Saw TMBG at the Carefree last night - the venue is a huge, old-fashioned movie theater in the middle of downtown.
Unexpectedly, it was one of the loudest shows I've been to (and I've seen Sonic Youth and Neil Young on the "Weld" tour).
John L. has become quite the showman. He loves being a rock star, and you kind of love him loving it. John F. is charmingly geeky as ever.
Best schtick: having an FM radio on stage and playing along with whatever song they can find, making up words, figuring out chord progressions. This is how we all learned country music was created by God to teach us we're all fuckin' bugs.
Best musicianship: The Dan who plays guitar picking up an acoustic for the final encore, and doing this long, Eastern-infected flamenco intro to "Istanbul". The crowd goes wild when they figure out what he's actually playing. (Oh, and if you're unfamiliar with the band's current configuration, it's the two Johns up front, with the Band of Dans backing them up).
Second best musicianship: The Dan who plays the drums doing solos according to John L.'s touchtone list of options: "To hear Dan solo in the style of Mitch Miller of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, press or say 'Three'.... To hear Dan solo in the style of every Stevie Wonder song from 1985 to the present, press or say 'Four'.... To hear Dan solo in the style of Gene Krupa, press or say 'Five'...."
There were 13 selections, each one spot on and funny as hell.
The Dan who plays bass also quoted "Crazy Train" during a solo.
They played a couple promising-sounding songs off the upcoming kid's album "No!", including one poignant number about waiting for a girl to show up and knowing she's about to get there because the clock reads four minutes to two. It's a broken clock on a New York streetcorner, and the song narrator grows a beard waiting for the girl to show up.
Downsides: doors opened 7:30, openers started around 8:30, finished around 9:15, 9:20 and TMBG took the stage well after 10. The music before the openers was some really nice old, pre-swing jazz, but for the agonizing 45 minutes-plus wait, they played old-school rap. They played it really loud. 20 minutes was enough.
Oh, and for the song "Man, It's So Loud In Here" (the catchy Pet Shop Boys knockoff about not being able to talk to a girl in a school dance/small town nightclub from Mink Car), they turned up the amps, turned off the stage lights and hit the crowd with some painfully bright strobes. I could feel the hairs on my arms shaking. In a slightly larger venue, that'd be cool as fuck - "oooo! we're in the place they're singing about!" - but five rows from the speakers in a movie theater (seats bolted to the floor), it's a bit much.
This is because I am old.
TMBG fans will also be impressed that the band did a complete rendition of "Fingertips." I'm not familiar enough with it to be as totally blown away as some of my friends, but I kinda got it anyway. It's like the TMBG version of the second side of Abbey Road, only with shorter songlets. And they never missed a note.
One of the tightest bands I've ever seen, and a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Bring earplugs.
Oh, and the openers, OKGO - great powerpop group, tight tunes, meandering from Rick Springfield covers into that kind of Soul Coughing/Suicide electropunk territory. The lead singer's great at the banter. And he's cute. They're on their way up. We'll see how the first radio release goes this July. Don't skip the openers, especially if you remember Loverboy on the radio being the coolest thing ever. |
