my little review of the first ever postal service show

live at the Casbah, San Diego, CA, April 4, 2003

so i got there at 9:15.. show's sold out! damn it! i decided to stick 
it out and bug people coming in, asking if they had an extra ticket. 
After about 45 minutes, some kind soul sold me an extra and i was in.
I got in about halfway thru Cex's set.. this is a odd fella singing 
with a DAT or something playing. Kinda NIN thing going on. He'd leave 
the stage during a song sometimes. Eccentrictainment. Then was Jealous 
Sound. They sounded pretty good.. solid tunes.
OK, so finally we get to the Postal Service. Ben announced it as their 
first show ever. They had a big screen behind them to project films on.. 
nothing amazing but kinda cool. I had a great "seat", front "row" right 
in front of Ben. Of course I woulda rather been right by Jenny, but I 
wasn't sure which side she'd be on, so I just staked a claim in the 
middle to hedge my bet (for those going to future shows, she was on the 
[your] right.) She looked great.. and had the 80's/MTV/Girls-just-wanna-
have-fun look down.. her dancing whenever she wasn't playing anything 
was very entertaining! She was really having a good time! During the 
show she played keyboard, guitar, a bit of harmonica, some little drum 
machine thing.. and maybe some other stuff I missed (do hand claps 
count?). And of course backing vocals on most songs. and one song was a 
full blown duet with Ben. I'm not all that familiar with the song titles, 
but they played everything (or almost) from Give Up. The encore was their 
"Against All Odds" cover. 
Oh, Ben was on guitar a lot, and some keyboard, and occasionally he'd 
get behind the drums. The only other guy in the band was Jimmy, who manned 
the Mac all night.
The crowd was pretty good.. with lots of people singing along, and strong 
response to most songs. There were a couple lulls caused by technical 
difficulties (resulting in the crowd calling for a switch to PC.. funny 
stuff). I wasn't that big of a fan going in, but I guess they won me over.
I had parked in a loading zone, and when I got there I saw signs saying 
the club's neighbors were being assholes lately.. towing cars and such. 
So that kinda cramped my night.. worring if my car would still be there 
after the show. So I took off as soon as they were done and didn't stick 
around to gush my affection to Jenny.
-Gav
p.s. it was still there. yay!

4/5/03
takeoff.to/rilokiley