It’s been awhile. I just really haven’t felt like writing much. My mental energy is sapped by everything happening in this country right now, and even the things that do make me happy are colored by my feelings of anger, sadness, and helplessness. I wasn’t sure when or if I would start writing here again, but of course it would be something music related that got me back here.

This past Thursday night I went to the latest BSO Pulse concert featuring Lake Street Dive. Of the four concerts in the series this year, this was the one I really wanted to go to so when a couple of my friends asked if I was interested in going I of course said yes. They were slackers and didn’t buy their tickets when we talked about it, and then it sold out so I thought I was going to be going alone. But things worked out. Following the BSO on Twitter paid off because they tweeted the morning of the concert that they had released some tickets for show. I immediately let my friends know when I saw it, and they managed to snag some of the tickets. I would have gone to the show alone, but it was nice to have some friends with me to enjoy it with.

If you recall from my previous posts on the BSO Pulse series it’s a grant funded collaboration between WTMD and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to pair indie rock bands with the BSO in concert to introduce a younger audience to the symphony.

The concert is split into three parts. In the first part the BSO plays an orchestral piece. This time it was The Rise of Exotic Computing by Mason Bates and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Legend of the Kalendar Prince from Scheherazade. In second part whoever the band is plays about an hour long set of their music, and in the third part they finish off with the band playing three of their songs with the BSO playing an orchestral arrangement to accompany them.

I just love this series. I love how it brings people who would probably never show up to the symphony and introduces it to them in a way that might get them to come back. I also like seeing the older people who are obviously regular symphony subscribers in the audience as well.

Lake Street Dive was a lot of fun in their set, and the collaboration between them and BSO was wonderful. They finished off the night playing “Call Of Your Dogs”, which is probably my favorite song by them, “Side Pony”, and a cover of Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl”. I was amused by their comment that they never imagined playing with a symphony and if they did they could never in their wildest dreams believe they would be playing “Side Pony”, which is literally about wearing a side pony tale. The cover of “Rich Girl” was practically grown in a lab to please me. I love Hall & Oates to death, and even though I didn’t realize it before, Lake Street Dive is the perfect band to cover their music. The addition of the BSO to it made it that much better. Everyone in the audience was up singing and dancing along. Even though I know Lake Street Dive has an EP of cover songs that includes “Rich Girl”, which may be how some of the people know the song, I’m choosing to believe in my heart of hearts that even the young twentysomethings also have a deep abiding love of Hall & Oates somehow.

It was an excellent night of music, and I hope there are many more of these to come even after the grant funding ends.