And Their Refinement of My Sublime

I had the utmost pleasure of seeing one of my favorite bands, Stars of the Lid (who haven't toured the U.S. in over six years) at the Staerkel Planetarium located in the Parkland Community College campus in Champaign, IL last Tuesday with my wife and brother.

I can safely say it has been my favorite concert to date.

One reason is the price in the lower right corner of the ticket stub pictured above. That's right. It was free. Another reason was the locale. If you want to get a novice astronomy buff excited, then have his favorite band play at a planetarium.

Tim gave an excellent recap of the evening here. Please visit for many cool details.

And now, a few observations by moi.

It was a much more intimate setting than I thought. It was a domed enclosure, no bigger than a medium sized movie theater. It looked like it could sit about 100 people or so. It had the most inviting ambient lighting when we walked in which made it hard to take photos, but to hell if I was going to disrupt the mood with camera flash.
Pictured above: (L) The soundboard. We sat about five feet from it. (R) The projection system which had us tripping balls most of the show. This picture is after the show ended and they raised it out of it's hiding spot in the center of the room

Christopher Willits was the opener. Very cool. That's him in the middle picture, messing with his sequencer while his visuals played overhead. The left picture was the still projected on the dome when we walked in. The right picture is a closeup of his crazy visuals. At that point it looked like vapors traveling down a drain. I'll have to see if I can score some of his music. All my money for the night was going to be allocated to SOTL paraphernalia.

Then the Stars came out. That's Brian on the far middle-left and Adam on the far middle-right in the white t-shirt. The three piece string section was located in between them. I recognized most of their songs. They played brilliantly.

To further the thought that they tailored this show for us was the fact that most of the visuals were 70's, Cosmos style space images. I would have loved to have gotten more photos, but most of the time I was glued to the seat in a stupor.

But, to give you more of an idea, here are a couple of short film clips I took...

They played for about an hour but it seemed like much longer. There were no encores and they quickly retreated after their last song. I figured they were probably just shy or just tired. The three of us sat, processing what we just sat through.

After about five or so minutes we got up and headed for the lobby. It was still full with the dispersing audience but I happen to look at one of the offices off to the side and saw the door was cracked with the lights on. I saw Adam sitting at one of the desks.

In case of meeting them, I had brought along one of their CDs in the chance hope of some autographs. Unfortunately, Tim and ~H~ knew I had done this so they verbally forced me to do what happen next.

I knew the band would not take kindly to pesky fan boys like myself begging autographs while they were trying to unwind after their show, but as my company reminded me, this would likely be my only chance. I tapped on the door and headed in.

It was truly my most gawky moment. Suddenly I was in a small office with two of my most influential artists and their backup string section composed of three beautiful women. They were all giving me this look like "What is this creature and what does it want?"

It was Adam who broke the awkward silence and said in a tired, casual and a little annoyed way, "What's going on?" I mumbled something like, "Oh, hey. I'm very sorry for bugging you guys....uh....just wanted to say the show was awesome." I'm screaming at my brain at this moment. Work, damn you! Work! Then I said something stupid like, "Oh, and I wanted to thank you for the shirt you sent me." I was wearing it at the time. For more about this shirt, see here.

Adam stretched and said, "Did I charge you or give it to you free?" "Free!" I blurted out. "Oh, ...then you owe me," he said. I was hoping like hell this razzing he was giving me meant he didn't hate my guts so far.

"Actually I was here to acquire more free stuff if you didn't mind," I said as I held up my Sharpie and CD. He kind of half smiled and took my pen and the CD and signed it. The album I brought was Per Aspera Ad Astra. It was hard for me to choose which one to bring. I love them all equally so I brought the one I tended to listen to the most. It's a quieter and murkier LP than most of their others but is richly layered and textured to my taste.

I tell you this because Adam gave the CD a questioning look as to why this one? I told him they were all my favorites but said I tended to listen to this one more. He simply asked in a rhetorical tone, "Really?" I wasn't sure if he was flattered or if it was an album he didn't share my feelings about. But he did not follow up with any more questions as to why, so it shall remain a mystery.

He then fled to the restroom in the lobby, probably in an effort to get away from me, where Tim had a brief encounter with him. So then I turned to the quiet Brian. He did not have Adam's gruff nature about him and struck me as a shy, modest, lovable chap. I walked up to him and handed him my stuff and said, "I love your work a lot. Thanks for this." He responded in a quiet, "Thank you. Thanks for coming." What a nice guy.

And then I fled with what little dignity I had left. I promised myself I would never bug tired musicians that I love ever again. I did it to Yo La Tengo and now I did it to Stars of the Lid. Oh well. Some would say the price they have to pay for being so damn good is putting up with toadies like me.

Anyway, here is the swag I collected from the lovely evening. Aside from the ticket stub at the top of this post, which I count.

(L) An 11x17 show poster. Limited screen print. (M) Their latest album, And Their Refinement of the Decline, T-shirt. (R) The autographs. Adam wrote "Slow down" which I thought he was referring to my demeanor but I later I saw it was the tag line on their MySpace page. And I'm not sure, but I think he's calling me "Free T-Shirt". Brian signed with a modest quote. Maybe he was too flattered by my praise.

The one small thing I liked about the autograph experience was when I gave it to them, they each took about 15 seconds to think about what they were going to write. If they were extremely annoyed by me, then they would have never have given me 30 seconds of collective thought. They would have just slapped an X on the CD and shoved me out the door.

Thank you, gentlemen. I had a wonderful evening. Thank you.

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