Monday, June 22, 2009
a good show last night at TT the Bear's in Cambridge
Sleepyhead: sounded good from the bar, but really muffled. I realized halfway through that I saw them in '95 or '96 in New York. Nice, catchy indie-rock from the pre-irony days.
the Bevis Frond: got bummed out by this one. I'm sure Salomon was great; what I could make out of the songs was pretty fantastic. But everything was muffled if you weren't directly in front of the stage, and it was so packed I couldn't even begin to get in position. So I stood off to the side again, near the bar, and couldn't understand a single word he said. His banter was as great as his songs when I saw him back in 2001, and it sucks I wasn't able to really enjoy this.
the Condo Fucks: okay, yeah, totally awesome. We weren't sure what we'd be getting: a live run-through of the Fucks LP? A more traditional YLT covers set? Maybe even Yo La Tengo songs? It was almost completely the first of those, as they tore through pretty much the whole album. It sounded amazing, raw and frenetic and better than most of the young bands plying this nonsense. A brief encore consisted of an as-yet-unreleased Yo La Tengo song (short, poppy, noisy, kinda generic riffs) and then a Tall Dwarfs cover in tribute to Chris Knox. That latter song saw Nick Salomon, the two folks who backed him up on his last few songs, and all of Sleepyhead jamming along on stage. About halfway through Ira jumped off stage, walked through the crowd, and strutted on the bar for a few minutes. Good times. Good to see dudes, good to see good people playing good music, good to go to a show and not down a drop of alcohol. Not good to get about five hours of sleep, but fuck it, totally worthwhile.
Sleepyhead: sounded good from the bar, but really muffled. I realized halfway through that I saw them in '95 or '96 in New York. Nice, catchy indie-rock from the pre-irony days.
the Bevis Frond: got bummed out by this one. I'm sure Salomon was great; what I could make out of the songs was pretty fantastic. But everything was muffled if you weren't directly in front of the stage, and it was so packed I couldn't even begin to get in position. So I stood off to the side again, near the bar, and couldn't understand a single word he said. His banter was as great as his songs when I saw him back in 2001, and it sucks I wasn't able to really enjoy this.
the Condo Fucks: okay, yeah, totally awesome. We weren't sure what we'd be getting: a live run-through of the Fucks LP? A more traditional YLT covers set? Maybe even Yo La Tengo songs? It was almost completely the first of those, as they tore through pretty much the whole album. It sounded amazing, raw and frenetic and better than most of the young bands plying this nonsense. A brief encore consisted of an as-yet-unreleased Yo La Tengo song (short, poppy, noisy, kinda generic riffs) and then a Tall Dwarfs cover in tribute to Chris Knox. That latter song saw Nick Salomon, the two folks who backed him up on his last few songs, and all of Sleepyhead jamming along on stage. About halfway through Ira jumped off stage, walked through the crowd, and strutted on the bar for a few minutes. Good times. Good to see dudes, good to see good people playing good music, good to go to a show and not down a drop of alcohol. Not good to get about five hours of sleep, but fuck it, totally worthwhile.
