Nothing, not even a case of the flu, could stop Peter Yarrow ’59 during his performance Saturday night at the State Theatre. With a set nearly three hours in length, Yarrow entertained the mostly older crowd with songs and tales from his 50-year career with Peter, Paul and Mary, and on his own, as a singer, songwriter and activist.
Throughout my childhood, I spent an undeterminable amount of time driving from here to there in my father’s forest green Ford Explorer. It was during this time that my musical preferences first began to take shape, as my dad had a static selection of albums that I was forced to listen to time and time again. Of course, there was the classic assortment of adult favorites: the Talking Head’s Stop Making Sense, Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True and Paul Simon’s Graceland. Besides these, my dad’s music taste seemed to deviate from the norm (read: The Phantom of the Opera). Finally, there was his brief foray into the country world with Lyle Lovett’s 1989 album Live in Texas.
Current politics exasperate the autumn gloom. Although the economy is emerging from the largest contraction since World War II, we are still stuck in Iraq, and the impasse in Afghanistan seems to be getting even more complicated.
Two months into its busy U.S. tour, Built to Spill lodged in Ithaca on Thursday night to play an offbeat form of rock and roll, and found an attractive crowd to match. Affecting its best indie rock persona, State Theatre played host. While sometimes the State Theatre pins everyone to his or her assigned seat, the mood on Thursday was looser, providing the right recipe for just a few shenanigans. The show featured two other bands as well, Disco Doom and Violent Soho, who were commissioned to set the mood.
“Sorry for the confetti in the first 10 rows.” Hearing this announcement as I took my seat at the State Theatre on Friday night, I knew it was going to be in for an incredible show. The stage, decked out with three chairs and a piano, was otherwise deserted.
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