Back in February, I was messing around on iTunes (so iTunes tells me. It's likely this was in preparation to buy the impending Massive Attack album), and I bought three albums:

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1. Umbrellas — \"Beach Front Property (EP)\"
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2. Paper Route — \"Absence\"
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3. Lydia — \"Illuminate\"
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I'm not really sure how I found the latter two albums. I'm guessing they were recommendations in iTunes, based upon Umbrellas (a band that I have liked for many years).

Anyways, time passed, and it turns out, of those albums, the Lydia one was a real winner. I found myself listening to it more and more, so at some point, I started poking around on the Internet, to figure out if they had any more music for me to enjoy. And that's when I learned a terrible truth — Lydia was calling it quits, but going out on one final tour to say goodbye to their fans.

And so that's why on a typically frigid Thursday night, after a long day of work, I found myself at San Francisco's Bottom Of The Hill, waiting outside to get into a sold-out show (note to self: if you have the opportunity to buy tickets for a show on the Internet before-hand, do it!). But it was totally worth it, while I'm sad to learn that Lydia is now no more, it was a great way for them to go.

Their sound was amazing, tight, yet melodic. It seemed like they were enjoying themselves, even though this was the end of the tour. And the fans just ate it up. I was surprised by how passionate people were — I'm just a johnny-come-lately to this thing, but almost everybody else there knew all the songs, and all the words.

But you don't have to take my word for it, I shot some video (embedded after the break), and some super-fan uploaded the entire Seattle show to YouTube (which I have organized into a playlist).

Sometimes, living in the city has its perks, and being able to easily head out to a small, intimate show like this one after work, is defintely something that I could get used to. Farewell Lydia, you will be missed.

-Andy.