Quiet, Too Quiet

Kat and I saw a great show on Friday night.  Built To Spill headlined, and The Meat Puppets and Dinosaur Jr opened for them.  I was a bit surprised about the order since I kinda feel like bands with seniority should be the headliners.  But when I heard Built To Spill’s set, I understood.  They were so much stronger.

Kat and I got pretty bored during the Meat Puppets.  They were doing some sort of grunge bluegrass set I didn’t really get.  And the same with Dinosaur Jr.  I’d always wanted to see Dinosaur Jr, so I’m glad I got the chance.  But their music is more sit-in-your-room instead of being surrounded by hostile fratboys.

J. Mascis’ setup was insane.  He had three or four Marshall stacks surrounding him as monitors.  I can’t imagine what his hearing must be like nowadays.

Built To Spill’s set was amazing.  They played all of Perfect From Now On and a bunch of other songs too. The weird part was at the end.  It’s the climax of the set and they’re jamming away.  And then the guys from the other bands start to come on stage too.  They switch drummers out, not stopping the song, mind you.  The crazy Meat Puppets bass player comes out and switches from bass to cello to crazy voices on the mic.  Meanwhile, J. Mascis and the Built To Spill guy are having some sort of guitar showdown.

It sounds awesome, and it was at first.  But after 20 minutes, a climax kinda becomes a plateau.  It got pretty boring.

Great show though.

I have photos here:

Dear Nora has some of the most depressing songs I’ve heard, but they’re sung in such a pretty, upbeat way, you don’t even notice until you listen to the lyrics.

The band has been, err, disbanded, but they played was at NYC Popfest 2007, so maybe they’re keeping it alive.

 

 

label: http://magicmarkerrecords.com/dearnora.html

myspace: http://myspace.com/dearnora

I moved a month and a half ago and finally unpacked my computer a couple days ago.  During the move, I went through all my CDs and found a bunch of treasures.

Back in 2001, after college I was unemployed for the summer and staying on a friend’s couch in Boston looking for work.  I had no money, but I was desperate for new music to listen to.  So I went to this thrift store which sold used CDs for $0.25 and came back with a bunch of unsigned band compilations.  They’re mostly unlistenable.

Here’s a sample of bands from Unsigned Bands – The Album Network CD TuneUp #7.

Some sort of heavy metal trumpet guy (Don Collette) and a couple power ballads by Ultraviolet, Blush, and The Affairs.

It’s pretty amazing that Nirvana just sorta wiped this stuff all away.