the lions of

Of Montreal has long been my favorite band, yet opportunity to see them perform has rarely come around. That streak of bad luck and timing ended this past Tuesday when we went to see them play House of Blues in Orlando. This, my friends, is a short recap.

Let me start by saying, I had spent the entire week prior to the show discussing with K the various reasons she could not come to the see Of Montreal, who happen to be her favorite band, too. She even went as far as Googling the venue to see how old you had to be (it was All Ages afterall), but my argument rested on the facts that she was only eight, HOB has a bar, and it was a school night. She persisted to debate her case desperately. It broke her little heart in the end. I've taken her to music fests and outdoor concerts in the park, but she's simply much too young for this type of concert...particularly when Kevin Barnes has been known to get down to his birthday suit during the set. Nonetheless, heartbroken.

I went with a good friend and we arrived just before Fiery Furnaces went on. Now don't get me wrong, I like the band...but they have absolutely no stage presence and the crowd was talking above them as if it were background music. Needless to say, we all welcomed the intermission of tacky funk music that you can't help dance along to while Of Montreal was setting up.

Once the curtains drew, a door opened to a new dimension in which we all found ourselves ecstatic to be in the middle of. All of our senses were heightened at once, although the taste might have been elevated by whisky and cheap beer. As the band began playing a revolving screen in the middle of the stage turned to reveal Kevin Barnes in all his glory, immediately jumping into lyric. From this point on, every soul in the crowd would be grinning ear to ear and dancing their little hearts off the rest of the night.

Barnes' love of theatrics and costumes were evident as a troupe of monsters and dancers in nude suits and a giant tree-like creature took stage acting out skits and interacting with the musicians, as well as the crowd. Glitter was spewn out at the crowd as if Ziggy Stardust had been resurrected. The multiple screens behind the stage delivered psychadelic mini-films that made even the most sober among us to question if someone had laced their Vitamin Water with LSD. There was a definite hint of Magic Mystery Tour inspiring the stage show and costumes. I think I even made a reference to George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic at one point. For a generation of reality TV show addicts living in the post-glory days of MTV, we don't know what it means to see a true performance by an artist. David Bowie, The Beatles, and early-Elton John all provided that for earlier generations, we missed out big time!

Barnes changed costumes nearly five times, leading to him wearing only skimpy hot pink hipsters while various creatures rubbed red paint on his bare skin. The performance could be best described as a rock orgy on acid. Within a moments notice there was an upright piano on stage with Barnes playing an interlude to the next fantasy he had planned out for us, as he allowed his alter-ego Georgie Fruit to deliver some of the most intoxicating dance tracks from the past few albums. While most of my favorite Of Montreal songs are off older albums, like Cherry Peel and Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies, I can honestly say I wasn't disappointed in the set one bit. Yes, I would've preferred to hear, literally, fourteen songs they didn't perform, but in no way did they fail the audience.

Just when we thought the soles of our dancing shoes had worn thin, the band delivered an encore with a fairly accurate cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Again, just as I referenced legendary performers my generation missed out on experiencing first-hand, Nirvana is also grouped into that category. It only took three seconds into the song to take the crowd of Gen X'ers back to 1991, when most of us were in elementary or middle school. Everyone, yours truly included, was slam dancing with huge smiles on their face singing along as if Cobain were standing in front of us with his beat-up Strat and stringy blond hair hiding his baby blues, but when we looked up we were reminded of the trick the glitter-adorned Barnes was playing on us. And no one cared.

The music ceased and we all stood in a trance, as if we had forgotten we were in Orlando on the curtails of 2008 instead of 1991 Seattle, 1971 London, or in a dimension of Sunlandia where time does not exist. I have been going to concerts for over 15 years now and I've been to my fair share of breath-taking, mind boggling performances; however, Of Montreal was hands down the single best musical production I have ever witnessed.

I bought K the Skeletal Lamping blik by David Barnes, since I already have the Gemini Tactics blik. On the back of the packaging there's a message from Kevin Barnes about the concept of having their album art transformed into various forms, including paper lamps and blik.

Ideally, every object you bring into your
home should feel exceptional to you, otherwise,
it just adds to the clutter and chaos of your life.
We feel, there's no reason to produce another
object that just sits on a shelf. We only want to
produce objects that have functionality and can
be treasured for their singularity. Objects that
can transform a room, bend the mind and
inform your dreams.

I absolutely agree on the importance of aesthetics, simplicity, and functionality in decor. Well said, Kevin.

On a final note, I still have glitter in my hair from two nights ago!