I ended a great week of gigs (Radiohead, Starlight Mints, Forward, Russia and Tilly and the Wall) with one of the craziest show I've been to in recent memory. The weird thing is that root rockers Band of Horses don't inspire strange goings on, it's just another Saturday Summer night in Hoboken.
Quietly, the duo of Ben Bridwell and Matt Brooke have become one of the most respected new acts in music. Formed from the defunct Carissa's Wierd, the guys from Seattle take Ben's echoed vocals and create grandiose Americana music reminiscent of My Morning Jacket, mixed with early Neil Young and just hint of the indie rock of Sub Pop label mates Iron & Wine and The Shins. The contrast of the quiet and haunting with the full-on force chorus of "The Funeral" off their debut Everything All the Time makes it one of the most potent songs of the year.
Their show last night was bare bones in terms of instrumentation, but it sounded enormous like it was backed by an army of guitars. We were treated to two versions of "Wicked Gil," "The First Song," a few new tunes and an effective cover of Hall & Oates's "You Make My Dreams," which I have a short clip of below. The problem sometimes with these small dissonant guitar driven bands is that the mind tends to wonder. All the guitar parts start sounding the same. That's not the case with Band of Horses, who consistently have a mellow tempo but punctuated with some freak-out power cords.
This being a Saturday night, and believe me I was feeling good myself, we were having a blast screaming and hooting between each songs. Ben would respond, "Yeah, Saturday night in Jersey. Fuck it, let's have a good time."
The strangeness was caused by the obligatory 5-foot nothing drunk girls who caused many a disruption in the sold out venue. Between one instrument tuning, I heard a guy yelled during the quietness, "Stop touching me." Which caused me to yell, "No touching. NOOOO touching" (it's an Arrested Development joke). I turned to Wes from PSNYC (his review) and we both were cracking up. Then the drunk girls made their way to the front, annoying everyone around. When they retreated to the back, I'm not sure if one of them vomited or just spilled their drink, but all of sudden one side of the room just cleared out.
When they came back, one spilled a drink on my friend, starting a little ruckus. The ruckus ended when my other friend was defending his fiance. There was some scratching and wrestling, then my friend picked up the drunk girl and dragged to the back of the room and out of the room. The drunk girls ended up getting kicked out. It was quite the scene. Bare in mind this is all happened during the performance. When the song ended, Ben had to announce, "Is everyone alright? I see some shit going down there. Is it all out of our systems?"
Oh, drunk girls -- they make the world go around. What would we do without you? Who would drunk guys hook-up with at the end of the night? Who else could single handily ruin our concert experience?
The other good times came from opening act, Mt. Egypt, although I didn't much care for their music, the lead singer, Travis Graves (who sang with Band of Horses on the Hall & Oates cover) was drunk out of his mind. He would mess up songs, slur lyrics and just look like he was about to pass out. He had this strong Virginia, hillbilly accent that was something. "Y'all must stop talkin' and sheet" or "I'm sorry bout dat y'all. I fuuugt up." The whiskey will do that to you.
Thanks for the comments about the fight... I had no idea what the hell happened up there (I was about 10 people back on the stairs.
Posted by: Mike | June 19, 2006 at 01:15 PM
Notice in the video, the camera flash, that went on the whole show. How long does it take to heal from a retina burn?
Posted by: RJ | June 19, 2006 at 04:36 PM
Unfortunately I was the person involved in the "fight". These two extremely drunk girls who were about 5'0" each thought they belonged up front and were doing everything and anything to get passed everyone. Once they managed to grope/push/wiggle their way up front one of them managed to spill their drink down my fiance's leg and on her feet. To make a long story short, too late, in an attempt to get the drunk girl away from my fiance I seemed to irritate the drunk girl. She was pissed that I blocked her from my fiance and was doing everything to get passed me. One attempted knee to the balls later and I picked her up, carried her to the door, dropped her in front of the door guys and told them to get her and her friend out of here. On the way out I heard from a waitress that they were kicked out, so mission accomplished. I apologize to anyone I bumped into while transporting the "package" out.
Posted by: Erik | June 19, 2006 at 05:35 PM
huh huh, you said package
Posted by: MusicSnobbery | June 22, 2006 at 03:14 PM