I Will Follow You Into The Dark
Joe Posnanski is one of the authors linked in my blogroll. Part of that is because I love baseball, and he is one of the best writers about baseball out there. But part of that is because he is simply an amazing writer. Witness:
The lead singer and main guy from Death Cab — Ben Somethingorother* — is standing right next to me, and he just looks like a GUY, a GUY you would run into at a ballgame, a guy you might see at the bookstore, a GUY who you would like hanging out with even if he has made a somewhat unfortunate sideburns decisions at times. I don’t know him, obviously, and I certainly am not going to talk to him now — I told you I don’t like these meet-and-greets, and anyway enough people are already coming up to tell him how great the show was, how great he was, how incredibly awesome he is and so on — but I do have to say that I have a new appreciation for him.
I was a moderate Death Cab fan before — I actually like Ben better in his “Postal Service” mode — but this was a great show. The whole band was great (Death Cab has GREAT drums). Still, by far the most mesmerizing moment of the night happened when everyone else in the band left the stage, and a spotlight dropped on Ben, and he sang, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark,” which might be the best love song of the last 20 years. I’m not sure how many people in the world can flat spellbind an audience with a single guitar, a soft spotlight and a microphone. To me that’s the real trick in life. It seems to me that any band with a couple of hits, trick lighting, and really loud “this goes to eleven” amps can overpower an audience. But can you wow them when it’s just you, them and no fire breathing floating heads overhead? I always say that 20 of the most magical minutes of my baseball-watching life was watching Ozzie Smith take infield practice. That’s all. Just infield. That’s the feeling I got watching and listening to Ben sing “I Will Follow You.”
*No, seriously, that’s his name. Or Ben Whateveryoucallit. One or the other.
I tend to feel that Death Cab peaked with The Photo Album, although We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes is easily my favorite. And generally speaking, I tend to have a diminishing interest in any band once they have reached a certain level of fame. I know that is pretty silly; good music is good music, and it isn’t any better if it is obscure or unpopular. But I’m still, sadly, captive to the feeling of being in a special club when I love something that most people don’t know about yet. And I simply can’t be bothered to shell out more than $20 for almost any concert, nor to rush out to get tickets right when they go on sale (The Magnetic Fields are clearly the exception that proves the rule).
But there really is something to be said for Death Cab, and their ability to not only acquire but hold on to the sort of wide, mainstream audience that they have with the kind of music they play. It reminds me a bit of the Nirvana phenomenon from when I was young, or The White Stripes – there is something remarkable in the fact that they are able to make music of their own idiosyncratic type, and still reach the masses through their sheer brilliance. For a huge Twin Peaks fan, I tend to forget sometimes that sometimes, art is popular because it is great.
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