Shakin' the Sheets

An all-around good weekend. Friday night once again saw the masterful Ted Leo in town and playing at the Black Cat. I can't get enough of his live shows. His last two albums have been fantastic and hearing that material performed at a frenetic pace with such enthusiasm actually makes me feel just a little bit younger. One of my favorite tracks on the last album, Shake the Sheets, is called "Walking to Do." I've been disappointed the he hasn't played it at the last couple of shows mostly because it's got a cool call-and-response thing happening at the end and I'm a sucker for cheesey shit like that.

Well, finally on Friday night I got to hear it live. The best part of it being that there are some mumbly lyrics at the end of the song that I never paid attention to because they are right after Ted does this lit scat gibberish and my mind tends to wander lyrically anyway. Earlier in the evening I was talking to my buddy about how I was hoping to hear this song and he agreed because he loves the lyric at the end; the mumbly one I never picked up on. Now I've been listening to this album non-stop for over a year and I never noticed that in one of my favorite songs where Ted is singing about walking between various locales he calls out "from Rock Creek Park, to the Ave., and on past the zoo..." I need to pay closer attention in the future so when one of your favorite artists is shouting out local landmarks I can pick up on it. Anyway, great show.

The night was made even better by the fact that we went down to Gallery Place to watch the George Mason/Wichita State game before the show and although I wasn't inside the Verizon Center I was as physically close to the action as possible when GMU won their Sweet 16 game. Add that to Sunday's victory over UCONN (where we were once again back at the same bar) and it was very good weekend. Except for the fact that a guy tried to sell us tix outside the stadium Sunday for $100 each and we turned him down. I should have spent the money.