Musical Dilemma

In the weeks leading up to Friday night I was faced with a problem. Two bands I really wanted to see, in the same VENUE on the same NIGHT. The Pearl St upstairs had Gang of Four, downstairs had Rasputina. No matter which we picked I would feel retarded. My wife wouldn't have anything to do with the decision, so I picked Rasputina. The way I figure it, well, I still don't have a good explanation. It was a really good show, so I'm happy we went, and at least we got to stand outside and listen to the last encore from the beginning. It was actually kind of cool.

The Rasputina show was really good though. We showed up about an hour before hand, with me having missed the last 3 nights sleep because I was up hacking all night with the flu and when I did fall asleep, my pager went off. The club downstairs is average total dive. About 300 people at the most were in there, dank was the word of the day. The sound wasn't all that great either.

The opening act was Tarantula A.D.. Predictably that sucked. Bad. Trio consisting of (broken) Cello, pounding drum, 2 neck guitar/bass, and synth. Mainly I think it annoyed me because often they didn't seem to be playing the same music as each other, the sound wasn't that good anyway, the cello pieces were more like "what else can I do to make this cello sound like I'm smashing a guitar". I kept trying to think of it as Philip Glass punk jazz-core blah blah, but it just annoyed me.

Rasputina came out, and immediately demanded everyone sit so we could all see. This brought a good round of laughter until they convinced everyone they were serious and we all sat down. About 30 minutes earlier my wife had asked whose brilliant idea it was to have carpeting in this place. I tried not to think about the carpeting as I sat and watched. It was kind of nice really, gave kind of a story teller feel to the whole thing, Pete Seeger, Punk Cellist. It was a really intimate fun show with lots of audience interaction, mostly the audience were morons, but that's what you get for asking them stuff. The band were super-tight, the effects worked really well live and convinced me that this wasn't just a good recorded group. The sound was slightly better, but they still complained about it sounding like thier mic's were broken, but I had a blast anyway.

Do I regret not seeing GO4, yeah, sure I do, I also regret not buying tickets to GO4 show the night before in Providence, but it was really better off. I had taken that day as a sick day, and we really can't be making a 3 hour drive at the end of a show on a Thursday night when we have to work the next day.

In all honesty I might have liked Tarantula AD better if:

• I wasn't hacking my lungs out constantly
• I had slept in the last few days, maybe I could put up with more pretention then
• I had had the ability to drink, a lot.
• I was 17 and thought that since they're on stage, they must be geniuses
• I could have stopped making jokes to that effect, and stopped thinking about Mystic Spiral

I knew I'd get what I asked for.