Oh. My. Goodness.

I just saw Jens Lekman. On Thursday my friend Sarah posted about seeing him in DC and my brain went "OMG, he's in the US?!? OMG he's on the east coast! OMG, I'm on the east coast!" and then I went immediately to his myspace page. There was a show on saturday night in nyc listed but I had a party to go to already and it may have been sold out. BUT! He had just added a solo show in williamsburg and I knew I had to go. One snag was Mikki's birthday gathering of the ladies but I thought it could work with the times. But then Sharon had a family thing come up and Brandon got called into work so I just decided to go by myself because I would regret it so much if I missed this show. I've been wanting to see him for a long time!

I arrived at the place under the impression that he was the only one performing (it's what a guy at the venue told me the day before) but after I bought my ticket and walked in I learned there was an opener. Dang! (apologies to openers everywhere, it's just that I coudl have stayed at the party longer) I spent most of the opener texting Johnny because I am a jerk. When Jens came out the whole night was immediately worth it.

He opened with Julie and sang it straight to the audience with no microphone, pausing between sections to talk and chat up the crowd and tell stories. Then a drummer came out to accompany him on bongos. It was AWESOME! And he had some machine that he would sing into or make noise into and record it and then play the song over (everything happened in front of the audience). Because I know very little about music, I have no idea what he was doing, but I liked it.

At some point a girl in the audience yelled out that she'd like to have his baby and he replied "but I'm not ready." He is so cute. I want a doll version of him so badly. Then he talked about how he does want babies someday becuase he's a good person who would make good babies so she should talk to him in the future.

He played Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill and Pocketfull of Money with the crowd providing the backing vocals. And during one encore, he covered Paul Simon's "You can call me Al." YES! It was great.

He's so fun to watch because he clearly loves playing music. He didn't want to stop. Someone invited him to play on their roof and he appeared to take them up on it saying "that sounds like something I'd do" and he kept saying that he could play all night. I love that kind of enthusiasm. There is nothing worse than a band who has scowls on their face and doesn't engage the audience in any way. I love a big smile and the feeling that there's nothing they'd rather be doing. Cheeseburger is like that too, which makes me love them even more. They're all such cutie pies.

I wish that I understood anything about music. I mean, I love music and I even play guitar and a bit of drums but I don't understand it at all. I've never written a song and can't even wrap my brain around how someone does that. It's just outside my skill set, I guess. But I am going to be in a real band, so I'm going to make an effort to learn and be less stressed and nervous about it. It should be fun, like tonight was. Everything should be as fun as tonight was.