Feistiest Concert of 2006 (And Maybe ‘Best’)

On Monday night, I went to Ames (which was given a new, exotic pronunciation as part of a segue into a Kings of Convenience song) to see Feist and Jason Collett. It was pretty phenomenal.

Jason Collett (right) began the show with his six-person (up to nine at some points) act. He seems to have been taking cigarettes and other rasp-inducing behavior seriously, as he sounds like a Dylan (Bob or Jacob, but I’ll leave the Wallflowers comparisons out of this for credibility’s sake) all the way down to a pseudo-New Jersey accent for the banter. Hearing his record (which is only a side-project; he’s also active in Broken Social Scene), you wouldn’t predict it, but hell hath no rasp like a Canadian Dylan moonlighter.

Also, Collett was really, really good. He invited Leslie Feist (who was identified as “backup singer for the band Feist” right before she started playing drums) on stage to perform a few numbers, and the rest of the Feist band came on at one point, too. He played quite well, and his band did, too.

Then Feist played. I never liked her music, and her live set was full of those annoyingly short experimental bits that aren’t totally song-like, but the way she did it was endearing. She also played a Kings of Convenience song that she identified only by telling the story of Erlend and Eirik. (If you’re wondering which one it was, I’ll tell you it wasn’t any of the ones you’d remember well, because this wasn’t that kind of show. It was a lower-fi version of “The Build-Up,” the last track on Riot On An Empty Street.)

After the Erlend and Eirik shoutout, Leslie Feist invited all of the music majors in the audience onto the stage to help perform the next song. It turned out that there was only one willing music major in the house, and it happened to be a Grinnellian (even though we were at the Iowa State University). He played some kind of rattle, but he stole the show.

Then Leslie told us that marriage was a big decision.

Then the two people quoted in the Iowa State Daily that day about the Feist show obliged a request to appear on stage to read their quotations. There was apparently something cool about that.

Later, Collett and his self-proclaimed “band of merry men” hopped back on stage to play some more songs. Of course, some of the merry men were already up there, because the two acts share some musicians. Also, Collett was pretty much blown at that point.

Leslie Feist asked if there were any girls in the crowd who had recently recovered from heartbreak, and she picked one to come on stage. She played a slow song and made Jason Collett dance with the girl the whole time.

Then we all celebrated a drummer’s birthday by singing “Happy Birthday” (twice). It was also the merch girl’s birthday, and maybe some other people’s birthday, too.

And then I blogged about it.

Here’s a song:

• Jason Collett - Hangover Days (Featuring Leslie Feist)

MAJOR UPDATE: As Feist promised, she and Jason (and like twenty other people) performed on Conan the next night, and they were really good. Take a look: Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)