Squirrel Nut Zippers + HUMANWINE @ Paradise Boston 7-18-2008

Late late update.

Natalie and I were very happy to see these guys touring this year. Squirrel Nut Zippers is fun, the Dise is a fun place to see bands (as long as I can stake out my pole early), so it was a no brainer. We got lucky, for this show was greatness.

Pictures, sure

So HUMANWINE, and where the fuck were we? For the last year or two all you hear is HUMANWINE and oh hey, Brian is playing with HUMANWINE, we should go... Did we? Hell no. Do I feel like a moron? Of course I do! (many better photos of HUMANWINE can be found here, along with better pictures of many other shows I've attended)

HUMANWINE's schtick is evidently that the musicians on stage haven't ever played fully together before. That alone is pretty damn brilliant, though I tend to believe they've got to run out of folks to play strings especially, sooner or later. It's not like there aren't regulars, like the afore mentioned Brian Viglione. Dresden Dolls shows have to be one of the top 3 or so Funnest Shows Evar to go to, but man, HUMANWINE is headed right toward the top of that list with a bullet. They're very Waltzy, kind of a Folk Waltz Punk Hippie event. They were really tight and even though I was totally unfamiliar with their music, I got the lyrics, and gathered kind of a closeness and and arms-length kind of vibe since it was a new experience for them as a full group. Really cool.

Squirrel Nut Zippers were lots of fun and surprisingly hard to get a picture of(1). The Ghost of Stephen Foster was especially fun to see played live, accompanying the video in the background. Later, Natalie explained to me that the reason old cartoon characters are always bouncing is that there has to be some movement since if you had frame after frame of no intended movement, you'd end up seeing artifacts from people drawing the same image over and over, so to make it look natural, old cartoons would always be in motion, often just bouncing. This works out absolutely perfectly for the type of music we were listening to.

They kept our crowd going strong and then toward the end brought on a huge surprise for us old timers. On came 2/3 of Fucking Morphine(2), Jerome Deupree and Dana Colley. It's rare that I'm THAT happy at a show. Jack of all trades Will Dawson even gave us some Tritar, it worked really well. Apparently we need to add Twinemen to our list of shit to go see often. Maybe the 8/28 show?

The only thing that bothered me about this show is that due to my crappy skills/crappy camera, I missed out on an opportunity to add to my pictures of People Playing the Melodica. Here are some of the decent shots from the show. More at Flickr:

Dana Colley:

Jerome Dupree:

(1) This is the show that finally made me fire my camera and buy a new one. I traded up from a Kodak 740, which maxes out at ISO 400, to a Kodak Z1012, which does ISO 3200 native. It's pretty much the exact same form factor, a few little changes here and there, but I can still tape over the light meter and anything else that would annoy anyone (Sorry Devotchka!), and should get way better pictures.

(2) Spend lots of time on Joe Harvard's Rock in Boston site, it has been a huge time sink for me, and hopefully for you. I missed his birthday show last year because I was really sick, but hope to see him in Boston sometime. You'd have to triple dog dare me to drive to Jersey, sorry.