I Bet That Horse is Tired of Bagpipes

Death Gardens for Anheuser

So I disappeared again, sorry. You're in luck though! I have two reviews today! One will be for the Death Cab for Cutie Concert I went to on Thursday night and the other will be for Busch Gardens, Williamsburg's Howl-O-Scream Halloween events.

So who the heck is Death Cab For Cutie? :: Well, the easy answer is that they are a band. The longer answer would be that that are a remarkably interesting, unique, independently made band that is gaining more and more attention by the hour. If you haven't heard of them before, you may also heard of The Postal Service, an electronic group that shares it's lead singer with Death Cab. After the smashing success of the album "Give Up" by The Postal Service, Death Cab signed on to Atlantic records, ending their era of indy. Doesn't bother me though, because their new album "Plans" doesn't show any signs of weakness...in fact, it's great.

Caroline and I got to the "Disco Rodeo" in Raleigh early. It was freezing but we had to wait in line for 45 minutes amidst the gaggles of 15 year old "I'm going to talk so loud everyone can hear me because I'm 15 and I'm retarded" kids. It's unfortunate that Disco Rodeo doesn't at least draw the line at 18...sigh. Once we got in the door, we b-lined for the t-shirt counter and while buying these AWESOME green shirts, Devin's (my roommate's) girlfriend found us and told us where to go. Which happened to be where Devin was standing. Which happened to be about 15 feet from the stage. It was cramped and this annoying old guy kept breathing heavily onto the top of my head, but it was well worth it to be that close.

The opening band "Stars" surprised me by being relatively decent. I won't be traipsing out to buy their cd, as my roommate will, but I enjoyed them nevertheless.

As it got closer to the time for Death Cab to come on, I found myself moving further and further to the back rail as countless drooling emo kids poured into the sides of the front section. I only moved a little though and with Caroline's camera, was able to get some sweet photos which I hope to have up here soon. In the mean time you can check out Devin's Photos. They may have come out better and he was standing virtually in the same spot I was.

Death Cab ended up running though all of their most popular songs and then surprisingly, picking out about 10 songs I'd never heard before, meaning they were from before Transatlanticism. Though it wasn't as spectacular as the Coldplay concert, I do love their music and being up in front was awesome. Give them a listen.

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Imagine my excitement as the day after the concert, I'm heading home for my family. Mom, Dad, Melissa, Jeffery, Elizabeth, Craig, Caroline and myself all headed out to Busch Gardens Saturday where we hoped to be spooked by their Howl-O-Scream events. It was a bit of a disappointment when we realized that the events that might have actually scared us, were ruined by the thousands of people that poured into the park at 5 PM. Some of the 17+ "haunted houses" would have really been spooky had their been fewer people going through them at the same time as us. As it stood, the night was long lines and cold weather, (about 33 degrees.) There were moments of, what the crap...this stinks, but they were brought on by the fact that some of us liked to ride rides, other didn't, and the fact that we were all freezing.

Craig brought Caroline, Elizabeth, and I back on Sunday for rides. They caught Alpengeist and Apollo's Chariot but sadly, Big Bad Wolf was dead almost the entire weekend. All in all, I made some good memories and enjoyed getting to spend a lot of time with Craig and Elizabeth...but more careful planning will be needed if we make any future trips there.

Bread me in corn flour, fry me on a stick, and sell me for $4 why don't you!