[phlipcam video] Matt & Kim get everyone off @ the House of Blues

Lessons Learned

I dropped Ecstasy exactly one time. I was 17, in a crab grass-ridden field behind an elementary school, and I believed that I had somehow trapped the universe in the carton of orange juice we were passing around. When the OJ ran out, then, I decided the world would soon follow, and spent the rest of god-awful trip crying pitifully. I took some bad shit.

With this limited experience behind me, what I'm going to say next is merely conjecture. But I'm pretty sure that standing in the audience at last night's Matt & Kim show at the House of Blues was akin to taking some really pure E. That's how much fucking serotonin was pumping through the HoB, courtesy of the --manically--cheery duo onstage.

I cannot be the only one who felt this way. And while I was just vibing off the contact high that Matt & Kim (and one of the most unabashedly stoked audiences I've ever stood amongst at the HoB) were putting out, there were a few kids running amok last night who might have taken the real deal. The dude streaming sweat behind me, eyes rolling in his head as he flailed happily about, for one.  Yeah, the one spinning a balloon--windmill-style --in each hand, chanting "go balloon go balloon go balloon go balloon" in time to "Good Ol' Fashioned Nightmare." He was having fun.

Good Ol' Fashioned Nightmare

But here's the thing, although Matt & Kim are so saccharinely, maddeningly adorable that you sort of want to kill a puppy in front of them to wipe those happy grins right off their freshly scrubbed faces, I was too. More uninhibited fun than I've had at a show on Lansdowne Street in quite some time. When I mentioned the Matt & Kim show to Marotta, he grimaced and muttered something about the indie-pop couple being so goddamn happy to be at every show they ever played that it made him sick. (Paraphrased.) And shit, was he right. "Every time we play in Boston it leaves me with a sweet taste in my mouth," Matt crooned at the beginning of the show. Gag! "I will love you til' the day I die, Boston," he continued. Full-on vomit! Kim's smile was so big for the entire two hour show, I thought her face might actually tear open. She made me sort of nervous, truth be told. But, despite myself, I was sucked right in.

I'm usually the girl at the show lurking on the fringes of the crowd, nursing a beer, and nodding my head semi-awkwardly in time to the music. Dance? Never. But there I was, flailing myself around right next to crazy old balloon hands. When said balloons were released into the crowd (printed with the grinning mugs of Matt and Kim) I went buck wild trying to get my hands on them. (I actually punched a girl square in the nose in my fervor, for which I apologize, but she didn't seem to mind. Everything's groovy!) When Kim performed her signature end-of-show feat whereupon Matt asks the crowd to create a bridge of hands for her to walk (gyrate) upon, I didn't even wish--just for a moment-- that she would fall. And that's saying a lot.