I pulled up to the El Rey theatre in Los Angeles last Friday night and knew I was out of my league. Wrapped around the corner was a line of indie-rockers: skinny boys with shaggy hair and tight jeans and girls with tiny bangs and sweater-coats.

I don’t have bangs. I didn’t dig my shirt out of an obscure thrift store bin, or even Urban Outfitters. I got my shirt from Old Navy. It wasn’t even on sale.

No matter if I fit into this eerily homogenous group or not, I had come to see my favorite singer, known under the band name Bright Eyes-Conor Oberst.

The way I first found out about Bright Eyes is not unimportant to the entire concept of his music. As evidenced by the obvious difference between the rest of the audience and myself, I am not exactly the typical Bright Eyes fan. You really have to know music to know Bright Eyes. They aren’t on the radio, they aren’t in Rolling Stone; I don’t know how people are supposed to learn about them at all.

For a person like me who does not necessarily attach myself to any musical genre, it’s always been something of a mystery as to how others find out about those weird unknown bands that only play in people’s basements. But I do know that this sort of inaccessibility and mystery seems key to the entire existence of this musical phenomenon.

I, however, never learned the secret knock. I learned about Bright Eyes from the late and great Napster.

I heard a song on someone else’s Winamp play list, and quickly went home to download it. I was struck by the sincerity and vulnerability that I would soon learn characterize Oberst’s lyrics. Oberst takes that enormous melancholy that you remember from when you were in high school and gives it back to you not only with more eloquence than anything you ever wrote in your journal, but manages to revisit your past introspection, without any self deprecating amusement at how cliché you were. He somehow sings about the honesty of withering flowers without seeming contrived or trite. Perhaps he is able to avoid this trap because of the dominance his lyrics seem to take over the music itself. In several songs, Oberst refers to himself as a poet rather than a musician and this sense of himself is reflected in the way his lyrics give the music a purpose, rather than the lyrics serving as an excuse for the music. I wasn’t sure if that would translate well in concert.

Nevertheless, I took my seat and prepared to enjoy a night of introspection and melodic poetry, but not, of course, before the opening act, Simon Joyner.

What can I say about Simon Joyner? Never in my life have I felt such a pressure in my head–begging, begging my legs to take me far from where I was. As Joyner twanged out song after song, each somehow exactly like the first but at the same time inventively torturous, the audience obligingly applauded after each song, until the artist himself tired of the obviously unexcited audience, noted, "love fails but courtesy prevails." As his set continued, the audience, perhaps out of a sense of mockery or perhaps simply boredom, began to respond to his attempts at musicality with exaggeratedly exuberant applause and encouragement.

No one asked for an encore.

Finally it was time for Oberst to come on. He did unobtrusively and with no introduction, simply walking out onto the stage and beginning to play "A Song to Pass the Time."

There is something disquieting about listening to a stranger share with you completely private and personal thoughts. The audience’s response of complete silence also added a strange layer of expectant voyeurism as Oberst’s emotionally laden voice trembled out his amazingly touching songs.

Oberst seemed to relax as the performance went on, as he alternated between gulping down water, red wine from a plastic cup, and eventually red wine straight from the bottle.

His set included several unreleased songs, each consistent with his past styling, except for one, "I’ve Been Eating (For You)", in which Oberst seemed to find it appropriate to compare a young lady to a basketball that gets passed around and bounced hard on the ground.

Aside from this one unfortunate metaphor, Oberst’s other new songs, including "We are Free Men",which literally made me lean back in my chair from the sheer emotion he conveyed–remained consistent with the lyrical force behind his older songs.

Oberst came out on stage with nothing but a guitar. The simplicity of his performance took nothing away from the songs, which is a further testament to refreshingly unproduced quality of his recorded music.

Although Oberst hasn’t announced any more Bright Eyes L.A. dates, he is currently involved in a new band, Desaparecidos. The side project just finished recording their album Read Music/Speak Spanish, which will be out in early 2002. Luckily for us, the band–with Oberst front and center doing the vocals–will begin touring this month.