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MFNW : An Intimate Evening with Mirah

pc-pdx Sep 08 2008 10:51P 5

The woman makes me swoon -laugh, cry, love, all of it, in all the best ways. Mirah melts me. As much as i love her and as much as my life has been based around going to shows, i've never managed to see her. It's not that i haven’t been trying, believe me, i have. It's been over nine years since the first miss. It was April 1999 (98?) on one of her first trips to Denver and i hear that it was incredible.

Skip nine years down the line to MusicfestNW [mfnw] 2008 and i see my chance, a thin line of victory on the horizon. I've always been wary of the festival in the royal sense, never having much faith in actually seeing whom i want to. Go back to 2005 at the new Meow Meow when at 5 in the afternoon Mirah stand a tiny fleck upon the stage through 2 doorways and several hundred people away. Saturday night at Backspace was not much different. The 250 cap seemingly full and what might have well as been 800 more lined-up out the door and down the block.

She was much closer this time, her back to the giant plate windows on 5th Ave. All these hundreds of people whom i can't imagine care about her half as much as i. This isn't how i imagined my first Mirah experience, i wanted more, i thought it'd be special. Even if i waited around and made my way in, i figured that this was not the right setting and these people could very well just ruin the night for me. I was fine having no expectation of actually seeing her; i figured the venue would be crushed by a rouge meteorite a few hours before the show. The fact i made it and got to see the back of her hair was enough to feel like a monumental step, like the first kiss in our nine year relationship. It's been so long at this point, i know i can wait a few more months for a shot at another date.

I decide to hand out some flyers for the Show-Guide on my way out and the gobs lined up proved my every suspicion.

"What's this?" they ask as i hand them a pc-pdx flyer.
"It's a website that lists every show in town".
They respond with "oh, i'm not interested in that kind of shit".
I figured as such. Who in line for a show would be concerned with, um, shows? I'm so glad that you blindly listen to whatever the WillyWeek tells you regarding where to go and what to do with your Saturday evenings, you’re indeed as cool as you think you are. Next time just please stay home and watch My Sweet 16 or whatever shitty show that happens to be on mtv and let those who really care enjoy an evening with these amazing artists that occasionally grace our awesome scene. The flyer said an "Intimate evening with Mirah" though i guess i shouldn't be surprised that it was actually a dissociated evening with hundreds of sheepish buttloads.

It was like a trip back to middle school, having to watch the jock get the girl knowing damnwell that they couldn't love or appreciate her half as much as I could. Defeated in this sense, I head back to the bar where, in transit to the show, i saw a friend standing outside ‘burning one’. Jay Awesome, a wise man who greets me with the following wisdom "Fuck it, let's go get wasted."

talk about it …

5 Comments

  1. Hey. I was there.
    I'm not surprised some weren't into your fliers but just so you know, I would have been. Had I not sat through 2 boring ass bands to see mirah. True its not my first time standing in front of her but let me tell you, next time its worth sitting through whatever you have to. Especially if she plays with Bryce.

  2. shit, dude. i totally would've gotten you in, i was running that show. don't all the other backspace people know you well enough by now? i should get them to make you a badge.

    • dreww
    • 9/9/2008 2:45:00 AM
  3. Nathan Backous

    I lived at a house that did the Handmade Bazaar, back in 2001 Mirah was one of the musical guests to play in our backyard. We started getting dozens of calls an hour from people wanting to know EXACTLY what time Mirah was going to play. There were 3 or 4 more musical acts, food, and a god-damned-hand-made-bazaar to check out too, so I just kept telling people that they should come check stuff out and that Mirah would be playing later. For some reason, people that don't care about culture in any other way, care about Mirah. Which is so weird, because Mirah isn't like that herself, at all. It makes me glad that my band is not popular.

    I remember flyering outside a Fugazi show in '95, I had about 200 handbills, passed them all out to the people filing out of the show. I was able to collect about 150 of them of the ground when everyone had cleared out.

  4. pc-pdx

    Thanks drew + crew.
    I was kind of turned off by some of the people that i spoke with out front and didn't want to have any sour associations with Mirah at all. I was really hoping to get in and take some great photos up front, maybe next time.

    Anybody who has photos that you would like to share from Mirahs set or from any other show, please get in contact - we'd love to publish them!

  5. Nathan,
    That Mirah show was one of the greatest shows I have ever been to in my life. Seriously, it downright life changing how good the show (and the bazaar) was that year.

    ezra

    • ezra
    • 9/16/2008 11:54:00 AM
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