The best thing I have EVER seen at a Raleigh Undercover!

I don't know who River City Ransom are, but they absolutely NAILED Meat Loaf during night one of the Raleigh Undercover. Seriously, it was better than Valient Thorr's Parliament/Funkadelic tribute last year.

From the very first note, "Meat" himself owned the crowd. He sang like him, looked like him (except for a slightly dodgy wig), and moved like him. He even had an Ellen Foley-esque back up singer who was every bit as on it as he was. And the crowd was just going wild. I honestly can't wait to see River City Ransom as themselves simply because they did such an amazing job at Raleigh Undercover. Let that be a lesson to bands who want to break into the local scene: If you entertain a crowd at the cover up, people will want to know about your band.

Unfortunately I didn't shoot video because I don't want to run afoul of the law, but plenty of other folks had their phones and cameras out during this performance, so I'm sure we'll see something floating around out there soon.

Meat Loaf was one of only four bands that played last night, and all of them did well. Another band I don't know, Here Are The Young Men, did a great job with Joy Division, and Free Electric State had everyone dancing to the Pixies. I only caught the first song of Lonnie Walker's rendition of Talking Heads, but I'm already hearing that it was really good. 

Grayson hosted in character as Charles Bukowski. I even tweeted some video of him reading a Bukowski poem, but decided it might be best to take that down. Even though it was actually a fairly mild poem, I'm not sure it's something I would want to explain to my boss. 

If you're headed out tonight, the schedule includes the following:
Aminal
The Tomahawks
Bright Young Things
The Old Ceremony
Dry Heathens
American Aquarium
And, of course, there's Double Negative and Whatever Brains at the Berkeley (assuming you didn't get tix for the big Rosebuds/Megafaun show at the Pour House). Yours truly is probably going to stay in and gear up for tomorrow night, because I hear that Static Minds has something awesome planned.