Pub notes #2

Last Tuesday, I accompanied a friend to a famous DIY venue downtown, to catch Everybody Everybody, the new project of Nate CCBB Mitchell (on bass) and Laura Swindall from Christopher's Liver (on drums), and a third member whose name eludes me for the moment. Interesting rhythmic section, heavily influenced by Pylon, but disappointing show overall. Some ideas deserve a longer cooking time.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm certainly getting weary of the kids gathering over the keg and not really giving any hear to what's playing. The tiredness lowered my patience level as well, and I spent a good part of Wednesday ruminating.

However, that Wednesday saw an awesome gig at Caledonia: Poison Control Center were opening for Casper and the Cookies, which brought me back faith in humanity (or at least indie pop).

So it was a Wednesday, the total attendance was less than 30 people (among them, Vanessa B-H. and Michael L. from Pylon, and Bryan P. from the Late BP Helium and that other band, you see what I mean, whose new haircut a la Robyn Hitchcock was the subject of a 15-minute conversation). The name-dropping isn't entirely gratuitous, as it should help you get a feel of the atmosphere: far more mature than the day before, connoisseurs (I hate this word), in one word, the indie family.

PCC is a quartet (Patrick, Devin, Joe and Don) from Ames, IO. It was my second? third? show with the full band. They played Athens Popfest regularly, last year being a notable exception, but they were here to promote "A Collage of Impressions", their latest album released last September on Afternoon Records. Their live is an experience, just pure rock energy, guitar acrobatics, ripped pants, and usually a lot of people on stage for their now classical encore, "Magic Circle Symphony". Remember the Bunnygrunt cover last Popfest ? Voila.

The Cookies show was pretty amazing. Three brand new songs made their premiere, along classics from the Optimist Club, "Marcel Marsalis", and many more (14 songs total). The songs fitted really well: the upcoming album they are currently composing and recording should be awesome. No I'm not partial.

With evenings like that, I'm not ready to give up the scene. Thanks guys.

"Love, love is the answer, until you get cancer, then you're lying, dying, dead..."

(Props to Daytrotter for the PCC MP3)

Pub notes - #1

So, I was about to fall asleep in front of the Satyricon, the bug that nagged me was fixed, I figured it'd be cool to go back downtown and check these bands at Caledonia. Running into a friend while getting some cash, I ended up for a little while at Flicker, where as a Xmas present Still small Voice were playing. Even if I wasn't technically in the audience, too busy with cigs outside, I attended the last part of their show, and man, was that great. The sound was quite right, they had fun and it showed, they did one of their Costello's covers, and that was just perfect. But too short for me, as I came late. Sempre cosi.
So I went back to my initial destination, to catch Misfortune 500. I really loved their Chameleons cover on their album, I came just at the time where they were doing another ("Paper Tigers"), and that was a nice surprise. The rest of the set was however not that much of a surprise. I don't wanna start bitching for my first official post, so I'll stick to positive comments.
- They are skilled musicians, 98% of the time.
- The girls in the audience were very cute, but unfortunately far too young (even for me). Nicely dressed, though, in this indie/darkwave way that I'm fond of.
- They can nail their Chameleons. Almost. Pretty close anyway.
- They gonna be schmeck on for the Brooklyn scene revival in 4 of 5 years.

Ah, dammit, the Chameleons (Note to self: Wow, I would never have thought to check whether the Chameleons were still active...). I discovered them afterwards, as usual, something like in 1987-1988. They were definitely part of my last-year-of-high-school soundtrack. They came through a tape made by a friend of a friend, penultimate-year-of-high-school. That was the time where we'd do mix-tapes for any occasion. Argh, time flies...

Anyway, DON'T FALL !!!