The Juice Bar

My muses, thoughts, ideas, and whatever

Friday, May 06, 2005

Summary of three concerts I have seen over the last few weeks. It so
happens that these are all indie bands more keyboard-driven than
guitar-driven. I find it a nice change of pace, guitar can all sound the same
after a while.

Dresden Dolls

- An interesting goth-cabaret band, consisting of a girl on piano and a guy
on drums, both dressed rather oddly. The girl on piano was the singer, and
she had a powerful voice. They put on an energetic show, and visually the
pair was quite striking, dressed in white face makeup and black and white
clothes that looked quite striking against the stage lighting. And for the
two of them, they filled a pretty big room with sound. The most interesting
song they did was a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", and managed to give
their piano-drums cover nearly the menace of the original. The crowd was
quite interesting as well, many of them dressed similar to the band. A
little different than the typical suburban strip mall bar crowd.

Aqueduct

- A keyboard, bass, drums trio. They put on a very energetic and engaging
show in a tiny club. They're great songwriters and looked like they were
actually enjoying themselves, which is nice.

Fiery Furnaces

- Another keyboard-driven rock combo. The difference between them and most
indie groups is the ambition of their songwriting, creating progressive rock
epics with multiple movements. At the concert, they started with a
45-minute medley of songs without taking a break. I admire the effort, but
I have to admit, I'm not crazy about this particular trick. I saw Blues
Traveler do the same thing one time. I like to have some kind of break from
one song to the other, or else all the sound runs together in a blur. After
that, they played another half hour of normal-length songs (relatively
speaking). But, the songs themselves were quite ecletic and entertaining,
and I really enjoyed the show. The show was put on in the basement of the
University Center of a local school, so it was nearly all college kids in
the crowd. It made me feel old, but I can appreciate it that our youth are
enjoying quality music.

Monday, May 02, 2005

One thing I don't understand about coffee shops

Coffee is full of caffeine. You drink it and it wakes you up, gets you moving.

Yet when I go to coffee shops, everyone I see is seated.

OK, that's enough deep thoughts for me tonight. :)