local music

I went to see my friend play a concert last night. He was really good, but the other acts not so much.

The first act was just a guy with an acoustic guitar. You could tell he was talented, but he was boooooring. Such a stereotype. You know, songs that are just a few chords and ramblings of words too long to fit in the musical meter, not "sung" so much as spoken in rhythm. One of the songs was called "Exercise in Existentialism" so you can imagine how that went. (eyeroll) All the songs sounded the same. Luckily it was pretty easy to ignore, as everone in the(very small) audience was bored. I could see that happening in a coffeehouse. However, upstairs from the venue is a gay nightclub, and we could hear the techno beatz over the acoustic guitar, so I was dancing in my chair to that, really resisting the urge to go up there.

Next up was my friend, and he too is just a dude with a guitar. I knew that coming into the show, but I wanted to support him. He was actually really good. He had good volume, had variety in his playing, and had actually well written lyrics. He gave me a cd of his, so maybe someday I'll share it with all of you.

The third and final act (for us, anyway) was having a bit of an identity crisis. They really wanted to be an indie folk band (sticking with the theme of the night) but also kinda sounded like The Pogues. I wish they would have embraced that, but no. This one was two dudes, one with an electric and one with an acoustic guitar. The singer wore a green wifebeater and trucker hat to go with his long redneck beard. The lyrics were less than stellar: one song repeated "Why or why are you such a bitch" and "Why or why are you such a whore." Gee, tell us how you really feel about your ex wife. (He explained the song before he played it, you know because we never would have figured it out.) Another song featured the line "breakfast is a metaphor." For what, we wondered. His "singing" was way more on the screaming side, and as the sound system in the place isn't as awesome as it could be, it was a pretty overall awful aural experience. We left partway through their set, since the friend I had gone to see also left.

But I miss the experience of going to shows (especially local ones) so it was still a fun time. And hey, it gave me a story to tell.