Doves Live and Turning 20

In addition to seeing Star Wars on May 19, I also went to a Doves concert. Doves are one of my favorite bands, their second album, The Last Broadcast is in my top ten albums all time, and their recent album, Some Cities, is excellent as well. They fall in roughly the same genre as Coldplay, but are much better, a bit dancier and a bit more rock.

Anyway, their concert Thursday was excellent. They opened with Pounding, my favorite song of theirs, and it rocked pretty hard. Other highlights were 'Here It Comes,' 'Words,' 'Black and White Town,' and the concert closer, 'There Goes the Fear.' The crowd wasn't that into it at first, but as time passed, they got more into it. It's always cool to see a band you really know in concert, because you can appreciate the songs a lot more. I really liked the variations they did, extending some solo instrumental parts and such.



I always like when bands mess around with the songs live, we already know the songs, and there should be some variation. I saw Aimee Mann last year, and it was a fun concert, but she was so close to the recording, there was no sense of discovery. When the crowd is really into it, it's fine to stick close to the recording, but generally speaking, it's good to mix things up. So, I would have liked a bit more variation, but as it was, Doves put on an excellent show.

So, it was quite a birthday. I think such a great Star Wars movie was really the best gift I could have received. That was the film I'd wanted to see since I was very young, and a huge part of my life now has resolution. I'm really happy to see that the film has been so well regarded by the general public because if you didn't like this movie, you're pretty much not going to like any Star Wars film.

And with that I'm now twenty. I guess that's a big change, the decade change over is always huge, but I think thirty is a bigger change, especially the way society is going now. Twenty is still young, especially because I'm in college, two years from now is going to be a much bigger change. This change is all mental, peoples' perception of me. When I was younger, I thought change was just happen, you'd get older and all the things that older people have would just come to you, but it's not that way, any change that you want, you have to work for. Another year passing doesn't mean anything unless you make it mean something.