A Religious Experience

Okay. So this is my Saturday night in Barcelona. Which deserves its own post. You can read about the rest of my trip in my earlier one.

At around 6 on Saturday, Claudia and I were walking back from our day out around the beach and Barceloneta. Our hostel is literally half a block away from the Apolo theatre, which is apparently this huge club/venue/restaurant thing that we’ve passed every day. Claudia wanted to go inside and ask about it, and as she was going in the door, I noticed a white piece of paper with black typing on it. Seriously, a piece of paper, not a poster or anything with a picture or large letters. It said:

8:30 Doors Open.

9:00 Josh Ritter.

9:45 The Swell Season.

I stared at this thing for a long time and just pointed at The Swell Season, because this is the name of the band made up of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, two of my very favorite musicians, that after winning an Oscar for Once, don’t really do small venues in the US…at all. You have to pay a lot more money to see them from a lot farther away in an impersonal setting. So, I stared at this thing in disbelief. And then I thought, surely, the date is going to be months away. But it was that Saturday night, in three hours.

We walked back to the hostel and I searched on computer at their official website, because I was convinced it couldn't be them. Upon searching, I realized they were indeed going to be a half block from my hostel that night and tickets were 18 euros. By the time I decided I was going to go see if I could buy tickets, it was around 7, and when I walked back out the door, there were tour busses and a line already forming. I got in it alone, met some awesome people around me, and just…waited. I had to ask in Spanish several times about which line to be in, and I swear, I have never spoken so fluently in my life – the Spanish just flowed out of me. I was going to get into this concert.

I had to wait until 8:30 when they opened the doors to buy a ticket, and by the time they opened the doors there was a huge crowd outside because Glen and Marketa were just walking up and down the sidewalk moving things from their bus.

The opening musician, Josh Ritter, was very very good, I highly recommend him, but I can’t even begin to tell you the musical experience that awaited me with The Swell Season. I was two feet away from these guys and they put on the best concert I have ever seen. The music was so good I could have died. Glen Hansard came out first and played a song from Once above my head, acoustically.

After this, the Frames and Marketa came out, and they played together. Occasionally, Marketa would switch to guitar and Glen would go to the piano.

Javier Moss was also there. He’s a guitarist from Barcelona that is one of their idols. He played Spanish style guitar at really a staggering level of musicianship and together they covered a Van Morrison song. Glen Hansard looked so happy and humbled to be playing beside him it was really fantastic to see.

They got so into the concert they played waaay longer than they were supposed to. He asked frequently for audience participation. By the end of the concert, every string but one was broken from his guitar, and the audience was singing the guitar part while he sang along without being able to play.

The fact that I walked by this place and literally saw this typed on a piece of paper is the most astounding thing to me. Seeing them on the sidewalk would have been enough but to have seen these two people play within arms length of me was just an amazing experience, I love musicians that care about music as passionately as they seem to – and I loved the way they spoke about their songs and what they mean and how they came about. Truly, one of the best experiences of my entire life, I am a sucker for good music. Thank you Barcelona. Thank you magic arch (See last post).

I'll try to put video on facebook.