She was a purty little thing with a sassy little mouth. Her set was littered with hilarious interludes, using her looks and her hillbilly twang to woo the audience. She talked sly shit about everyone she knows, about herself, and about us (“I appreciate you all coming out tonight when you had so many other options.”). Some of the audience members thought she was over the top and putting on a bit of an act, fluffing up the accent, but her background’s legit (rural Florida). I mean her dad went to prison for running moonshine. People couldn’t reconcile her prettiness with her supposed background. With the heavy makeup, the bleached blonde hair, the cute little outfit, and especially, pumping little spurts of throat soother in her mouth on stage, I knew she was the sort of girl who needed to be in control after a childhood that was a bit out of control. I just liked her – she’s done good for herself and she sees through life and people. So they made references to outlaw country through the night, but they were more of a country rock band. The music lacked definition, and she is definitely more of a voice and performer than a guitarist. They were at their best when the lyrics were witty and female [“I slid on my tightest pair of jeans, Combed my hair like it was 1983, Honey I know that I am just your wife, But I wanna be your girlfriend tonight”; “And we were making love in the disco era, And he was Travolta and I was Farrah, I was like man what is happening here, Dude must of put a qualude in my beer, If I wake up married, I’ll have to annul it, Right now my hands are in his mullet”], when they did covers (Johnny Horton, Merle Haggard), when they did old southern gospel, and when the guitarist sang two songs of his own. Unlike Elizabeth, he was a dopey humble hipster, in his misshapen shirt and slightly baggy dress pants, with a curly lock of hair covering his eyes. He maintained a rocker’s cool until he turned to look at Elizabeth and adoration beamed from his humble face, and when he sang, his face was a playground of emotions. His songs were simple but his voice and active face infused them with emotion – decent guitarist too – Tim Carroll is his name. We found out later he and Elizabeth just got married. The third member of the band was an Australian roughneck on upright bass – he was a sidenote, possibly because his guitar wasn’t amped properly.

I had to write my notes on paper napkins torn in half, which were all that were provided in this self-described “classiest” place in Gunnison – a group of nurses were there to see ‘the guys from their kitchen’ playing a gig for the first time – they were a formidable collection of guitars, 3 electric and 1 bass, with a female drummer (who was hidden behind all of the dueling fretboards) – although the setting was more suited for a jazz outfit and they were described as “easy listening,” they were a cover band who cast a 70s haze of Clapton and Santana over everything – with the length of every song doubled, they were also a hop skip and jump from being a jam band – they did Talking Heads’ “Take Me to the River,” Clapton’s “We’re Going to Let It All Hang Out,” Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” and then we left – the first singer was all right but the second singer was a Clapton look-alike who was living the dream and was suddenly half-screaming to a somewhat baffled crowd “How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?!!”

great name – competent classic rock and 80s hits cover band

hippie extreme setting: barefoot, dreadlocks, doing rope tricks – Rockboy was very bothered by this but I was more bothered by the lackluster music – a woman and a man trying to kill whatever life was left in singer/songwriter music – she whispered along to her dull guitar strums – he livened things up a bit with some nice backwalking riffs – I’d like to say it was because the sound was bad but I’d be lying- we left before their set ended

More than anything, the current Erasure tour is about lead singer Andy Bell’s vocals. Every single song allowed Bell to stretch his voice to the rafters. In fact the new tracks, including the stunning I Lose Myself and the club-ready A Whole Lotta Love Run Riot, seemed custom-designed to showcase that voice.

Erasure have a back catalog spanning twenty-five years, and they reached way back for the b-side Push Me, Shove Me and the crowd favorite Oh L’Amour. The new songs fit right in but somehow it was the older tracks where Erasure truly found their groove. It wasn’t just a function of being familiar. The songs from early in their career, like the frenetic Drama and bouncy singalong Sometimes, just worked better tonight. Those songs found that balance between allowing Bell to roam wild and Vince Clarke’s intense love affair with the soundscape of Erasure’s songs.

Blue Savannah is consistently one of my favorite live tracks (nothing beats Clarke in a cactus suit playing guitar on an acoustic-tinged Blue Savannah during the Cowboy tour), and the backing vocals tonight were layered brilliantly behind Andy Bell’s soaring lead vocals giving the song a fresh new feel. Twice, Bell favored the lower register for a song, including Tomorrow’s World lead single When I Start To (Break It All Down). He must have been saving his voice for other tracks because A Little Respect was belted out with an intensity that sent waves of energy through the crowd.

The sound mix was a little muddy in the House of Blues, and it was distinctly noticeable on the ballads. Alien was just a sonic mess. The acoustic elements were completely lost and the backing vocals smothered Bell’s. A similar problem affected Always and Ship of Fools. But for whatever reason, the dance tracks didn’t suffer the same sound issues.

Erasure knows how to get people off their feet, and they had the crowd hopping from the pulsing intro to Love to Hate You straight through to the last note of Stop. Once again, Andy Bell sounded fantastic. With the new album’s release still a month off, it is always good to hear from them again.

Erasure setlist
Sono Luminus
Always
When I Start To (Break It All Down)
Blue Savannah
Fill Us With Fire
Drama
You’ve Got To Save Me Right Now
Ship of Fools
Chorus
Breathe
Victim of Love
Alien
Push Me Shove Me
Love To Hate You
I Lose Myself
A Whole Lotta Love Run Riot
Breath of Life
Chains of Love
Sometimes
A Little Respect
Encore
Oh L’Amour
Stop!

old school banjo from a very old man – stoic

We were pretty skerred to see our first music in Gunnison but they weren’t too bad – of course, the dobro player is our neighbor and a potential coworker – band consists of him (in his 40s) and four college kids – two sweet girls and two bored-looking (or cool-trying) boys – they played Americana of all sorts – their first song was a cover of a song from an Austin band sigh

Kristin Ezbicki is an unassuming singer-songwriter with country sensibilities who showed up on a porch on Willow Ave on a sunny afternoon in Somerville, MA. Dubbed Porchfest, the event was a city-wide initiative to highlight local artists by having them perform on people’s porches. After a rainy miserable week, the sun came out for a few hours as Ezbicki took the stage to promote her recent album, Bring Me to the Light.

Given the venue (a porch), the limited staging space she had to share with a guitarist, a keyboard and a drum kit, and a roving audience who came and went by foot, on bicycle, plus the constant stream of cars passing by, Ezbicki handled the entire atmosphere with aplomb. But what quickly became evident, despite Ezbicki not being a household name, was that the people who stopped to listen to the music stuck around. She was good. Her voice was warm and her songs struck a chord with the crowd.

Weaving deftly between haunting lost-love melodies like Anna and an Edgar Allan Poe poem A Dream Within a Dream set to original music, Ezbicki ran through a forty-five minute set of original tunes. The highlight was the gorgeous rendition of the album title track, Bring Me to the Light that soared through the crowd (which, fortunately for all involved, happened to be at its largest size at that moment).

For a change of pace, Ezbicki invited the house band on stage for a jam session of familiar tunes including Honky Tonk Woman and Dead Flowers (both Rolling Stones covers). And the surprise of the night was a woman named Anastasia who was recruited from the crowd to play guitar – and took lead vocals on an impressive version of Coldplay’s Clocks.

Ezbicki handled all the elements and surprises and put on a terrific showcase for her talents and her original music. Reportedly, her debut album was six years in the making. Here’s hoping the next one comes sooner than that.

Porchfest, a citywide initiative to highlight local artists in Somerville, MA by playing on people’s porches, had a 4pm stop on Willow Ave. Playing as Houseband 101, the 3-piece band drew in a small crowd with credible versions of Old Man (Neil Young) and Wild Horses (Rolling Stones) among others during their 25-minute set. Fronted by James Cressey, the house band, as they say, owned the porch.

[Austin, TX] so this band was recommended to me yearrrs ago and I’d never managed to see them until this day – I believe they’ve won local awards and I believe they were described to me as soul rock – the latter is just not accurate – they’re proggy proggy prog rock with maybe a little Grateful Dead jam band thrown in – I’ll admit there were a few songs that lightened up on the guitar work and could maybe be described as soul rock but overall they’re pretty intense for the average listener – the boys are very skilled on their guitars and the singer has a great voice but unless you’re of the Rush persuasion, you’re going to find them hard to digest for easy listening – I kind of think that this set may have focused on their newer material which may be a departure from their older material

[Austin, TX] we were there to see a ‘better’ band but Rockboy assured me he’d seen this band before and they had a crazy lead singer who would writhe on the floor – that’s always all right by me so I waited patiently – the band is an assortment of young and very old geeks in red shorts and red t-shirts – and also a hussy lead vocalist in too-low white jeans, a white crop top, and an eager g-string – they started and the best I can do to explain their sound is Parrothead space rock – they kind of segued into funkier stuff that might be compared to Red Hot Chili Peppers if I were feeling charitable – I wasn’t and I’m not – and it turned out that Rockboy had mistaken this band for another more exciting band so no entertaining lead singer was going to appear either – this band was awful and we left before even seeing the ‘better’ band – the really old hippie guy on bass was kind of cute I have to admit because I kept wondering how he ever ended up in this band of odd young people… I’m not sure I have the name of this band right or Rockboy was correct on the lead singer and he just didn’t show this night – it doesn’t matter because you don’t need to see them

[Orange Country, CA] We were so close to staying on the couch instead of going to this show but Rockboy got fired up and waged a campaign to convince me to go – it wouldn’t have worked, because I’m old and tired, except for the fact that this band, amidst all of the various punk bands I’m only moderately familiar with, has always stood out as unique and gorgeous – so we went and was it ever worth it golly gee whiz – there was a bunch of speed metal bands who opened for them – one of them told the crowd between a song “We’re going to go ahead and speed things back up” which was amusing because the music had never stopped being ferocious as far as I could tell – then there was a young punker rocking out by the stage by himself with only the bare cement of a future mosh pit surrounding him – in one last glorious move, he picked up a beer can from the ground and raised it to his lips with his X-ed hand (X for ‘under 21’) – he was promptly gathered up by bouncers and dropped outside before he ever even got to see TSOL – it was very entertaining – in other mosh pit exploits, there was a girl who ran into the mosh pit which is always inspiring to me – and then she went one step further and took a guy out with her elbow – she stepped back out of the mosh pit and retrieved her eyeglasses from her back pocket to replace them on her face – even Aretha would have shown some respect – finally TSOL came on and it’s pretty much a blur of gloriousness from that point on – the lead singer is OLD now of course, and even kind of portly, but he was a raging maniac – bounding around the stage and commanding every person in the audience – I think this band’s sound is amazing – it’s some blend of speed metal, punk, goth,… – all of those genres can get boring and repetitive but TSOL’s songs are brilliantly written with unexpected turns and starts and pauses – dramatic and catchy too – they manage to be hard and beautiful at the same time, and to create an atmosphere in an instant – I can hear their CA roots too even if it’s just my own nostalgic fantasy – my euphoria was dampened when I went to the back and couldn’t pay my tab because a fight broke out behind me, and then came face to face when some sad hippie boy who was all bloody and was led out – I recommend “Thoughts of Yesterday” and “Sounds of Laughter”

Crass: [Britain] I liked punk in high school before I listened to punk – it was the ethic of punk that mattered to me but I didn’t find out until I was trained at the Rockboy School of Punk that there’s a lot of punk music that does NOT have that ethic I like – Crass is a band that has that ethic – their politics and passion are spot on – rather than Crass themselves, this was actually “Steve Ignorant’s Crass Songs – The Last Supper Tour” or the lead singer touring on his own and doing Crass songs – this show was great except I couldn’t understand a single word the extremely British, or maybe cockney British, vocalist was singing – not a word – the crowd was pretty deliriously happy though (and not noticeably punk which was interesting – it was a motley crowd) and I did enjoy watching the mosh pit manager manage the moshers – it also occurred to me that he wasn’t really singing but was doing spoken word and practically could be attributed with being one of the first hardcore rappers which is more evidence for the punkness of Wu-Tang – ha – “Do they owe us a living? Of course they do! Of course they do!”

the amazing street band that drew a bigger crowd than was seemingly in all of the clubs lining Frenchmen St. – they played a hard jazz, a punk jazz, or a free style jazz that was still incredibly listenable and danceable – was immeasurably more interesting to me than that old played out same-style jazz you hear all over New Orleans, but they told us that the clubs won’t hire them to play – maybe because they’re clearly from the poorer parts of New Orleans – it amused me that in New Orleans, it’s cool, even for street kids, to play band-geek instruments like the trumpet and trombone

you’d think this was exactly what we were just seeing (Linnza Zaorski), i.e., another retro girl with a backing band, but the sound was pretty different – this band had a lot more brass and wasn’t as easy breezy – this girl was older and harder – she was fine but didn’t particularly stand out to me – this was where we ran into scary people from the swing dancing convention that was meeting in New Orleans during the French Quarter Festival

Rockboy has had her music for a while and was Very eager to see her – it was clear why once we arrived – she’s a hottie – she was charming old men, young men, girls and even dogs passing by – she sings in that nasally sweetie girl voice from the 20s/40s – there is no doubt that she was entrancing – the whole band seemed a little stoned – outside of her voice, the vibe of the band was very smoky-coffee-shop – after Rockboy told me how she passed out in the bathroom midset during a show in Austin, I spent the show pondering the plights of being Linnzi Zaorski…

that big-sound bluesy rocking jazz – reminded me of the Sex and the City episode with the “I Can’t Get Next to You” song – it just bugs me

as the name would suggest, they mix zydeco with punk – Rockboy foresaw Pogues and I foresaw gypsy punk, and that’s about exactly what we got – they were terrific – very Gogol Bordello – lots of passion – they’d played a show until 3am the night before and were at this show by mid-morning – this was the best venue of the whole festival, just a field – no bureaucracy, tons of good food stands, and everybody mellow in their little fold out chairs – we started feeling like locals once we picked ourselves up some of those chairs and settled in with the middle aged folks – this band inspired some truly creative dancing from the audience – the kind of band you’d want to have at your wedding, even if you’re not Greek or Jewish

they were playing a Sunday brunch show at a warehouse type bar on Frenchmen St. – it was pretty straightforward traditional jazz – pleasant – suitable for a Sunday morning – not too tricky

Rockboy saw this band the day before and raved over their zydeco fantabulousness – I think zydeco is the ugliest music in creation but turns out it’s the danciest music in creation – they were just a bunch of fugly guys in the tackiest bar EVER but everybody wanted to be at their party – appears I’ll need to look into zydeco a little bit more

Irvin Mayfield is a good-looking slick guy in a suit who convinced the crowd that we need to visit his jazz club – the band was made up of a set of similarly slick brass players, a piano player, an all-grins banjo player, and three peacocked up females who inexplicably sat at the side of the stage for most of the set – there was also an adorable little boy with his own trombone that he would play every and now then when he wasn’t standing stoically – Michael Watson, also a trombone player, was a tall drink of water with a butter voice – he reminded me of Marvin Gaye – Sasha Mazakowski, daughter of some famous guitar player, was an exceedingly and obnoxiously hip girl with giant sunglasses who sang her admittedly pretty sad-mysterious jazz with more hand emoting than voice power – her voice wasn’t bad but I couldn’t get over her awareness of herself

a bunch of brown-clothed hobo-looking kids playing old time jazz blues – turned out they had a ‘showcase’ show for the Fest sometime later – lots of brass and a dancing girl but the kid on a washboard with a tilted cap was the best

I think this was the band’s name – there were about ten men on the stage – all older gents, each with a different instrument – the music was so markedly better than what we’d been hearing pouring out of Bourbon St clubs, that we knew we had arrived at our first official French Quarter Fest stage – traditional jazz – I don’t know the proper terms but it’s the happy go lucky kind that makes me think of full dresses and big rivers – it was great!

dread-locked Papa from the Carper Family and her bearded bandmates from Arkansas – meld of bluegrass and country – Papa plays her upright bass, one guy is on banjo and harmonica, and the other guy is on guitar and kazoo (as well as a little human voice instrumentalizing) – they often harmonize – particularly liked a southern gothic song that Papa led on – they write most (or all?) of their music as well – some witty lyrics – their shows are hard to come by but they’re really really good

[Memphis, TN] the only show I was insistent upon seeing this SXSW – fronted by Alicja Trout, the woman who dated Jay Reatard and formed Lost Sounds with him – since none of his other material had the same sound as Lost Sounds, I attribute the sound to her – she was so thoroughly not a disappointment – in case you’ve forgotten, Lost Sounds are the best band of the 2000s: dark driving synth punk – despite this, I just was certain she wouldn’t be a scenester and she wasn’t, bless her honest heart – she showed up in blue jeans (they were skinny) and a bright-blue halter top (literally could have been from Old Navy) – her hair was naturally brown and a ridiculous mess, she had a little cloth tie buried in the nest – she was medium height, not skinny but spare, you could see her cheekbones – yes, I have a crush on this woman – she was very decorous while she watched the band before her, no antics, spoke to the people who approached her – and then she hit the stage and was a fury of guitar whaling – and it was over for me – she is a goddess of rock without pretension or show or sexy little tricks – and so I near cried by the end of the set – seeing women break boundaries does that to me – so this band is not Lost Sounds, they’re more garage punk – she is accompanied by a lean grizzly man on bass and a guy on drums – they played one Lost Sounds song which was pretty much put me over the edge of ecstasy – Rockboy, although not a Lost Sounds fan, did notice that the sound of that song was dramatically different than the others: harder, more staccato guitar – I always thought Lost Sounds had a keyboard but now I’m not sure – Alicja invited the wild frontman of the Zoobombs up to accompany them on their last song which I thought was very gracious – I’m not sure if he was following their lead or they were following his (good sign) but it basically ended up that she and he went into a guitar battle – it is just very apparent that the guitar and music are within her, and that she does this because she loves it – she could kick a boy’s ass any day

[Tokyo, Japan] and right after their earthquake… it was three youngish guys and one older minuscule woman in bell-bottoms – they started off with what I’ve come to expect from hard Japanese bands: tight and explosive – it was mostly fast and furious but, with some 60s keyboard, they strayed into some psychy wailing (almost Doors-like) and even a little bit of dance rock – the lead singer was fantastically dynamic: flailing, fixing his broken guitar string mid-song, mouthing the microphone – I didn’t like the keyboard/psych stuff too much but enjoyed that they ended their one-long-song of a set with a guitar wail and a group bow

[Austin, TX] three old guys, each a certain sort, and none the same sort as the other – one had a bandana around his head, one had a lot of tattoos and a squirrel tail hanging from his guitar like a big old hipster, and the other was like a former hardcore guy (based on bumper stickers) – there’s no denying they could play (they mentioned a 20 year history as a band) – one guy sang for the songs that were bluesy hard rock – the other guy sang for the songs that were vaguely 70s pop post-punk (Buzzcocks, Vibrators) – they were good and I really can’t put my finger on why I couldn’t quite get into them – maybe it’s ageism, and they had the longest outro ever

[Austin, TX] we were lucky enough to see their last-show-ever (and their 5th show ever) – and all because of a girl: the leader singer and guitarist is moving to follow his woman (who filmed the entire show) – the bassist and the drummer work with ShellFish, and we were regaled with the band’s history the night before by the bassist who learned to play bass just in time for their first show – despite all this, they were a just-fine 90s alt rock, post-grunge sort of band – they had a blues stomper song too – they wrote several of their songs – they played a Roky Erikson cover (“I Walked with a Zombie”) – most charming were the tongue-in-cheek comments of the lead singer – he managed to unite the band and the audience (most of whom he probably knew) into finding all of their flubs endearing and being thrilled that we were able to see the last show if this outstanding – they re-started 3 songs, the bassist screwed up his run one time, and then pulled out notes to do his spoken word part, but that was all part of the hilarity

[California] this band came to our attention because the former lead singer of Grand Ole Party is in this band – Grand Ole Party is/was a great band and Dum Dum Girls is not – I’d heard their recorded material and wasn’t very impressed but hoped the live show might be better because Grand Ole Party’s live shows were fantastic – it was just dull girl rock – 3 girls in slutwear with guitars in the front and one girl on drums – no movement or passion – I ESP that they got a manager who tried to make them appealing to a wider audience (sexy! slick!) and they’re a big old peter out….

[Brentwood, NY] highest quality rap show I’ve ever seen, especially at SXSW – VegasFashionisto recommended them and I happened to walk by – two MCs and 1 DJ – kind of a Wu Tang sound but maybe more clubby – the crowd was live

[Nashville, TN] we saw them last year and liked them enough to see them again – ghoulish wailing swamp punk – they were a little messy but I think that’s the point

[Indianoplis, Indiana] girl in black with feathers on her head, jerking herself around the stage wailing and whining – backed by three guys, two guitars, and a drum – she expressed angst very well, and sometimes used a loudspeaker to do it – kind of reminded me of a singer/songwriter version of Babes in Toyland which is ridiculous – I liked them a lot actually – dark, pacing and dancey – her voice is great – she’s familiar to me somehow, hopefully because of the music and not the personal torturedness