City Mitten

(Photo by friend/music journo Laura Leebove)

Life is just too good. I must admit that I spent a half hour googling my little heart out trying to find out WHO THE HELL was on drums for Phoenix Saturday night in Central Park because he just may be my new man. Indeed.

I have never been more impressed by a drummer. Ever. Something about him, he just rocked it. I can’t get over how good he was and how much passion he poured into the drums. Insane.

(Editor’s note: I made a mistake in stating Ronald Bruner was the drummer for Phoenix. In fact, he was not. But continue reading anyway.)

Apparently his name is Ronald Bruner (Jr?) and I found some little videos of him on YouTube and am even more impressed. He kind of reminded me of this guy I used to date in a weird sort of way, maybe it was just his body type or something (muscle-y) but I couldn’t really figure it out. He also smiled a lot, which helped. Oh, he was just so nice. I was glued to him for almost their whole set. It didn’t help I had Tall Man Number One on my left and Tall Man Number Two on my right so half the time the drummer was the only thing I could see clearly anyway.

If you saw him on drums, you’d understand. But since you can’t, here’s some pictures I found of him on the internet (You can say it: staaaalkerrrrr):

Yep, I’m a freak.

Anyway, back to the show…

Probably one of my favorite live shows I’ve ever been to. And it was in Central Park (again) which is always a plus. I went with my friend Laura who took the first pic in the post because she is Fancy Press and got to go into the Photo Pit with her Photo Pass to take Fancy Pictures (check out her stuff at lauraleebove.com). It’s funny because we were pretty much that close anyway, only had one or two people in front of us before she left to go into the pit and once she left for pit, there was no way she could get back to me when she was done. So I stood there bopping by myself.

This photo of Passion Pit was taken by me so you can get a sense on how close we really were. It was great. The crowd was pretty young, Laura thought since the tix were so expensive ($45!) it was pretty much only high school kids who could afford them. I saw a mom kiss her kids goodbye in line when the doors opened. True story.

But Phoenix was so good. I can’t get over how good. They did a really long instrumental for the song “Rome” and I could have stood there forever. It started to lightly rain towards the end which made it kind of fun AND they did the longest encore I’ve ever witnessed. Fantastic. Afterward when we had to walk again to get out, my legs were SO STIFF from standing there and bopping around for the past few hours. So worth it though.

Ashes still it fall, fall, falls…