Music and Fortunes Apr 28, 2007

Last night, v_cat and I went to see The Ego and the Oracle.  She had answered an ad on Craigslist, and we got free tickets.  Pretty sweet.

The premise of the show is that it's a collaboration between radio psychic Andras Jones and local folk-pop band Jim's Big Ego.  The format is similar to Jones' actual radio show - he puts his iPod in shuffle mode (figuratively speaking, I imagine) and has people call in with questions about their future.  Then he plays whatever song comes up next on his iPod and interprets it for them as the answer to their question.  This show is just like that, except instead of an iPod, there's the band, and instead of shuffle mode, they have a big Wheel-of-Fortune style thing with the names of Jim's Big Ego songs written on it.  Audience members submit questions on slips of paper, and the interpretation is done collaboratively by the audience member, Jones, and Jim Infantino (the Jim in Jim's Big Ego).

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this show.  Jim's Big Ego is one of my favorite bands, but I was really skeptical about the premise.  I was especially afraid it would turn into a humorless John Edward-type affair where everyone was expected to take the fortunetelling aspect really seriously, and luckily it wasn't like that at all.  Instead, it was fun, relaxed, and funny, with a whole lot of audience participation.

This is definitely the kind of show you can go back to multiple times, since the content's almost guaranteed to be entirely different.  The show's in town until mid-June, so I might be looking into getting a large-ish group together to go to it sometime towards the end of its stay here.  Anyway, highly recommended.