He has agreed to take me to the ice hotel

All right, I guess I'd better say a few things about the Rasputina concert on Sunday evening. The show was in West Chester, near where I grew up. It's a very pretty town, but I tend to think of it as being rather square (in both shape and attitude), and not exactly the place for a happening music venue. The venue was a pretty new place called The Note, and I didn't really care for it. They served food, but the tables were in a different room from the stage. We didn't get any food anyway, but isn't part of the point of places like that that you can eat and watch the show at the same time? It was a particularly bad venue for Rasputina, because they usually have chairs, and there wasn't room for them in the small space with the stage. bethje and I ended up standing at the rail on the balcony for the whole time.

The opening band was called An Horse, and I really don't have anything to say about them. They were pretty mediocre, really. Rasputina itself hasn't been able to keep a lineup for very long as of late. Zoe Keating, the second-chair cellist for Frustration Plantation and A Radical Recital, is actually playing with Amanda Palmer now, but she wasn't at the Philadelphia show. Recently, it looks like the Ladies' Cello Society accepted a man, which either shows Melora Creager being pressured by affirmative action groups or unable to find any more female cellists willing to work with her. I wonder if she's hard to get along with, or the other cellists think they can make it on their own. I really don't know, and I don't think it would be fair to speculate. Melora seemed to rush through her introductions this time, not even including them for many songs, and Beth thought it might be because she was unhappy with the venue. That's certainly possible, but once again, I can't say I really know. It was still enjoyable, though, and the first time I've heard "The New Zero" live.

I have a few pictures of the concert up here, and some from the Amanda show the previous day here.