a dangling veil in a black dress with a polka dotted blouse and a fox shoulder wrap. You might have heard Edith Piaf's sonorous lament for a love lost before having had, but here, in this reality, its Nick and you can't help but fall in love all over again with the sweet ecstatic pain of falling out of love.

The band was very generous, the entire show wran for about an hour and forty five minutes. They ran through songs from all three albums and even a cover. At one point I thought, that's it, they're done, this must have been about an hour into the show. They began to walk off stage but wait, they were coming down off the stage to stand right in front of us. The bass was brought down, Shawn took up the trumpet Nick on acoustic guitar, Tom on violin and a roadie with a shaker and they went at it as we all pushed in shoulder to shoulder to hear them without the benefits of amplification. And so we swayed to a somber little tune with a catchy melody that evolved and evolved. They returned to the stage and kept up the pace, at times frenetic with driving percussion and fast paced rifts, then slowing it down a notch and falling into a laconic slumber where you wanted to go to sleep inside the music and feel the warmth of a gypsy caravan, lit by fire, lying on a rug of near eastern design. That's where we were... and I'm happy to say, we didn't miss a moment of it, not even the huge guy on the right that screamed "Sousaphone, Sousaphone, Sousaphone" over and over again until Nick said into the mic "For God's sake will you pick up the Sousaphone?!" as they returned for their encore. No, we were there for that...

Go listen to them... you'll love them... and here are some pictures from the show... taken with my little phone cam... its all the digital that I have... sadly...