Thursday, October 16, 2014

Concert Anecdotes: Kina Grannis


Wednesday night was a blissful blur.


It all started in the early evening when I found Maddy, floundering around the East Bank, toting around a chunky electric blue sleeping bag and backpack (we had agreed to meet at the West Bank Station but then the circulator screwed me over by arriving earlier than expected and so we just decided to walk in each other's general direction and hope that it would work). We walked back to my room and I excitedly introduced her to my 9th floor cohort. After a delicious dining hall meal, we got ready and headed off to Varsity.

Following a reckless game of Follow the Leader, nearly getting run over by dozens of cars, and narrowly escaping our deaths, we found ourselves in line in front of the theater. We had originally planned on making a Chatime run, but the dozen or so people in line convinced us to hop on in. 

To quickly summarize our concert line experience, Maddy and I briefly FaceTimed Dalena, Dan and Joyce were being Dan and Joyce, and the ID checker dude mistook Dan for a 21+ year-old (no worries, she didn't raid the bar). And yes, Dan is a girl.

Once we got inside, I ran for the front row to get us a comfy spot. Due to the inconvenient nature of my height, I have to either snag a front row spot or find a seat, otherwise suffer via hours of standing on my tippy toes. We waited and waited, took selfies, conversed with a pair of high school girls with VIP passes (one of which referred to herself as a "fetus" a little too much for comfort), and shared college life anecdotes. 

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Finally, the background music turned off and the opening act showed up. Twas Imaginary Future—the heavily bearded guitar-strumming guy with the dreamy voice (Maddy says his beard glistens under the light). He quickly won over the crowd's hearts with his soothing acoustic love tunes, the kind that makes you a) think lovey dovey thoughts or b) bitterly question why you're single. Needless to say, that kind of stuff really pulls at your heart strings. One of my favorite parts was when he pulled out a dreamy rendition of Fly Me to the Moon, which, if you don't know, is one of my favorite songs. Some other favorites of mine include April and Fire Escape, both of which would fit perfectly in a romantic comedy. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed being gently smothered by Imaginary Future's achy love songs. 

After the opening act was done, the crowd was restless. Now they were really ready for some Kina lovin'. 

And so when Kina came on, they went wild. 

How do I even begin to describe her performance? After all, me, Dan, and Joyce listened to her album three times over one night just to make sure we were prepared for it.

Well, it was excellent. Let me begin by asking, are people even allowed to be as drop dead gorgeous as her? Not fair. But anyway, she opened with Dear River, and it just went uphill from there. The rest of the concert was filled with beautiful Kina-crooning, interesting anecdotes, fan karaoke, and head bobbing. I was particularly excited when The Fire, Winter, Sweater Weather (I voted on that one), and My Dear played. The most intense moment of the night though, was when she explained the back story of the song Forever Blue. I could feel myself choking on tears and wanting to give her a big hug. 

In conclusion, it was a great show. I really enjoyed the intimate, up-close-and-personal nature of the concert. Both acts, opening and main, were spectacular, and of course everyone thought it was cute because y'know, they're married (they never did mention it though). The ambiance was on point, the back up band was awesome, and the performance was kickass. I get cozy feelings just thinking about it right now. 

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And to quickly inform you all of what we did after the concert, we stopped by Insomnia Cookies and headed back to our living quarters. Later that night Maddy and I had a crazy two-person dance party (awesome Snapchats included) and casually analyzed a 1950s Colonial-era flick on TCM at 2 in the morning (we deduced that it was a terrible movie). It was a good night.

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