Monday, May 30, 2005

Happy Memorial Day! Thanks to my incredible powers of procrastination, I will be doing some actual work today (with a break for kickball if the weather holds). But I wanted to give a quick update on the bands I saw Saturday night.

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We began the evening at a party at Ryan Pound's house. Apparently it was an all-day cook-out type affair, but we got there late in the evening. Caspian Sea Monsters (Brian Sliwa's band) were playing when we got there. Unfortunately my memory of the evening is a little fuzzy, but I remember they ended the set with Brian (who had been playing guitar) and the bass player both playing bass on "Heart Full of Soul."

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Next up was The Cherry Valence, just back from their tour of Spain. It was the first time I've seen them since Erik and Charles joined the band, and since the sound was so bad I'm going to reserve judgement for now. I don't know what was going on, but the only way to hear anything but a high-pitched squall was to go inside the house. Danny said it sounded like the PA was broken. All I know is that it sounded wrong -- not bad, because this is an awesome band -- but just wrong. Of all the movies I made of bands during the night, the Cherry Valence one came out the best, so I'll post that soon.

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The cops showed up promptly at 11 p.m., so we headed down to Kings, where We Vs. The Shark, an woman-fronted Athens band with a bit of a Bloc Party sound, was already playing. I bought their CD, but haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. But Danny and I agreed they were the best band we saw all evening. They have my undying admiration for covering Groove is in the Heart.

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The final band of the evening was Strange, with Dave Mueller on guitar and vocals and Linc from The White Octave on bass. They reminded me a lot of The Bolshoi and Gene Loves Jezebel.

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