Ben Gibbard is relaxing at home in Los Angeles in between touring bouts for Death Cab for Cutie’s liltingly lovely (with the odd spot of trademark anxiousness) indie rock album, “Codes and Keys.” The break is not without incident, though.
As Gibbard puts it, “It was punctuated by the odd show in Ottawa that didn’t happen.”
That’s right: the show where the stage collapsed as Cheap Trick played!
“We were supposed to be playing after Cheap Trick,” continues Gibbard, who married actress and chanteuse Zooey Deschanel in 2010 and moved from his native state, Washington, to L.A. “We were 30 yards away when the stage collapsed; it happened right in front of us. It was absolutely terrifying.
It’s an unfortunate analogy that gets made at this point in our society whenever you see something unbelievable. But it was like watching a disaster movie. It was like watching a terrible movie. I was actually wondering this morning: If it were the 18th century, how would you describe it to a friend?
Would you say it was like a disaster play? Like before TV, would it be a disaster novel?”
Perhaps the viewer would be inspired to write an account? Perhaps turn it into song (hint, hint)?
“That’s probably what would happen,” he agrees. “Someone would actually pick up a pen and write very eloquently about it.”
To play or not to play
“All of our equipment is still on the stage, pending the investigation of why the stage collapsed,” says Gibbard. “It looks like that is all getting squared away. Number one, it is a miracle no one was killed. It’s an even larger miracle that a couple of people escaped with relatively minor injuries. At this stage, I can move onto … worrying about whether our equipment is OK.”
