Look! It's El Perro Del Mar!

Last week I encountered a new obstacle in my life: a black Camaro. This is yet another car that parks in front of the sorority house next door to me. However, instead of parking in front of their house, it decided to park right behind my driveway where my car was. This was Friday morning. I knocked on the sorority house door and no answer; I acted cool about it and went on with the rest of my day (I took the bus to work). When I told Eric about it, he was livid and described the amount of hell he would have raised if he was parked in the driveway.

The weekend was black Camaro free, but keep in mind that Eric had parked in the driveway. Sunday night I parked there and, sure enough, Monday morning, there was the black Camaro. It wasn't parked right behind my car but at an awkward spot that did not let me maneuver out of the driveway. Again, I knocked on the door and no answer (I don't know if they are still asleep or what) so I wrote a note for the car that basically described that I can't pull out due to the position of the car. I started thinking that this Camaro was a physical representation of the antithesis of Peter: this car will not let me transport myself to where I need to be in a vehicle sense. Then I thought to myself of what other possible representations would manifest to make my day not complete.

On the bus ride to work I thought some more about what if I encounter some kind of series of unfortunate events where I wasn't able to fulfill my evening designation: seeing El Perro Del Mar in San Francisco. I thought that maybe my student supervisor for the call center wouldn't show up for the shift, some unknown illness would dawn upon me, and other various worse case scenarios. Walking into my office there was an email from Rebecca (who was my companion for the evening) and the subject line said "Duuuuuude" and I immediately became pessimisitc thinking "Uh oh, what happened that made her say Duuuuuuuude." But not the case, it was related to a voice message I left her (and her thinking I was bailing out on her).

As the day went on I felt relieved; Shawna and Stacey supplied me with great directions on the best way to get to San Francisco. Rebecca and I were out of Santa Cruz by 5:20 pm.

The car ride was fun and there wasn't really any traffic going up. The conversations were your typical Peter/Rebecca ones: what is the difference between matter and anti-matter? And what is dark matter anyway? (it's just like matter but with a good tan) And of course, if Prussia was still an existing country, what kind of economy would it have within the current European Union?

The show was at the Great American Music Hall, which was quite an impressive venue. The tickets we bought were for dinner as well. Our arrival was ahead of schedule so we went and got a beer at a nearby tacqueria and split nachos. Arriving back to the Music Hall, we found our table at the front, literally a couple of feet away from the stage (this was due to buying dinner, you get a reserved table).

Before El Perro Del Mar's performance, there were two other musicians: Thao Nguyen and Rosie Thomas. I am not quite sure how to place their style of music. Was it folk-rock or alt-country? Both were very calm music, each song had a lot of personal storytelling in them. Both setups were the singers and a male companion with a guitar. The music was not overwhelming (thank God since we were right there at the main stage!). Thao Nguyen was entertaining between songs, she mocked VH1's Storytellers, and commented on the fact that she was wearing a Hane's undershirt at the Great American Music Hall. And I'll say it, I thought she was highly attractive. There, done.
Rosie Thomas was interesting, her singing voice was absolutely amazing! It reminded me of something essential, if that's the right word; her vocals had something legendary about them. The humorous part of it all was her voice when she wasn't singing. You know when you watch a cartoon or movie where, for what ever reason, a character is shrinking and its voice is changing into that high-pitch tone? Well, that is what reminded me when Rosie Thomas spoke between songs. Every time she ended a song, she said, "Thanks very much" in that voice; I just kept grinning. She ended her performance with a cover of R.E.M.'s "To the One I Love," which was amazing.

Going back a little bit; dinner was served to us, like I said. There were only three items to choose from: Ravioli, Skirt Steak, and Chicken Breast. Rebecca went with steak and I did the chicken. Now, although having front row seats was amazing, it was slightly intimidating since we could see the singers very clearly and, therefore, they could see us very clearly. Something about cutting away at my chicken while a song was going on seemed odd. Rebecca, at one point, asked me if I was self-conscious, and I quickly agreed and she felt the same. In result, we got to-go boxes and enjoyed our wine instead.

El Perro Del Mar was preparing on stage, and I felt a slight jolt in my stomach due to the singer's presence. I was getting really excited about the soon to be performance.

Here is the 411 on El Perro Del Mar. The singer is Sarah Assbring (yes, that is her last name) and she is from Sweden. The story I read about her is that at a certain point in her life, she was at the very end of it all; maybe suicidal or just extremely depressed. She had encountered a lot of things in her life. She found herself in Spain and was on a beach one day. While viewing the beach, she saw a dog running wild along the ocean currents. This brought complete happiness to Sarah, and she found this to be a way of getting out of her current state. She took the name El Perro Del Mar (Dog of the sea, or seadog). This led to her music career. In late 2005, her album was released, but only in Europe. My friend Josh somehow downloaded it and burned me a copy back in February of 2006. It was frustrating knowing that her music was not readily accessible in America, but I felt slightly special since I had a little secret gem that many other people did not know about. I made a mix CD for Rebecca over the summer, and on it was a track by EPDM. She mentioned her interest in getting the album; I found another fan.

Fast forward to Christmas time; her album finally was released in America and almost every critic gave it great reviews (I felt slightly smug, thinking "I could have told you that 10 months ago"). In February 2007 I read that she is on tour in North America (first tour on this side of the world) and on March 12 she will be in San Francisco. Some time later Rebecca received an email from me asking about her interest in this.

Fast forward to last night. El Perro Del Mar is on stage. We saw that there was Sarah and three gentlemen as her backup band (all very Swedish looking). When the music started, it was just Sarah at the microphone with her guitar, her bandmates were not on stage yet. She opened with the song "Sad." Her voice, I feel, is very original; it's a bit haunting, and at some times, a little rough. There are some points where her voice sounds like she is extremely close to a breakdown. After Sad was played, the rest of the band came on stage and they broke into the track "Candy."

As more of the songs were played, I was incredibly impressed by her vocals and overall presence on stage. Her songs are catchy due to their simplicity, but their is much complexity behind the words. When she was singing the song "Loneliness," I felt that I wasn't hearing words coming out but instead, memories were pouring out of her body. Such lyrics as "This loneliness ain't pretty no more/This loneliness has taken the place of a friend" seemed so much more real to me when watching her sing those words. It was heartbreaking.

Most of the album was played (minus "Here Comes This Feeling," "It's All Good," and "Shake it Off"). There was a song I did not recognize, not sure if it was a new song or a cover; something about a boy and a girl. When they came back for their encore, they ended with a cover of the Velvet Underground's "I Found a Reason," which seemed fitting.
The evening came to an end and it wasn't even 11pm yet (well, ten more minutes and it would have been). We drove back to Santa Cruz ranting about how great of a performance we witnessed, commenting on one of the band member's hair and how I should try to make mine like his and how the band overall was really shy. The drive home concluded with more unique conversations like "why is the universe so esoteric?" and "is Saving Private Ryan essentially a remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?" Plus, the exit to highway 17 was closed; that made things weird for a moment.

For those reading this and are not familiar with El Perro Del Mar, here is the official site and here is the myspace page where you can sample some of their songs.

Next: I need to look into the songs that El Perro Del Mar did with Jens Lekman, and why does my cat keep knocking over my little cactus plant?