Final Fantasy at Tonic Saturday night

The Good:
Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) does everything live on stage. He records each layer of song right there, loops it, plays over it, and everything on the violin, he beats on it, slaps the strings with the back of the bow, plucks it, screams bits into the distortion mike attached to it, etc, etc. It was mesmorising to see one person turn one instrument into an orchestra. His performence was flawless and fun. I couldn't believe it was only him. If you ever get a chance to see him live, do it. It's amazing to see the power over music (and live music too!) that technology can give to one man. He pulls it off beautifully.

The Bad:
Final Fantasy's crowd was the strangest collection of people I've ever seen at a show. There's nothing bad about that in itself, until they started being jerks. While Owen was recording his loops, people kept screaming from the crowd, trying to be a part of the loop. Jesus, let the guy do his show! This happened, repeatedy, throughout the entire concert. He was a good sport about it, but he did have to start over about 3 times to try and get a clean loop. Then there was spastic LARPer-type dancing everywhere, (but not everywhere enough so that it was communal dancing, it was one person here, one person there, amongst the normal crowd, who were standing still (have you heard Final Fantasy? It's not really the type of music you boogie down to). I saw at least two people singing along...at parts where there were no words! Were they trying to sing the notes of the violin?! It had a very creepy holy-rollers-speaking-in-tounges effect. There was the kid on his DS the whole time (playing Final Fantasy, I wondered? I was too far away to tell, but I could definitely make out anime). And of course, the chubby, frizzy-haired drama major who you can read about in the post below this one.

All in all:
Final Fantasy: Good
Other People: Bad