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Picked up Amy, Brett and Lisa last night in the new ride and we took it down to the Great American Music Hall to take in a solo acoustic show by Elliott Smith.

Wow.

He was wasted, no doubt. His between-song banter was nearly unintelligible, and he sat and swigged Smirnoff Ice while rabid fans screamed song titles at him. All things considered, he took the fan onslaught very well and actually indulged quite a few requests for older songs.

Highlights included covers of George Harrison's "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" and one of those folky Zeppelin songs about elves and faeries — I can't remember which one, but he did it pretty well after having to stop mid-song and get the guy from Oranger to re-tune his guitar for him.

Actually, Elliott forgot the lyrics and chords to a lot of his songs, especially the few XO songs that he played (he played nothing from Figure 8). He played many songs that I've never heard, and I can only assume that they were songs from his forthcoming record; and lemme tell ya, they contain some dark themes and some of the most unveiled drug references so far. Tough times, I presume. I'm hoping that he's hitting the bottle and not the needle, but... one can only speculate.

For me, probably the greatest moment was his encore of "Angeles," which is one of my favorites. He couldn't remember the bridge, and just stopped playing it — but the audience kept singing the words, which must have spurred his memory, and he launched back into the final "no one's gonna fool around with us" verse.