The Beat @ Tupelo Music Hall

[music | DJ? Acucrack - Damage Control]

I guess we need to move to Londonderry now. Tupelo Music Hall was a pretty damn good little venue, except for the whole "having chairs" thing. The Tupelo Guy said at the beginning that this would be about the most energetic band you'd see at the venue, which is probably for the best, because honestly all you want to do is dance, but you just can't.

Luckily, we had 3 tickets, and one went unused, which is for the best, so we could move around a little, until the woman in front of me castrated me with the corner of her chair.

But really, the sound was good, the lighting was minimal and good, and the crowd really got into the show, so it was a blast. We also found that there's a BYOB policy, so lots of people showed up with coolers ready to go. I gather there's some cover charge for this, but it's easily worth the cover not to have to run to the bar, and obviously 6-pack + cover is way cheaper than 6 beers from a bar.

There was no one opening for them, so the Beat went on around 8:30 and we were back on the road by like 10:15, which is just amazingly early. They played all the Beat songs you'd want to hear and we got some General Public love.

I think I'll have to get the new record, which I honestly didn't know existed.

I just finished up reading a really good interview with Dave Wakeling from a couple of weeks ago. It does a good job of covering a lot of the drama around the dueling Beat incarnations that are currently touring, FYC, and IRS records nut-jobbery. Fascinating.

Here are a couple of the less crappy pictures I was able to get from Row J, the ears were the bane of my photo taking existence, but that's going out for you, they were fun, and people should have fun at shows, not worry about some moron 10 rows back with a camera:

There are a couple more pictures in the Flickr set