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Not My Cup Of Tea

By ben

Friday April 15, 2005

But I Heard Some Good Things

I caught this evil, nasty flu last week and was bullied into staying home. I had to miss the Dead Meadow/Jennifer Gentle/The Out Crowd show at the Brickyard on Friday. Too bad ‘cause I heard good things about it. I did make it out on Saturday for a couple of shows, starting with the Girl Nobody video release party at the Media Club. I have never seen Girl Nobody or been to one of these video release shindigs before so it seemed like a good idea. Bontempi opened the show and were excellent, as always.

Afterwards, Girl Nobody brought out a white screen with a projector and showed two music videos. The first one was more the type of thing I’d expect to see on MuchMusic (if they still show music) with the fancy camerawork and the pseudo plot. The second one just mostly shows the band sitting around playing a song. The screening was followed by a set. They have some good players in the band and the music is very polished but the style of music is not exactly my cup of tea – sort of a sugary space pop that’s very similar to the Cardigans, even down to the singer’s voice. I left after about five songs for the Railway Club, and got there just in time for the beginning of Beekeepers. A quirky fun pop band with humorous lyrics, they put on a pretty good show. A guy I was talking to commented that the band reminded him of They Might Be Giants and that made sense. Second was next. Dark and moody, musically they are the exact opposite of the Beekeepers. The last time I saw them I thought all their songs sounded too similar, but that wasn’t the case this night, there was good variety in the set. Panurge ended the night, they encountered some technical difficulties but I think in the end the band escaped unscathed. When it’s two in the morning and you are getting a tired crowd dancing it’s impressive.

I was back at the Railway the next night for Collapsing Opposites’ CD release party. While I was paying to get inside, I peeked and saw that Gangbang was doing their last song, with Chris-a-riffic the guest singer. Damn, I probably missed a good set. In between bands the crowd was treated to Free Bryan Adams, which is Pietro from They Shoot Horses Don’t They? performing Bryan Adams songs. He brought his computer to the bar, and I was not referring to a laptop. It’s a full desktop computer with a tower case, big monitor, speakers and the works – just seeing the thing next to the stage is bizarre enough.

He used the keyboard to play notes off the computer while singing songs like “Summer of 69” and “Everything I Do I Do It For You”, and like a radio he would repeat some of the songs a few times. It was all quite neat, and I enjoyed it. A bit more practice might help though, as Pietro paused to look at his keyboard a few times and vocally he missed more than a few of the high notes. Or maybe that’s part of the shtick, I don’t know. Collapsing Opposites, who is Ryan from They Shoot Horses, went on stage next and got the crowd involved in one of his trademark sing-alongs right away. It was a good set, I believe he performed every song off the new album and even played a few old ones he never plays anymore. You wouldn’t think that it was possible, but They Shoot Horses Don’t They? keep getting better and better, and their set to end the evening was marvelous. Throughout the show the rest of the band kept pointing at Ryan/Pietro and saying “Hey, there’s Collapsing Opposite/Free Bryan Adams!” which I found to be quite humourous.

This Friday night you can go check out Alan Astor/Gangbang/The Rain and the Sidewalk at the Lamplighter. Alan Astor is this New York City neo-technopop musician that’s been getting a lot of rave reviews recently, and it should be an interesting one. Or alternatively, Vancougar and Ladies Nights are playing with Atlanta rockers The Black Lips at the Midtown. Saturday night there’s Sub Pop’s Album Leaf with The Precious Fathers at the Media Club. And oh, Signal + Noise 2005 is happening all weekend at Video In Studios – lots of stuff there so you might want to scoop out the schedule online first.