We stopped by a friend's get-together before heading off to the Metro.
"What show are you guys seeing?"
"It's a band called
Do Make Say Think."
"
Milk Spider Clownshoe?"
* * *
Because we went to the party, we missed the opening act. It was actually kinda nice to get there and be introduced to the meat of the show. This was my third time at the Metro this week, and while the openers for Battles were all stupendous, the openers for Thursday were more just stupid (please note I'm using that word more for the alliteration - they were a little boring, but not stupid).
The bassist/guitarist/trumpeter started the set with a little anecdote. He said that the museum of natural history in Toronto has this giant wheel that children are allowed to spin. The result of the roll of the wheel indicates the percentage chance one has to randomly be born a human on this earth. He said that children would spin it and pretty much always would be born an insect, and everyone would go, "aww." He'd never seen it, but he assumed someone must have spun a human and everyone would cheer.
Then he said that the buddhist tradition has a similar story about the chance to be born human. There's an old blind turtle swimming in the ocean and every 400 years, he comes up for air. On the surface of the ocean is a hula hoop (I'm sure the buddhists didn't say "hula hoop," but this is what the guy said). The chances of the blind turtle surfacing into the hula hoop are the chances of a soul being born human.
He said that this indicated two things. One was that the museum thought we had better chances of becoming human. The other was that we should be reminded of how special we are and that we should all go out and do great things, and that he was sure there were many people in the audience capable of such a thing.
I turned over to my friend Ryan and said, "I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth for this show."
And then Do Make Say Think rocked my balls off.
I'm gonna go ahead and tell Gregor that he has every right to be jealous that he missed this show. I hadn't known what I was getting into when I was going. For some reason, I had it in my head that I not only had seen this band before, but that I also owned one of their cds. I've looked through old blogs and through my iTunes collection and can't find any mention of them. It was like Divine inspiration that I decided to buy tickets to this show. And I'm glad I did. I think it all comes back to the name. It is the best prescription. Do. Make. Say. Think.
I HATE HATE HATE the Metro's policy on no professional cameras. This band was so visually interesting to watch on stage. Two drummers, violinist, two guitars and a 5-piece horn section. One drummer and a couple of trumpeters were
especially eye-catching, if you know what I mean). There was some instrument-swapping as well, but not a lot. At one point of the show there were seven horns, and they were all standing at the edge of the stage, like a clarion call. It was pretty cool.
By the end, I told Ryan that that was one of the best shows I've ever seen. He said that he thought Battles was better. I thought about it for a while. I thought battles was an excellent show, but there was something sublime about the Do Make Say Think show. There were these totally rolling kids near us who kept raising their hands in the air like they were praising Jesus and for some reason, the music made you want to do that. It just seemed slightly spiritual. And I liked that.
