Sufjan Stevens

Back in October, my friends Paul and Amanda were planning on traveling to Seattle from the eastside of Washington State to visit Olivia and I. Even though we didn't have tickets, we were going to try to scalp seats for a Sufjan Stevens show on Sunday night. Paul and Amanda got in on Saturday night and decided to stop by the venue to see if by some chance, last-minute seats had been made available for this sold-out show. Lucky for all of us not only were they able to get four tickets together, but the seats that were available were in the orchestra pit!

Paul and I were very excited but guarded. Sufjan was a musical favorite of the both of us. We had seen him once before in the spring of the same year during an all-day music festival, and his performance was underwhelming. Perhaps part of this had been due to our high expectations for the show, but nevertheless, Stevens and his band seemed out of place and underprepared. Paul and I reasoned, "the seats we've bought aren't any more expensive than any of the others put on sale for the show, they couldn't actually be in the orchestra pit, could they? They must be obstructed view at the very least?"

After we got inside the Paramount (a beautifully restored old theatre in downtown Seattle), the usher pointed us down to the front of the venue toward our seats. This was a good sign. We walked down the long aisleway, watching to see when the row numbers would correspond to the ticket stubs in our hands. We kept going and going and going and eventually came to the end of the rows. Only two rows of folding chairs remained at the very front and they were restricted access. Could this be it? Another usher verified that this was indeed where our seats were located. We were in the second row, center stage, 8 ft. from the stage. We couldn't believe it. We had gone from not knowing if we would even be able to successfully scalp tickets to the show 24 hrs earlier to having the the best seats any of us had ever had, for any show, ever. Not bad.

As difficult as it would be for the music to live up to the location of the seats, it actually surpassed it by far. The manner with which Stevens conducted himself was absolutely without pretension. He came out with the rest of the road crew in the "disguise" of a baseball cap and helped set up the gear. He engaged with the audience in such a pure and humble way, it could almost be described as reverse charisma. The music wasn't too shabby either. With a total of 20 band members, he had a full horn and string section along with a regular 5 piece band. The video shot below is from a show two weeks prior to the one we attended, although it is shot from almost the exact same vantage point as our seats. The grainy amateur video doesn't do the music justice, but it is still pretty darn good. As you watch Sufjan tickle the ivories as a sort of indie-rock Liberace, I hope you get to see the ten minute video in its entirety, because it is worth it.



PS - I jumped on stage after the show and grabbed Stevens' setlist. It has ridiculous, over-the-top code names for each of the songs in the show (i.e., 'The Transfiguration' is listed as 'Transfigured Readiness of 20 Yurts').