My Favourite Concert: The National/St. Vincent in Dachau City Centre

The best concert I’ve ever, EVER experienced, was seeing St. Vincent and The National in the city centre of Dachau in 2010.

We had been in Moscow prior to flying through the night to Germany, arrived stupid-early, dropped off our luggage at our hotel, eaten breakfast, took a red bus tour of Munich, then took the train to Dachau, spent several hours at Dachau Concentration  Camp Memorial, stumbled into St. Vincent and said a very lame “hi”, sat under the trees to escape the blinding sun, marinating in our musky traveler aromas, before heading back into the town of Dachau to find the concert location.

Near the train platform there was a handy city map…

We are here, and need to get here.  Let’s go!

We arrived with enough time to grab some hearty Bavarian food and beer before the show started…

The stage area’s behind that white fence thingy…

And then we went to get a spot to watch the show.

We ended up right at the stage.  That felt weird after seeing these people earlier in the day… so we were good with there being at least one row of people in front of us as buffer.

St. Vincent started things off… and thanks to our close proximity, we got some fantastic photos…

Then we had a while while they set up for The National.  I turned around and took a few pictures of the square we were in, flanked by the rathaus (city hall), and also by a church complete with bell tower.

Behind us to the left…

Behind us to the right… See that light standard? Matt later CLIMBED IT while singing.

Here’s us, our buffer row, and the stage.  We don’t actually look that bad considering we’d been on the move in the hot sun for over 24 hours by this time.  Good thing you can’t smell through the screen.

Then The National took the stage.  The energy was so great, so fun, they put so much into the show, and the music was so beautiful.  The weather was perfect.  The crowd was great, I don’t remember there being any douchebags whatsoever.  Everyone was mutually appreciative and cooperative.  Wow.

I remember looking up at the clear sky, the moon, the church, the bell tower, the trees, the crowd behind me, and my handsome, intelligent, kind husband, and was just so full of gratitude… trying to absorb the experience as much as possible.

I mention above that yeah, Matt climbed that light standard in the middle of the square, while singing.  Into a mic.  With a cord.  He suddenly left the stage and rushed through the crowd and made pretty good progress climbing that thing.  It was pretty darn entertaining.  We were all cheering.  Hilariously fantastic.  Delightful!

I mention the weather was perfect.  Well… there was a storm coming, actually.  In between songs, there was a huge crack of thunder.  Ha, I think that might’ve even been after the song Little Faith.  Added to the drama of the experience.  But the rain held off until we were almost to the train after the show ended… and then the storm unleashed itself.

The timing was stunning.

The other day I was reminiscing about this, and became curious… surely people recorded this and put it on youtube, right?

But of course!

It’s upside down and distorted, but somehow represents the evening pretty perfectly…

Andrew’s in this one for nearly the entire thing!  You can sometimes see me too I think… but I’m a lot shorter.

Five and a half years have passed since then.  We’ve seen St. Vincent since (last year, it was electrifying).  But we simply must see The National again before too much more time passes.  *fingers crossed they come to Winnipeg soon*

Andrew… thank-you for making these experiences together possible.  I love you.