The day started out fantastically, at least if you’re the type of person who does a fist-pump when you can finally fit into the pants you bought last fall that didn’t fit and you forgot to return so you just had $30 of pants in your room until you tried them on last week and ZING! (I’m that kind of person.)
Tonight was The Black Kids and Mates of State at Webster Hall (11th St near 3rd Ave). I went alone, which is nearly one step better than my last trip to see Mates of State, when I was stuck in silence with my just-barely-boyfriend and I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the drive from Cleveland to Erie because he wouldn’t talk to me to keep me awake. I digress, the past is the past. Hakuna Matata.
A slight drawback to going alone, though, is that once you pick a spot, you must keep it. That is, if it’s a good spot. If your vision is blocked or you’re standing next to an oversized sweaty dude who smells like the cheese aisle at Whole Foods, by all means, move.
I had a good spot though, with a place to set my purse and my jacket (this is huge) and see comfortably. So when I bought a Heineken (woo! it was 8-dollar beer night!), I sipped it slowly and made it last, because if I had to leave to join the bathroom line, my perfect locale would be no more. (This was also incentive to save my $16 on things that AREN’T overpriced beers, like, say, food for the rest of the week.)
The Sunbears! started their set around 8. From Jacksonville, these two guys were teetering on the edge of nerd rock, with long ballads & drony vocals like Ben Gibbard, but colorful graphics and lots of confetti (!!) like, say, Tilly. Four or five songs, decent set, I’ll dig up more on them soon.
Now, I hadn’t heard of The Black Kids before this tour, so a few weeks ago I downloaded probably eight of their songs, and they were catchy, and that was all. But you know that band who you don’t think twice about and then you catch them live and you can’t stop thinking of them? Ta-da.
Also from Jacksonville, they’ve got five members — two chicks, three dudes — of whom only two are actually black. Going to look up where the name comes from tomorrow so as to avoid making any inadvertent racist comments.
I had a group of big Black Kids fans next to me, and with the help of the bar, they danced all over each other, arms flailing, jumping, one girl with a neck like a heron standing in front of me for a while, so now when I think of The Black Kids I’m going to think of BirdNeck with the Glasses. Read the rest of this entry »
