Spoon, St. Andrews Hall, Detroit, 10/29/05

I Spooned with Liz and Cameron tonight. What a blast! What a show!

Even though I've been a fan since Girls Can Tell, this was my first Spoon show. The venue was pretty full, although it could have held more people. Gwen Stefani and the Blackeyed Peas played the Palace, and Simple Plan played the Fox. It is cool when other shows attract the teenyboppers, yes? Oh, very yes.

The staging consisted of a red velvet curtain behind the band and spotlights at the edge of the stage intended to cast shadows onto the curtain. It was simple and yet a perfect match for the Gimme Fiction artwork.

Spoon played most of Girls Can Tell, most of Gimme Fiction and some of Kill the Moonlight. (I had a shot at the setlist because I had struck up a conversation with the sound/light guy, but I waited so long to ask that he had already given it away. I didn't take notes, either. Sorry.)

They played hard, with no breaks and little talking. For example, when Britt Daniel blew out some strings on his guitar he merely handed it to a tech who gave him another one, and they played on. And they played like this for 90 minutes or so until their "encore."

I asked the sound/light tech if they would play "My Mathematical Mind." He said yes, he thought so. He let me look over the playlist, which ended before the encore. "Not much help, is it?" I said, laughing. He nodded as if to say, "That's exactly what I've been trying to tell you."

After the second encore song, I added my voice to others who clamored for "My Mathematical Mind." Daniel shushed us from the mic while the band played the opening chords of "My Mathematical Mind." The crowd went crazy.

I could have used another two or three minutes jamming on that song. I also missed the sound of the horns which, on the cd, introduce calm and quiet following the mass musical chaos. Still, it was good. Very good.

After the show I got to shake Jim Eno's hand (Jim is the drummer and half of the core of Spoon) and say a couple of stupid fan things to him. But I thanked him for the setlist and for coming to Detroit, and asked him to come back soon. He's a nice guy for playing along with fans like me.

Next Up: Guster @ the Michigan Theater, Wednesday, Nov. 2. With Andrew.