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|   Dismemberment Plan, Special Sauce, Enon, Gena Rowlands, sick | Rae
May 11, 2001 5:08 PM | | Ack. I said I was going to write about the concerts I went to this week, but I'm sick as f*ck right now. (Yeah, yeah.) But promises are promises, even if no one but Dave reads this.
<i>Tuesday, May 8th:</i> <b>G. Love & Special Sauce, the Quest Club</b>
Doors were at 8, and at 7:30 the line was around the block! Definitely a change from the last two times I saw Special Sauce here at First Avenue, where it was half full. The show was a little late getting started, but oh man! No opening act, so G. played two full sets <i>and</i> an encore. Both sets were great-- during the first one, he ran through a lot of tunes from the new album, as well as covering the Dead's "Fire On the Mountain" and closing with a killer version of "Small Fish". The second set started out with a few acoustic numbers sans Special Sauce, including an extended freestyle, and then hit a bunch of older songs with the full band. The encore was "Cold Beverage", of course. My favorite tune of the night was a crunching (practically Zeppelin-esque) "Garbage Man". I also got a BACKSTAGE PASS and was able to chat with the band and hang out after the show, it was a blast and a half. I didn't get home until 3am, but I called in sick to work so I could be rested for...
<i>Wednesday, May 9th:</i> <b>The Dismemberment Plan, Enon, and Gena Rowlands Band, the 400 Bar</b>
I went to the early all-ages show. Gena Rowlands band turned out to be a two-piece from D.C. consisting of a woman playing violin and a guy playing guitar and singing. If it sounds post-rock and sophisticated, well, it wasn't. I hesitate to say they sucked because they were on such a good bill, but, they sucked. The violin and guitar parts were seemingly random noodling which I would've thought was improvised had all the songs not had their own prepared cue cards (so we'd know the titles, I guess). The violin was ok, but it didn't work well together and the guy's lyrics were pop-culture-refrency and lame. For example, they played a song about Helena Bonham Carter and then followed it up with a song about Janeane Garofalo (the refrain of "Ohh, Garofalo" sounded suspiciously like Guided By Voices' "Auditorium"). Enon played the middle set, and they brought the house down. It was a short set-- 8 songs-- but they were all good. They played five songs from the <i>Believo!</i> album and 3 new ones. The <i>Believo!</i> selections all sounded better than the album versions, with the possible exception of "Come Into". The other four were an amazingly stomping "Rubber Car", "Believo", a much better "Conjugate the Verbs", and "Biofeedback", which sounds like a really good song when the vocals don't have that annoying distortion on them. By the time the Dismemberment Plan took the stage, there was a tornado warning outside. If I was less tired right now, I'd write a witty analogy about dangerous weather and the energetic performance dispensed by the Plan. It was a wonderful set, the high point for me was a cathartic version of "The City". They also did "A Life of Possibilities", "What Do You Want Me to Say", and "Gyroscope" off of the <i>Emergency & I</i> album, and a frenzied version of their new single "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich". They did a couple of covers too: OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" and New Edition's "Mr. Telephone Man" (take that, suckers!). At one pointin the show, they called for audience members to play the Pips to Travis Morrison's Gladys Knight, and so I got to go up on stage and dance around with them! I'm such a little kid, it's great. So it was an awesome show.
I'm going to bed now! |
| Sounds like a great show for $8 | dbi
May 11, 2001 7:35 PM | | Thanks for the report but unfortunately The Plan are only playing the eastern side on this tour. Anyone interested should check dates at http://www.dismembermentplan.com/plan_site/production/shows.asp.
Sorry to hear how sick you are but glad you had a good time. That G. Love review you wrote the other day was one of the best I have had the pleasure of reading around these parts and much better than most I read online or in magazines. Good work Rob! They are playing around here next week so maybe I'll try to catch the show.
Dave |
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