Insight As To The Recent Lack Of RFT Posts

My computer hard drive died! As I have stored most of my music digitally on my computer and don't have a stereo in my dorm room, not only is my capacity to blog crippled but as is my ability to listen to music at all.

Sad, I know, but true. My reliance on (slightly more advanced) technology leaves me a chilly solitary spinster.

Hopefully I'll scrape together the cash to get things moving again soon. Wooden Media has suffered a similar mothballing process.

Pithy comment about the new Youth Group Album

After listening to it through a few times I've determined that it is the new Shins album that never was.

AFI & Sick of It All @ Newport

OK, so I'm not going to give a total rundown of this show. But I'm going to address a couple things.

First off, I went to this show because I was able to get in free. I think tickets were around $20 and sold out weeks in advance so... I've followed AFI for awhile and I was interested to see them, even after the little transemographication they've gone through. I wish I could say that I totally used to be into hardcore, but alas, I never was.

A friend of mine used to really be into Sick of It All but I had a hard time getting into it.

In fact, I'll be totally honest and the most appealing prospect about this concert going into it was the likelihood that some mall-goth would get beat up by a hardcore kid with gauges and a baseball cap.

In the minutes leading up to the AFI-mania, during Sick of it All's set (which was bordering on electrifying) I saw lots of green glowsticks flying around. Something about this seemed poignant considering the circumstances.

The highlight of the evening was when a group of what looked like four 99.7 DJ's tried to barrel down to the dancefloor, only to be stopped by a human blockade: shoulder to shoulder goth chicks, guys with eyeliner, college students. Somewhere in their brain functions (I'm guessing Natty Light was the main catalyst for the chemical process) they decided to try to push their way through a crowd of 20 odd people and instead almost knocked most of them over.

Someone took offense and confronted the College Night Cornhole cadre. Words were had. Beers flew. A brawl seriously seemed ready to break out (probably the last thing I wanted to see was a full-fledged melee, despite my general interest in the situation.)

One of them, a short stocky man wearing a backwards white baseball cap and a black hoody with the word BOSTON emblazoned on the back threw an open-handed slap on a clean cut college kid. I'm not really sure what happened next or what, but eventually one of the group of jerkholes through a sucker punch on a guy literally a foot and a half taller and scurried away.


Things actually simmered because the disturbance was gone, but in the group's wake was a general din of "did you see that guy? what dick" and such... it was like an electric circuit, how quickly word of the fight travelled around me. Obviously it was a major point of interest.


Oh, and AFI's set was OK.

Done Waiting Anniversary Show

I know I know you're just dying to see some washed out $300 digital camera shots but I just can't provide that for you. I didn't bring my camera. SORRY

So I intentionally left around 10 PM even though Duffy had posted on the DW message board that the show should start around then. I made the mistake of listening to Chris Deville when I went to the Columbus Alive Bands to Watch show. He said the show would start promptly at 10 and ended up starting promptly at about 10:45. OOPS

But I digress.

Chris McCoy & The Gospel

I arrived a little late and Chris McCoy (with Gospel in tow) was just playing his last song. I've always thought McCoy was a really impressive performer but his set would go on a little too long. Well this wasn't a problem this time because I saw him for about four or five minutes. Actually, in all honesty I wish I'd made it earlier to see some of his set.

An interesting fact: Chris McCoy is like 7 feet tall and plays his guitar backwards, a la Jimmy Hendrix.

Megan Palmer

You know, it was honestly really hard to evaluate her at all. I pointed out to Colleen, who had come with me, that Megan Palmer was a female, slightly alt-country singer/songwriter. Colleen mentioned that all female singer/songwriters were a little alt-country. Marcy Mays of Scrawl fame proved that wrong later.

Hopefully I get to see Megan Palmer again.

Miranda Sound

Miranda Sound, who had covertly set up while our attentions were diverted to the back of the room, played next. They played a super-energetic set, as I would have expected. I was really impressed when Western Reserve came out last year and have been surprised that the band hasn't picked up more buzz than they have, seemingly.

Miranda Sound is a somewhat straightforward power-pop band but that didn't stop them from doing a really interesting song that didn't even really push 100 BPM and featured timpani mallets and inner-guitar singing. I really enjoy their guitar interplay and general energy. Great live set.

Eric Metronome

Eric Metronome was on the side stage next. He had his uke and his wife, Kim a melodica. I'd never seen them perform together and unfortunately, Kim's vocals were waayyyyy too low. Eric even went through the common ritual of asking "how are my levels" to which the perfunctory general crowd noises were given in response. So the levels stayed untouched until Kim realized no one could hear her.

In general acts on the side stage were kind of ignored because of low levels and the fact that it's really hard to command the attention of a large crowd with only an acoustic guitar. I always enjoy seeing Copy Cat though.

The Greenhouse Effect

OK. Here's the real star of the evening, hands-down. While it seems like their set may have been a little long, they were exceptionally entertaining and far superior to The Catalyst (WARNING: don't click on that link unless you have a ton of RAM or are not particularly partial to your computer.) In all fairness, I was pretty intoxicated at the BTW show but Blueprint and Fess showed that The Catalyst still has a lot of work to do.

As I had suspected, Blueprint was pretty much amazing. Good flow, clever rhymes and a lot of general stage presence and humor. There's a lot of inherent humor in a situation when a hip-hop set breaks out at a concert full of white hipsters. The hardcore dancing kid provided a good segue between the hands-in-pockets foot-stomping of before with some of the bumping and grinding and such that followed. Blueprint even pulled out a ghetto-blaster and rapped about Do The Right Thing for a little bit.

DJ Interchange (Spare Change?) held it down nicely and had fun with Nirvana's 'Smells like Teen Spirit' for awhile.

I talked through Marcy Mays and left during Brainbow. I just can't do Brainbow -- don't really dig the wall of sound thing that they are trying to achieve. It just seems like a speed-metal song should break out at any moment and it doesn't happen.

All in all, it was a great show and I really enjoyed myself. I also bought a nifty Donewaiting.com T-Shirt. It wasn't American Apparel though :( I guess child labor has to enter the equation to achieve a $5 T-Shirt.

All in all, the acoustic sets were unfortunately too quiet but really helped the show move along at a quick clip. I really enjoyed myself and look forward to yet another year of snarky music commentary and emoticons.