Mumford & Sons, October 18 at the Palladium

I have to admit I wasn't really into Mumford & Sons before the show. Vanessa suggested going and got the tickets and I went along, mostly just for a night out, but I got a copy of the album and it was pleasant but nothing that really got me going or that I wanted to listen to it repeatedly except for becoming familiar with the songs to get ready for the show. I wouldn't even have been able to imagine how they had gotten so big – selling out the Palladium, which is not a small place, and tickets going for at least $100 online. I probably wouldn't even have heard of those guys if it wasn't for Vanessa, though I noticed that they had played Lollapalooza, if that's remarkable. But I had a feeling that there was something in the music that sounded flatter on record than it does live. And indeed, I was right. There were a whole lot of people there, mostly in their 30s it seemed to me (I guess I could just relate to them physically), and they were really into it, more than I would have guessed. It was about four or five songs in that I realized that the band hadn't even yet used the drum kit that was set up behind them. This band, a group of Englishmen playing bluegrass, looking and sounding like Ozark hicks, were really getting a few thousand L.A. hipsters moving? It was a pretty amazing sight. Even more to the point, they played their last song completely without electricity, completely unplugged, not even with microphones, and it would have been hard to hear them across an empty room, much less among those few thousand people trying to be silent, but they did it. There were angry shushs and surely a few that thought this was just another show in L.A. that they could freely conduct a conversation through, but it was at a point where you could hear the air-conditioning above. If you would have told me that you could get that at a show in the city I wouldn't have believed you. It's a band that you have to see live to really get. I reckon I'll listen to the album differently now, though I'd rather see them in concert, to get the full effect.

Vanessa and I didn't get messy (or at least I didn't) but we did okay. And it was a rainy night. A shame that people from dreary England come to California and it has to be one of the few days of the year when it rains.