The two kinds of concerts I normally attend: 1) Those at which I know every song, with few surprises and those tucked neatly at the front of the encore, usually in the form of a cover. And 2) Those at which I will know about half the songs, often the band’s newer, more mainstream stuff, i.e. what they did after selling out, or in order to do so. It’s the pull of the familiar that leads me to see bands I know well, the same pull that generally leads me to a pint of Guinness instead of some new microbrew that I’ve heard good things about but that might be objectively overrated, or merely not to my taste.

Few concerts are fresh experiences for me, with little expectations to fulfill or exceed. This is mostly because of the cost, in time or money or both. But with Bon Iver, I tried to do something a little different, and not just because it was my first time ever in Prospect Park. I had the band’s two albums on my computer, ready to listen, but I got through twenty seconds of the newer record’s first track when I shut it off and decided to be surprised.

The genre is what did it: Beautiful, gorgeous, shimmering, nearly ambient – whatever adjectives other people were tossing around to describe this music told me I wouldn’t feel left out as at a punk show knowing no lyrics to shout along with. I could let it be about the music, being outside, in the summer, alongside a small group of my own friends and a few thousand of the generation just younger than mine. For once I tried to welcome the immediacy of the unknown.

Compared to regular reviews, I can’t speak to what the band did, specifically. It sounded okay, whatever songs they did from whichever release. Most of it was down-tempo, I can say. It was down-tempo enough such that when singer/leader Justin Vernon put on an electric guitar and dropped to his knees for a solo I wanted to run up and steal the guitar and give him the finger for having the nerve to show himself being temporarily overwhelmed by the ferocity of the electric guitar while otherwise ignoring it and pussyfooting around up there and in his upper register.

The band was enormous, which is an automatic red flag for me. I’m still not a fan of huge bands, not since the last time I complained about it. Bruce Springsteen’s comes to mind, with people on stage mostly for the sake of having people on stage (though this excludes Clarence Clemons, who before his passing contributed to the sound on a dominant instrument unique in the band). That fourth acoustic guitar part will make no headway and sound no different than the third, I’m sorry to say for your best friend’s cousin up there, and for Bon Iver the scattered assortment of random instruments was just too random, the sound too subtle for a concert of this size. I prefer the happy medium of variety and power and efficiency of three- and four-man groups, Bon Iver among others looking and acting more like a commune, people chipping in a single note here and there and otherwise merely fleshing out the production design.

There were two drummers. I don’t know how two drummers add up to a sound that has no pulse, but I suppose they might have insisted on being called “percussionists.” I did get there late.

In a way I’m not surprised that my favorite song of the evening was in fact a cover, of the Björk song “Who Is It.” Finally, a song with rhythm! Each band member seemed fully committed during that one, the stage full of spinning plates and humming like the engine these musicians were capable of being. As always, this display of potential was as infuriating as the drony drag was – actually – kind of soothing.

Yes, despite these transgressions, it was a pleasant time. I know not every band has to be a rock band, but I refuse to be fooled into thinking this type of music is supposed to hit the same spots or more importantly receive the same level and kind of adulation. The music for me didn’t have the slow burning intensity that electrified the cores of my plaid-shirted friends, but as the background for a summer outing it was superficially fine. More than fine, actually – it was good. But not that good.

SET LIST
Don’t Know
Don’t Care
Look It Up
I Don’t Mean To Be a Dick
Where Have All The Rockstars Gone?
(Not My) Cup of Tea
A Step Up from Crickets
Good Enough
It’s Not You, It’s Me

Encore:
Who Is It (Björk cover)
We Could Have Left on a High Note
So Long, and Thanks for All the Cash

I’ve seen Ludo four times now, all in New York, all at the Highline Ballroom. I’ll always think it’s some of the best $15 you can spend in the city – more enjoyable than almost any movie, especially if ephemeral performances tickle your fancy more than films more comfortably seen at home (excepting event movies). With the band intact and the venue the same, it’s easier for me to compare show to show, to see where this fourth installment fits in.

This current tour sets itself apart with its rotation of themes. Called “Space Dracula’s Basketball Expo,” cities may experience one of the three themes included in the title, if not all three. Living in New York and therefore entitled to the best of everything, our audience was blessed with the trifecta. The one opener I saw wore basketball jerseys, the lead singer wearing stripes as a referee (though they were jailbird-horizontal). A less-than-regulation basketball hoop stage right contributed to the ambience. When Ludo came out – this after setting up their own instruments, deflating the suspense but demonstrating their humility – it was first to a long-darkened stage and good old Bach’s good old “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” The band carried out a coffin over their heads, setting it down before 2 Unlimited’s “Get Ready for This” signalled the start of a 3-man basketball passing drill. More jerseys, spacesuits and Dracula capes gave it all a Halloweeny flair, a few months early (actually a nice mental break from the hundred-degree heat).

Decorations aside, the show was largely the same as the last one I saw, last year. Then it was to support their newest record Prepare the Preparations, though only a few of those newest tracks made it into the setlist. The lion’s share of this go-round featured songs from two records ago, most of which were offered as sing-alongs and all audience favorites. Much as I loved hearing these songs again, I was a little disappointed by the familiarity. With no new material to push, I could see them cherrypicking from their whole oeuvre. Two shows ago the band played their Broken Bride EP (one of the most poignant recordings I’ve ever heard, still, seriously), so I don’t doubt their capability to reproduce nearly everything they’ve recorded. I understand in theory that you have to give an audience what it wants – Aerosmith can’t escape the twin balls-and-chain of “Sweet Emotion” and “Walk This Way” – and a show full of people singing along can’t truly be called a disappointment. But displacing three or four songs with three or four others might have set the whole affair wonderfully apart. For a band with a following of a certain size, these fans would certainly know some of the rarer tracks. Not knowing how much rehearsal goes into any basically unfamiliar song, I can only be pleased with what I saw and heard.

The small differences, then, were very much appreciated. I was hoping to hear “Skeletons on Parade” – a Halloween song if ever there were one – and surely enough they incorporated the second half of it (beginning with the Dropkick Murphys-esque instrumental break) after “Rotten Town,” another favorite. But the most exciting change came at the end of the set, pre-encore. The band’s signature song is “Love Me Dead,” and we all sort of knew we’d hear it. But the band offered up a deal: If we would shut the hell up and be quiet, and not grope any of the band, they’d play an acoustic version in the middle of the audience. We agreed, and they did. And it was marvelous.

We snapped along, sang along, sat on the ground and behaved ourselves like the good little children we were. Twenty years of tight hamstrings have made Native American Indian-style an impossibility, but I came damn close. As powerful as the band can be on stage, their showmanship and musicianship translated well to the crowd around them. This ten minutes of the show was its defining moment, and will be how I remember this one a couple of reviews from now (goodness willing).

SETLIST
Lake Pontchartrain
Go-Getter Greg
Drunken Lament
Hum Along
Rotten Town/Skeletons on Parade (2nd half)
Topeka
Please
Anything for You
Part I: Broken Bride
Save Our City
The Horror of Our Love
Whipped Cream
Girls on Trampolines
Love Me Dead (acoustic)

ENCORE
Good Will Hunting By Myself

I love May, but it’s a little bittersweet, too. The many TV shows I’ve anticipated each week are done or nearly done for the summer, due rest for keeping me entertained for eight months. During the TV season, few ultimately irrelevant things bother me more than sitting down to enjoy a new episode, live, only to see that it’s a repeat (I sat down in this chair for nothing??). But when all the season finales have aired, I feel free. In June, July and August, the weather’s nice and I can be doing anything with my time. Which means I can catch up on TV.

Enter Dexter. I’ve heard forever that I would enjoy the show, and it’s clearly up my alley: I’ve been a CSI apologist for way too long (stay tuned) so the forensics angle fits, plus I generally enjoy most of what Showtime offers. (If Adam Savage can forward the idea that the world is divided into Hammett people and Chandler people, I’d say it might also be divided into Showtime folks and HBO folks. I’m a Showtime folk.) I watched the first season as I usually do with shows on DVD/Netflix: An episode here and there, then two in a row until the last night when I pound out four to finish it.

Dexter is about Dexter Morgan, a forensics analyst and blood spatter expert who also happens to be a serial killer. It’s based on a novel by a man named Jeff Lindsay. The series is set in Miami, but a regular-looking Miami, not the day-glo neon of the Miami of the CSI franchise set there. While I soon got sucked into the story, I was thrown off by the first few episodes. Not by the story, but by the nuts and bolts of it. The lieutenant is a Latina woman, and true to stereotypical TV form, she’s fiery and generally has a bad attitude (think Ana Lucia). And there’s an African-American man with a chip on his shoulder who spouts off a “motherfucker” here and there and also generally has a bad attitude. But the show mitigated these cliches pretty well, smoothing over some of the edges that made these representations one-dimensional and over the top while keeping the characters’ intensity. That’s all that stuck in my craw with this one. Onward to season two!

This show, first aired in April, is an hour-long roundtable discussion about comedy featuring Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Louis CK. It’s very much about the process of comedy, not necessaily all dry theory but a longer view on the topic, the writing of the material, the mindset of the comedian onstage and how he relates to the audience, and so forth. It’s intelligent conversation but there’s also plenty of laughter, so it’s easy to watch. Personally, I love this stuff almost as much as comedy itself so I was happy to see it, and twice.

Gervais is more or less the moderator, tossing up questions every so often and giving the conversation a shape by putting the other comedians’ statements in perspective. But as the conversation moves along, we see he’s also the outsider in a couple of ways. I think the show is his baby, if not his idea – his production company pops up at the end – so it makes sense that he’d host it and maybe also be the one to wrangle up these elite comedians. It’s easy to point out that he’s British and they’re American, but their professional backgrounds are different as well. And Gervais points this out, that these other three, among many others, worked at clubs for a decade or more making the stand-up work before branching out into other arenas, never giving up the touring outright. Gervais hit it big first with The Office, then wanted to prove himself onstage after the fact. He’s a very funny comedian, successful beyond his experience, maybe, but I’d say he’s not quite at their level just yet, in terms of stand-up.

I’m not picking on him at all, but it was a curious dynamic. For a discussion of stand-up as such, I could easily have seen Eddie Izzard as the fourth. But, the relationships might not be there for that quartet to work as smoothly. Gervais and Louis CK are friends, as are Louis CK and Chris Rock. Seinfeld and Louis CK toured together a long time ago. So they’re friends and friends of friends, in the same circle but not the same pantheon, maybe.

Chris Rock points this out, maybe not entirely in jest, a couple of times. Seinfeld actually asks the question, about their first bit that worked. When Gervais is thinking about his, Rock says, “he wrote it last week.” Later, Rock says the stand-up is how he made himself, his career and his money, and it’s not just something he’s doing on the side. And he wasn’t really being a jerk about it in either case but he’s highlighting an interesting wrinkle. I wonder if there’s a thought even among comedians that Gervais isn’t quite part of the group yet, that he hasn’t paid his dues in the same way. I’m just saying it’s possible.

I do have to say that Louis CK impresses me more and more. I appreciate his comedy because things are said so straightforwardly. They’re well-wrought jokes but they sound plain-spoken, and are probably funnier for it. But he’s as incisive in discussing this material. It’s clear they take the offstage work seriously, perhaps him most of all. He also made a point I’d heard him make before, that he does a new hour every year. He first heard that in a George Carlin interview that he doesn’t mention in this show. But of the four, it’s likely that Jerry is the oldest-fashioned in that sense, in his use and reuse of material.That seed is tackled right up front, setting in motion a most interesting hour.

I wish there were more of these, or that this show could have been longer. Left wanting more, I understand one of entertainment’s basic ideas, and get on with my day.